Surviving Monday's Apocalypse

First period AP Bio felt like a **zombie** outbreak - thirty dead-eyed juniors staring blankly at periodic tables while Mr. Reynolds droned on about covalent bonds like he'd personally discovered each one. My bestie Kai caught my eye from two rows over and made a dramatic gagging motion that almost made me snort out loud.

"Dude, are you alive?" Kai whispered at our lockers after the bell. "You look like death warmed over."

"Running on three hours of sleep and existential dread," I admitted, fishing through my backpack. "But hey, at least I remembered those **vitamin** gummies my mom swore would fix my 'teenage mood swings.' Want one? They're cherry flavored."

Kai snatched one and popped it in their mouth. "If these don't work, I'm literally going to cry in Calculus."

The warning bell cut us off. Drama class next, and Ms. Patel had that look - the one where she was about to drop a "surprise" performance assessment on us. My stomach did a nervous backflip. This was NOT the mental state for spontaneous acting.

"Today we explore emotional vulnerability through scene work," Ms. Patel announced in her theatrical voice, positioning herself in the center of the circle like a judgmental **sphinx** waiting for us to solve her riddle. "No scripts. Just truth."

My scene partner Jordan looked ready to bolt. We got stuck performing some heavy breakup scene that required way more emotional range than I possessed on three hours of sleep. But midway through Jordan's monologue about betrayal, something cracked. Her voice broke, and suddenly it wasn't acting anymore - she was channeling something completely real.

The room went dead silent.

"That was absolute **bull**," Jordan whispered afterward, wiping her eyes furiously. "I wasn't ready to go there today. Like, at all."

I pulled her into a quick hug. "But you killed it, though. Seriously. Everyone felt that."

After school, sitting on the bleachers while Kai's soccer team ran drills, I realized something weird. Maybe the vitamin gummies had actually worked, or maybe surviving zombie mode and Jordan's emotional explosion had somehow jumpstarted my brain. For the first time all week, the fog had lifted.

Kai jogged over, sweating and grinning. "Your girl's trying to convince everyone those vitamins are actually magic, which: total **bull**, but I'll take the placebo effect."

Jordan actually laughed, and something about that sound - light and real and unforced - made the apocalypse feel a little less apocalyptic. Fine. Maybe Mondays aren't so bad with your people nearby.