Running From Dead

I scrolled through my iPhone for the third time that morning, thumb moving on autopilot. Sixty-two notifications. Half of them were from group chats where everyone was talking but no one was saying anything.

"You look like a zombie," my little brother announced, eating cereal at the kitchen table.

"Ha ha." I reached for my hair—same messy brown bun I'd worn every day since seventh grade. The reflection in the microwave showed it: dead eyes, slouched shoulders, phone screen illuminating my face like a ghostly blue spotlight. Zombie was accurate.

Mom pushed a container toward me. "Spinach salad for lunch. You're doing track this semester, you need actual energy."

Track. Me. The girl whose idea of cardio was walking to the fridge during commercial breaks. But she'd signed up last week—something about needing a change, needing to feel something real instead of this constant low-key anxiety that lived in her chest like a trapped bird.

First practice was brutal. Coach Miller made them run laps until their lungs burned, until legs felt like jelly and hair stuck to foreheads in sweaty clumps. Lily wanted to quit. Her brain screamed THIS IS TERRIBLE.

But then came the second lap. And the third. Something shifted. The zombie feeling started to lift, replaced by something else—something alive.

By week three, Lily was actually running. Not fast, but running. And the weird thing? Her phone stayed in her locker more often. Her hair stayed down sometimes. She ate the spinach salads without complaining.

"You're different," her friend Maya noticed at lunch one day. "In a good way."

Lily looked at her phone, facedown on the table. Then she looked at Maya, really looked at her. "Yeah," she said. "I think I finally woke up."