The Last Summer Before Everything Changed

The coaxial cable dangled between our houses like a lifeline we'd forgotten to cut. Every night at 2 AM, I'd see Danny's window glow blue through the gap in the blinds, and I knew we were both watching the same thing—some dumb reality show that neither of us would admit to liking the next day.

That cable was the only thing still connecting us.

"You're basically a zombie," my sister said, kicking my foot as I scrolled through Danny's Instagram for the third time that hour. "He's moved on. Maybe you should too."

She wasn't wrong. Danny had spent all summer at basketball camp, coming back with new muscles and new friends who said "no cap" unironically and posted stories I didn't understand. Meanwhile, I'd spent July and August mostly horizontal, my brain feeling like it was operating on a three-second delay, sustained by stale chips and the comforting glow of screens.

A zombie with WiFi. That was me.

The thing about zombies, though? They're persistent.

When Danny finally texted—u up?—at 11:47 PM on a Tuesday, I didn't think about how pathetic it was that I was still awake. I didn't think about how we hadn't spoken properly in three weeks, how every conversation since July had been weirdly stilted, like we were both speaking different languages and didn't have the translation guide.

I just grabbed the cable from under my bed and crept downstairs.

The night air hit me like something I'd forgotten existed. Danny was already in his backyard, looking somehow taller in the moonlight. He was tossing a basketball in the air, catching it, tossing it again—something nervous settling in his hands.

"I missed this," he said, not looking at me. "Just. You know. Being able to say actual stuff without everyone performing all the time."

"The cable's gonna snap someday," I said, which wasn't what I meant to say at all.

Danny laughed, and it was the same laugh from third grade, the one that had gotten us both sent to the principal's office for laughing so hard during standardized testing. "Yeah. But not tonight."

We sat there for hours, not talking about much of anything, just two zombies trying to remember how to be alive again. Some friendships don't end. They just get rebooted.