Summer of the Walking Woke

The summer before sophomore year, I was basically a zombie. Not the cool, brain-eating kind from movies—more like the undead shell of a person who'd spent three months selling organic **vitamin** supplements at my mom's kiosk in the mall. "These gummies will change your life," I'd drone, watching my reflection in the mirror: dead eyes, limp hair, wearing a polo shirt two sizes too big.

Then I met Mateo at the old **baseball** fields behind the rec center. He was there every day at dusk, hitting homers into the chain-link fence with this violent, beautiful focus. I'd sit in the bleachers, eating a questionable vending machine burrito, watching him like he was the only interesting thing in my suburban wasteland of a town.

"You look like you need this more than I do," he said one day, tossing me his bat. It was heavier than I expected, solid in my hands like holding something real.

That's when he told me about the **cable** show he was obsessed with—some underground documentary series about teens doing impossible stuff. "We could be on it," he said, eyes bright. "I know you're not just some vitamin gummies zombie."

The next week, we snaked through the ventilation system of the abandoned **bull** breeding farm (don't ask) to retrieve his lost backpack, which apparently had something valuable inside. Something "important." Something that would prove we weren't just small-town kids waiting to happen.

But here's the thing about breaking into places at 2 AM with someone who makes your chest feel tight: you learn stuff. Like how Mateo's hands shook when he talked about his dad leaving. How he wasn't obsessed with that cable show—he was making it. That backpack held his camera and footage of kids like us—kids who were awake in a world of sleepwalkers.

"You're not a zombie," he told me later, knees bumping against mine on the baseball field's grass. "You're just in hibernation."

He was right. That summer, between vitamin sales and midnight fence-hopping, I learned that waking up isn't about energy drinks or attitude adjustments. It's about finding the people who make you want to be there, fully and painfully present. It's about letting someone hand you a bat and trusting you'll swing.

I still sell the gummies. I still watch the sun set over those baseball fields. But now I show up with a camera, documenting all the ways we're not quite dead yet. And Mateo? He's teaching me to hit homerons into the dark. Some zombies, it turns out, are just waiting for someone to pass them the bat.