The Summer I Unplugged

The ethernet cable trailed from my router like a lifeline I'd been clinging to all summer. I'd become a total zombie — surviving on three hours of sleep, energy drinks, and the blue glow of my screen while group chats blew up without me.

"Bro, you smell like straight stagnation," Marcus said, appearing in my doorway like he was on a mission. "We're going to play padel. Now."

"Pass? That sounds like something old people do on vacation."

"It's tennis's cooler younger sibling," he argued, literally dragging me off my bed. "Besides, Sarah's going, and you've been lowkey simping for her since freshman year."

Padel turned out to be this chaotic mashup of tennis and squash in a cage with glass walls. I was terrible — swinging wildly and missing everything. My coordination was completely shot from months of being horizontal.

"You run like you're escaping a zombie apocalypse," Sarah called out, laughing as I sprinted across the court. She didn't mean it as a compliment, but she was grinning.

"I'm working on my cardio," I lied, panting.

Afterward, someone suggested swimming at the community pool. The water hit me like ice — shocking me alive in ways my air-conditioned bedroom never could. Sarah challenged me to a race, and suddenly I was swimming harder than I had in years.

I didn't win, but for the first time all summer, I wasn't watching life through a screen. Later, running back to our towels with salt water in my eyes and lungs actually burning, I realized the ethernet cable could wait.

"Tomorrow?" Sarah asked, tossing her hair back like she hadn't just destroyed me in the pool.

"Yeah," I said, already calculating how late I could stay out without my mom blowing up my phone. "Tomorrow."

That night, I actually turned off my computer. The black screen reflected a version of myself I almost recognized — someone who moved, who laughed too loud, who was tired in a way that felt real. The zombie summer was officially over.