The Fox in the Feed

The notification ping cut through my zombie-like state. 2:47 AM, and I was five hours deep into what my friends call a 'scroll hole' — that limbo space where your brain feels like fuzzy static and your thumbs move on autopilot. My socials were basically my whole personality right now, which was low-key embarrassing but also, like, everyone's truth.

I'd been low-key spying on Maya's profile since the party last weekend. Not in a creepy way — okay, maybe a little creepy. But she'd posted this story where she looked so effortless, laughing with that perfect casual hair, and I was still thinking about how I'd spent twenty minutes just standing near the snack table trying to look chill. Meanwhile, Leo had actually talked to her.

'Main character energy,' he'd told me later, using air quotes because Leo uses air quotes unironically and that's somehow part of his charm. Meanwhile, I was experiencing major NPC energy — just background character vibes in my own life.

My phone chose that moment to die. That specific brand of teenage horror where you're at 3% and the charger cable is literally nowhere to be found. I dug through my backpack, coming up with nothing but a single papaya-flavored hard candy from that time my mom went through her 'tropical fruit phase' and bought, like, five pounds of weird candy nobody asked for.

I stared at my black screen. My own face reflected back at me — messy bun, dark circles, the whole 'I'm fine' aesthetic that wasn't actually fine.

And then it hit me: I was literally waiting for a dead rectangle to tell me who I was supposed to be. How crazy was that?

Outside my window, something moved. A fox — actual wildlife in suburbia, which never happened — pausing under the streetlamp. It looked right at me with these eyes that said something I couldn't quite translate, and then it was gone, just a flash of rust and shadow.

The next day, I walked into chemistry without checking my phone first. Maya was there, and I didn't do that thing where I pretend I'm busy so I don't have to say hi.

'Hey,' I said. Simple. Human.

She looked up, surprised. 'Hey! You were at Jake's party, right?'

'Yeah. I was the guy near the snack table. Looking very chill and mysterious.'

She laughed. It wasn't fake. 'I remember. You were wearing that shirt with the weird fox on it.'

'The fox is culturally significant,' I said, lying. It was just a shirt I got on sale.

'That's what I thought too,' she said, and something shifted — not like a movie moment or anything, but smaller. Real.

Later, Leo found me in the hallway. 'Since when are you confident?'

'Since I realized being a zombie is boring,' I said. 'Also, I found my cable. My phone lives again.'

'And yet here you are, talking to actual humans. What dimension is this?'

'The main character one,' I said, and I didn't even use air quotes.