The Catfish Zombie Apocalypse

Maya's palms were sweating — like, actually dripping — as she gripped her iPhone under the desk. Mr. Henderson was going on about quadratic equations (again), but Maya had bigger problems.

She'd been lowkey spying on this dude Jax's profile for three weeks. His posts screamed different vibe: aesthetic skate pics, cryptic song lyrics, that perfectly messy hair situation. Maya was down bad.

"You good?" whispered Sasha, sliding a note. "You look like a zombie."

"Haha same," Maya muttered. She literally had gotten two hours of sleep. Doomscrolling Jax's profile until 3 AM would do that to you.

The thing was, Jax had DMed her yesterday. Actually DMed her. Maya had almost choked on her Airheads. They'd been talking nonstop since, and Maya felt like she was living in a fever dream.

But then her older cousin Leo had dropped truth bombs over family dinner. "A catfish, Maya. Look up 'reverse image search' sometime."

So here she was, about to risk it all.

Her cat, Mochi, jumped on her bed and knocked over her iced coffee. Typical. Maya shooed him away and pulled up the image search website. Her hands were literally shaking as she uploaded Jax's profile pic.

The results loaded. Maya's stomach dropped.

The photo came up on some random lifestyle blog. Posted three years ago. The caption: "My little brother before his awkward phase lol."

Maya threw her phone across her bed. Mochi skittered away, offended.

She was such a clown. Actual clown behavior.

Her phone buzzed. A notification from Jax: "u there?"

Maya stared at it. Part of her wanted to block him immediately. But another part — the part that was still down bad, the part that remembered their 2 AM convos about music and anxiety and weird family dynamics — wondered what would happen if she just... asked.

So she did. And Jax's response came five minutes later:

"lol yeah that's me. my sister posted that on her blog years ago. i look so different now but i swear it's really me hahahaha"

Then he sent a live photo. One second video. Same guy. Same slightly crooked smile.

Maya's palms stopped sweating.

"oof my bad," she typed back. "im so awkward."

"nah it's chill," he wrote. "kinda impressive tbh."

And maybe — just maybe — this wouldn't be a disaster after all.