Poolside Zombie

I stood by the **water**, clutching my red solo cup like it contained the antidote to social death. Kyle's pool party raged around me—bodies splashing, music thumping, people actually having fun. Me? I was basically a **zombie**, functioning on autopilot, nodding at people I barely knew, trying not to look as out of place as I felt.

"Yo, Maya!" My best friend Priya materialized beside me, grabbing my arm. "You've been hovering by the snacks for forty-five minutes. What's going on?"

I shrugged. "Just vibing."

"You're not vibing. You're rotting." She pulled me toward a lounge chair. "Talk to me."

Before I could answer, something brushed against my leg. I looked down—a scruffy orange **cat** sat there, blinking up at me like I was the weird one for being at a pool party.

"Wait, whose cat is that?" I asked.

Priya laughed. "That's Nacho. Kyle's neighbor's cat. She crashes every party."

Nacho the cat hopped onto my lap and started purring like a motor. And suddenly I wasn't the socially awkward girl hiding by the chips anymore. I was the girl with the cat. People actually started looking at me—not through me.

"Okay, that's actually kind of iconic," some guy from my English class said, sitting down beside us. "Can I pet him?"

"Her," I corrected. "And yeah."

Within twenty minutes, I had an actual conversation going. About cats, about school, about how much we both hated group projects. Priya kept shooting me these looks like, *since when do you talk to guys?*

Later, when Nacho wandered off to beg for hot dogs, Priya leaned in. "What just happened?"

I shrugged again, but this time differently. "I think I just stopped being a zombie."

She smiled. "Finally. Now get in the pool before I push you."

I jumped in, clothes and all. Sometimes you need a random cat, a pushy friend, and to stop overthinking everything to finally feel alive.