Poolside Lazarus

The apartment complex pool reflected the sickly yellow of the streetlights. Elena sat on the edge, legs submerged, nursing a glass of wine that had gone warm. She should have been at Sarah's birthday dinner. Instead, she'd texted that work had run late.

"You've been a zombie for months," Sarah had told her that morning, not looking up from her coffee. "And you're not even the fun kind that eats brains."

The words had stung because they were true. Elena moved through her days at the architecture firm — shaking hands, marking up blueprints, smiling in all the right places — but somewhere along the way, she'd become hollowed out. The divorce from her marriage to ambition had been clean but painful, like surgery without anesthesia. Now she was thirty-eight and successful and absolutely terrified that this was it.

A splash broke her reverie. A cat — a mangy orange thing that lived in the complex — had leaped from the bushes and was now paddling toward her, looking vaguely offended by the water.

"You and me both," she said.

Her phone buzzed on the patio chair. Sarah again. Probably asking if she was coming home, or if she was staying at her sister's again. They hadn't slept in the same bed in two weeks.

Elena watched the cat reach the pool's edge and shake itself off with violent dignity. It sat next to her, started grooming its wet fur with total concentration.

She thought about the life she'd built: the corner office, the partner track, the beautiful apartment with the beautiful view. The woman she'd promised to love forever, who now looked at her like she was a stranger she'd made a terrible mistake trusting.

What she hadn't built was anything real. All of it — the career, the relationship, the curated version of herself she presented to the world — it was all performance. She'd been playing a role so long she'd forgotten who she'd been before the casting call.

The cat finished grooming and looked at her, seemed to wait.

"I don't know what I'm doing," Elena told it. "I think I might have forgotten how to be alive."

Something cracked open in her chest. Not tears — she was too hollowed out for tears. Something else. A recognition, sharp and sudden: she'd died years ago and hadn't noticed.

She stood up, water dripping from her legs, grabbed her phone and her shoes. The cat watched her go, unimpressed.

In the apartment, Sarah was asleep on the couch. Elena sat beside her, touched her shoulder gently.

"I've been dead," she whispered. "I want to come back."

Sarah stirred, opened one eye. "That's a start."