The Night We Ran From Everything

I felt like a **zombie** staggering through 3rd period history, my eyelids heavy from staying up until 3 AM doom-scrolling through Leo's Instagram. Again. My best friend Maya kicked my chair under the desk.

"You good, fam? You look dead."

"I'm functioning," I whispered back, though functioning was a stretch. My brain had been running on caffeine and anxiety since homecoming, when I'd accidentally confessed my feelings to Leo in a moment of panic-induced boldness. Now every time he looked at me, I either said something weird or forgot how to speak English.

The school courtyard had this ancient **sphinx** statue—some leftover from when this place used to be a fancy private academy back in the day. Kids wrote secret confessions on sticky notes and tucked them into the stone cracks. Maya said it was cringe. I thought it was kind of beautiful.

That afternoon, I became an unwilling **spy**.

I'd ducked behind the gym to avoid Leo, but instead I found him talking to Sarah—the perfect, shiny-haired Sarah who'd somehow won homecoming queen despite everyone knowing she started that rumor about Mr. Henderson's toupee.

"I'm just saying," Leo said, leaning against the brick wall, "she's different, you know? Like, actually interesting. I don't know why I froze at homecoming."

My heart did this thing where it forgot its job.

Sarah rolled her eyes. "Just DM her, Leo. God, you're making this weird."

I should've left. I really should've. But then Leo said my name, and suddenly my feet were **running**—not away, but toward him.

"Hey," I blurted, crashing into their orbit like a celestial disaster.

Leo jumped. Sarah smirked. And I, professional trainwreck, somehow managed to not say something completely terrible for once.

"Leo," I said, my voice surprisingly steady, "wanna walk to the parking lot?"

He grinned. And that's when I realized something: the worst thing that could happen wasn't rejection. It was the not knowing. The endless waiting. The feeling like I was already a ghost haunting my own life.

Sometimes you have to stop running from the scary stuff and run toward whatever might happen next. Even if you're tired. Even if you're terrified. Even if you're pretty sure you have nothing cool to say.

We walked together under the fading October sky, and for the first time in weeks, I didn't feel like a zombie at all.