Summer of the Living Brain-Dead

The August heatwave had turned everyone at Johnson High into zombies — literally shambling through the hallways, eyes glazed from three months of TikTok doomscrolling. But Maya had bigger problems than the collective exhaustion of junior year.

She was currently hiding behind a lounge chair at the Castillo's pool party, clutching a warm Diet Coke like it was a lifeline. This was it: her chance to finally talk to Caleb, who she'd been lowkey obsessed with since he'd worn a My Chemical Romance tee to the winter formal. But every time she tried to approach him, her brain turned into static. Like, literal garbage noise.

"Maya! You good?" Chloe, her best friend since seventh grade, dropped onto the chair next to her. "You've been lurking in the corner for forty-five minutes. You look like a zombie that forgot how to zombie."

"I can't do it," Maya groaned, burying her face in her hands. "He's over there playing pool volleyball with his shirt off and I'm just... existing. Awkwardly."

Chloe rolled her eyes so hard it practically hurt. "Okay, first of all, Caleb's abs are mid at best. Second, you're not awkward. You're selectively mysterious. It's a vibe." She paused. "Also, his cousin keeps asking about you."

Maya's head snapped up. "Wait, what?"

"His cousin?" Caleb's voice came from directly above them.

Maya nearly spilled her Diet Coke everywhere. There he was, dripping wet, smiling that crooked smile that made her brain short-circuit. "Oh! Hey! I was just —"

" — hiding from the party," Chloe supplied unhelpfully. "Maya's socially coded. She needs to recharge."

Caleb laughed, and it was genuinely cute, which was annoying. "Same. I've been pretending to care about pool volleyball for two hours." He gestured toward a tangled mass of wires near the outdoor speakers. "The cable's messed up anyway. Music's barely working."

"I can fix it," Maya blurted out. Why did she say that? She knew nothing about cables. But suddenly she was following him toward the speakers, Chloe giving her an exaggerated thumbs-up behind his back.

The cable connection was loose. Maya reattached it with shaking fingers, trying to ignore how close they were standing, how she could smell chlorine and his cologne and this was absolutely the most terrifying moment of her life.

"You're, like, secretly good at this," Caleb said, watching her.

"I'm secretly good at nothing," Maya said honestly. "I just fake it till I make it. Like everyone else."

He laughed. "Real talk though? I was hoping you'd come over. I've been trying to talk to you all day."

Maya's brain did that thing where it stopped processing language entirely. "Wait — really?"

"Yeah." He rubbed the back of his neck, suddenly looking nervous. "I was gonna ask if you wanted to, like, hang out sometime? Not at a party?"

Behind them, the speakers blasted to life — some indie song neither of them recognized. The pool party continued, people still doing their zombie impressions in the heat, but for once, Maya didn't feel like hiding.

"Yeah," she said, feeling something unclench in her chest. "I'd really like that."