The Night We Didn't Die

I was basically a zombie. Three hours of sleep, finals week crushing my soul, and here I was at Maya's supposedly "chill" game night, which had somehow morphed into something terrifyingly closer to a rager. The bass vibrated through the floorboards as I slumped against the kitchen island, nursing a lukewarm soda like it was the elixir of life.

"You look dead, bro," said Jake, materializing beside me with his signature grin. He'd been my best friend since seventh grade, back when friendship bracelets were still a thing and not embarrassing.

"Basically," I muttered.

Outside, lightning cracked the sky open, and everyone screamed. Classic. The power flickered, plunged us into darkness, and then emergency lights bathed everything in an eerie red glow. Someone suggested a horror movie marathon, which was a terrible idea given my current mental state, but somehow I found myself wedged between Jake and some girl I didn't know on Maya's massive sectional sofa.

The movie started—something about a bear that turned people into actual zombies, which was scientifically ridiculous but somehow working. Maya's golden retriever, Buster, chose that exact moment to leap onto my lap, shedding dog hair all over my black hoodie like he was paid to do it.

"Buster, no," I whispered, but he was already snoring.

The girl next to me—her name was Riley, apparently—laughed. "He likes you."

Her eyes caught the red emergency lighting, and I felt something weird in my chest that wasn't anxiety for once. "He has terrible taste then."

"Maybe," she said, shifting closer so our shoulders touched. "Or maybe he knows something we don't."

On screen, zombie bears were massacrating campers. Jake fake-gagged next to me. In the kitchen, someone accidentally set off the fire alarm, and chaos erupted. But for a second, I just sat there with a shedding dog on my lap, a guy who'd seen me through my awkward phase snorting at fictional zombie bears, and this girl who smelled like vanilla and possibility, and I thought: maybe being a zombie wasn't the worst thing. Sometimes the undead stuff was just practice for actually living.