Running From the Future

Maya's hands were literally shaking as she tapped through the eight hundredth Snapchat of the day. Her brain felt like it had been marinating in energy drinks and panic since finals week started. Full-on zombie mode. The kind where you're technically alive but moving on autopilot through the school hallways, nodding at people you don't even see.

Her friend Jordan burst into her room without knocking — typical Jordan energy — and started aggressively rearranging her vitamin collection on Maya's desk like it was some kind of strategic operation. Jordan's whole deal this semester was wellness. She'd gone full gymbro, but for mental health and skincare and whatever seventeen TikTok trends had convinced her was essential.

"You're spiraling again," Jordan said, sliding a vitamin D supplement across the desk. "You haven't been outside in three days. Your skin is literally reflecting your bedroom lights. This is concerning."

"I'm having an existential crisis about my entire future path," Maya said, not looking up. "Also, I'm pretty sure I'm developing an allergy to standardized testing. Is that a thing?"

"No, but stress hives are. Take the vitamin."

So now they were doing this: running at 6 AM like absolute psychopaths because Jordan had read something about morning exercise rewiring your brain or whatever pseudoscience was trending that week. Maya hated every second of it. Her lungs burned. Her phone buzzed against her thigh with notifications she couldn't check. She was missing everything.

But then Jordan, genius that she was, had made it weird. She'd signed them up for the charity 5K zombie run downtown because "it'll be fun! We can be zombies together! It's immersive!"

"This is mortifying," Maya hissed, adjusting her fake blood makeup in the rearview mirror of Jordan's mom's Honda Civic. "People from school are going to see us."

"That's the point! Lean into the disaster energy. You're already having one anyway. Might as well get a medal for it."

And that was the thing about Jordan — she made chaos feel like an adventure. While Maya was catastrophizing about college applications and GPAs and whether she'd peaked in eighth grade, Jordan was just... existing. Unapologetically. Making weird choices and prioritizing joy over whatever fabricated metrics of success adults had invented to torment them.

The race was absolute chaos. Hundreds of people in zombie makeup, running through the city while volunteers dressed as survivors chased them with pool noodles. It was ridiculous. It was perfect. Maya's fake blood was already melting down her neck. Her vintage Nikes were getting destroyed.

Jordan kept falling behind because she kept stopping to take aesthetic photos of the chaos. Classic. Maya had to keep circling back to get her, which — fine. Whatever. That's what friends did. They waited for each other. They didn't leave each other behind over bad photo timing or existential dread or whatever. They just showed up. They adjusted their zombie makeup together. They kept running.