Summer Zombies at the Net

Marcus had been running on fumes for three weeks straight. Finals, AP exams, and his parents' messy divorce had turned him into something else entirely - a straight-up zombie, shambling through the halls of Northwood High like his brain had been hijacked. His best friend Priya kept calling him "undead" whenever he fell asleep in the cafeteria again.

"You need to get out," she said, sliding a flyer across his desk. "Summer padel tournament at the Ridge Club. Saturday. I already signed us up."

"Padel?" Marcus groaned. "I haven't picked up a racket since middle school."

"Exactly. You need this. And there's gonna be a pool party after. WATER, Marcus. Remember that stuff? You used to like it."

Saturday arrived with the kind of humidity that made everything feel like a fever dream. The Ridge Club was packed - popular kids from school, summer camp refugees, and a bunch of college-aged counselors who looked annoyingly perfect. Marcus felt like he'd stumbled into the wrong genre movie.

They got destroyed in their first match. These twins from the tennis team crushed them 6-0, 6-1. Marcus could barely move, his limbs heavy with three weeks of accumulated exhaustion. He kept missing easy volleys, his timing completely off.

"Dude," the twin, Caleb, said afterward. "You look like you haven't slept in a month. You good?"

"Just tired," Marcus muttered, wiping sweat from his forehead.

"Hey," Caleb's sister appeared behind him - Chloe, who sat behind him in AP Bio and never seemed to notice him existed. "You guys should come to the pool party. There's free food and nobody actually cares about the tournament. We're just here for the Instagram content."

Something about the way she said it - like she saw right through everything - made Marcus actually look at her. She wasn't wearing makeup, her hair was messy from playing, and she had this tiny splatter of mud on her cheek from diving for a ball earlier. She looked real.

"Yeah," Marcus heard himself say. "Yeah, okay."

Two hours later, he was chest-deep in the pool, watching the sunset paint everything pink and gold, feeling strangely okay. Maybe it was the water finally washing away the zombie fog. Maybe it was Priya cannonballing off the diving board, screaming his name until he laughed for the first time in weeks. Maybe it was Chloe floating nearby, talking about how much she hated AP Physics and how she couldn't wait to never see another protractor again.

"You know," she said, splashing water toward him. "You actually have a pretty solid backhand. You just need to stop thinking so hard."

Marcus laughed. "I'll work on that."

"Good." She grinned. "Because next weekend, we're doing this again. And I'm not going easy on you just because you look like the walking dead."

For the first time in a month, Marcus didn't feel like a zombie anymore. He felt like a person who was tired, maybe, but who could pick up a racket and get back in the game. Even if he lost. Even if his backhand still sucked.

Priya found him later, sitting on the pool edge with his feet in the water, watching the stars come out.

"See?" she said. "Told you."

"Yeah," Marcus said, and he actually meant it. "Yeah. You did."