The Fox and the Vitamin

I was a zombie. That's the only way to describe junior year when you're running on three hours of sleep and an energy drink that tasted like battery acid. My best friend, Leo, had been trying to get me to take these vitamin gummies his mom bought—said they'd change my life. I told him the only thing that would change my life was graduating.

We were sitting on the roof of his apartment building at 2 AM because neither of us could sleep, and that's when I saw it. A fox. Not like in a cute Disney movie, but this scrawny, suspicious-looking creature with fur that looked like it hadn't been brushed since the Bush administration. It was staring at us like we were the ones who didn't belong.

"That's your spirit animal," Leo said, cracking open another soda. "Sneaky. nocturnal. judging everyone."

I threw a vitamin gummy at him. "You're one to talk."

But here's the thing—I couldn't stop thinking about that fox. The next day at school, I felt like I was seeing everything through zombie vision, all blurry and slow-motion. Mr. Harrison was droning on about something that was supposed to be important but felt completely meaningless. I caught myself staring at the back of Maya's neck in homeroom, the way she kept twisting this one piece of hair around her finger. She was going through her own thing—her parents were getting divorced, and she'd been wearing the same hoodie for three days straight.

That fox had looked so awake. So present.

"You gotta bear it, you know?" Leo said later, when I told him I felt like I was drowning in nothing. "Just bear with it until it's not terrible anymore."

I started taking the vitamins. Not because I thought they'd magically fix everything, but because it was something. A choice. Something I could control. And slowly, almost imperceptibly, the zombie fog started to lift. I started talking to Maya. She started talking back. We found ourselves at the park one evening, watching the same fox dart between trees, looking like it owned the whole damn world.

"My mom says vitamins won't save you," Maya said, "but she also says she's happy, so."

We laughed. It wasn't perfect. Nothing is at sixteen. But the fox was still there, watching us like we were the most interesting thing it had seen all night. And for the first time in months, I felt awake.