Poolside Resurrection

The pool party was everything I dreaded: bodies pressed together, bass thumping against my ribs, the smell of coconut sunscreen and cheap perfume. I stood by the edge, nursing a lukewarm soda while everyone else cannonballed into the **water**, their laughter echoing against the backyard fence.

I felt like a **zombie** — dead behind the eyes, moving through motions I'd memorized from TikToks and Netflix specials. Smile. Nod. Pretend to care about Jake's new truck or Sarah's summer internship.

Then Marcus appeared beside me, shirt already plastered to his chest, hair dripping. "You're not swimming, Chlo."

"Not feeling it," I mumbled.

Marcus — my oldest **friend**, the one who'd seen me cry over failed math tests and bad haircuts — didn't push. He just stood there, dripping pool water onto my sandals, watching the same scene I was.

"You know what's weird?" he said finally. "We spend all year waiting for summer, then when it gets here, we're too exhausted to enjoy it. Like we're all just zombies chasing something we can't even remember wanting."

I laughed, surprising myself. "That's deep, Marcus. Did you read that on a fortune cookie?"

"Shut up." He grinned, and suddenly I was back in seventh grade, staying up until 3 AM playing video games, before everything got complicated. Before I had to care about being cool.

"Come on," Marcus said, grabbing my hand. "I'll push you in if I have to."

"You wouldn't."

"Try me."

I kicked off my sandals and jumped, the water shocking me awake, washing away the zombie fog I'd been walking around in for months. When I surfaced, Marcus was already splashing me, and for the first time all summer, I wasn't pretending.

Some friendships are like that — they pull you back to life when you didn't even realize you'd been drifting away.