The Night I Died Socially

I felt like a actual zombie walking into Tyler's pool party. Three hours of sleep + finals week + social anxiety = me, shambling toward the backyard with my heart doing somersaults.

Everyone already looked perfect. Jenna and her squad posted up by the pool, their phones strategically positioned. I clutched my iPhone like a lifeline, watching group chats blow up without me. The classic fake group photo move—I'd been excluded from the snap but not the aftermath.

"Hey, you made it!"

I spun around and nearly dropped my phone. It was Maya—aka the actual fox of our grade, with her fire-orange highlights and that way of looking at you like you're the only person who matters. She was wearing this vintage shirt that somehow worked with pool vibes.

"Oh, uh, yeah," I managed. "Just. You know."

"You look like you need saving," she said, grabbing my wrist. "Come on."

She dragged me away from the pool chaos toward the edge of the woods. The sun was setting, everything gold and hazy. My phone kept buzzing in my hand—probably Jenna posting something else I wasn't part of.

"You know what's funny?" Maya asked, sitting on a fallen log. "Everyone in there is performing. All those Instagram stories? They're basically zombie apocalypse footage—people trying to look alive when they're dead inside."

I laughed. It just slipped out.

"That's literally me," I said. "I've been scrolling through stories of this party for twenty minutes and felt like I was missing everything. But here you are."

"Here I am," she grinned, then splashed me with water from a bottle she'd brought. "Oops."

"Did you just—"

"I did. And now you're officially part of the chaos, not watching from the sidelines." She held up my phone. "Wanna post something real?"

My Instagram was full of curated pics and group photos I wasn't in. She snapped one of us—hair frizzy, makeup slightly smudged, me mid-laugh, looking actually happy for the first time in months.

"Post it," she said. "Trust me."

I did. No filter, no perfect caption, just us being real.

That night, while everyone else was being poolside zombies performing for their iPhones, I finally felt like I was actually somewhere—right there, sitting in the dirt with the fox who taught me that the coolest thing you can be is yourself, awkwardly and completely alive.