Summer Without Signal

The cable guy said he'd be there between 8 and 5. Typical. But when he actually showed up at 4:58, I was mid-argument with my mom about my "screen addiction" and why I couldn't possibly survive a weekend without WiFi.

"You'll live, Marcus," she said, already scrolling through her phone. The irony.

The cable company had messed up something major—something about a server issue that would take days to fix. No internet. No streaming. No nothing. I was officially zoning out, feeling like a total zombie after binge-watching until 3 AM every night that summer.

The next morning, Jake texted me. *Pool party at Sarah's. No parents. Be there.*

I walked over, phone dead in my pocket. Sarah's backyard looked exactly like everyone else's in our subdivision—perfectly manicured lawn, above-ground pool, too many lawn chairs. But something was different. No one was scrolling. No one was taking selfies. People were actually... talking?

"Marcus!" Jake waved me over, already shirtless and cannonball-ready. "Finally broke free from your phone prison?"

"Shut up," I laughed, but he wasn't wrong.

Sarah's older sister was DJing from a Bluetooth speaker, playing throwbacks we all pretended to know but secretly loved. I jumped in the pool, the cool water shocking me awake more than any iced coffee ever could. Swimming laps felt somehow revolutionary after weeks of basically being horizontal on my couch.

Later, floating on an inflatable raft with pizza-stained paper plates, I realized something. We'd been walking around like zombies all summer, eyes glued to screens, missing everything. Now, without cable to distract us, we were actually having fun. Real fun.

"This is way better than Netflix," Sarah said, splashing water at me.

"Yeah," I agreed, wiping chlorine from my eyes. "But don't tell anyone I said that."

The cable came back on Monday. But I kept going to Sarah's pool parties anyway. Some things are better than perfect signal.