The Pyramid Chair Incident

My life reached peak embarrassing at 2 AM on a Saturday, which honestly says everything about my junior year.

So there I was: streaming Zombies vs. Humans to like, three viewers (one was my mom, accidentally), when my pyramid-shaped gaming chair decided this was its moment. The pyramid was this ridiculous monstrosity I'd bought from a gamer clearance site, shaped like an actual pyramid because I thought it made me look pro.

Spoiler: it did not.

"Bro, your cable situation is literal chaos," Tyler commented through Discord. He was the popular kid who'd somehow decided I was worth mentoring, probably because I was decent at the zombie rounds. "You need cable management. It's affecting your feng shui."

Before I could snark back, the pyramid chair _creaked_. That ominous, I'm-about-to-collapse sound.

My sphinx project—a half-finished papier-mâché disaster for history class due Monday—sat on my desk. Why had I chosen the sphinx? Because I thought it would make me look deep and mysterious. Instead, it looked like a cat having an allergic reaction.

The chair gave way. I _faceplanted_ into my keyboard.

"You good?" Tyler asked, trying so hard not to laugh.

That's when my bedroom door opened. Jordan—Jordan, who I'd been lowkey crushing on since seventh grade—stood there holding my childhood bear. The one I'd hidden in the closet. The one with the missing eye.

"Your mom sent me up," Jordan said, voice so gentle it broke something in me. "You left this downstairs after movie night."

I stared at my screen. _Stream was still live._ Seven viewers now. Everyone had seen me: the pyramid chair fail, the sphinx judgment, the bear reveal. The complete uncooling of Marcus Reed.

But Jordan just set the bear on my desk—next to the sphinx, like they were having a conversation—and said, "Your zombie build is actually sick, by the way. Teach me sometime?"

The pyramid chair creaked threateningly beneath me. I didn't move. Some disasters, I decided, were worth surviving.