The Undead Glow Up

My beanie sat mashed into my skull like a second skin, basically fused at this point. Mom kept calling it my 'security blanket' but whatever. At sixteen, your hat choices are basically the only thing you can control when your body's doing random betrayal stuff and school feels like a glittery dystopia where everyone's performing happiness 24/7.

Then Lucas, formerly the most basic human at Northwood, shows up to chem lab glowing. Actually glowing. Clear skin, new haircut, wearing his hat backwards like he invented the look.

"What happened to you?" I whispered, dropping my voice to library-level even though Mr. Harrison wasn't paying attention. "You look... alive?"

Lucas shrugged, that casual shoulder thing that everyone does but somehow he made it look rehearsed. "Started taking these vitamins. My cousin's girlfriend's brother makes them. They're supposed to fix your brain fog."

Broccoli-brained me asked for the link. Of course I did.

Two weeks later, I'm fully zombie mode - staying up until 3 AM scrolling, feeling dead inside, barely keeping it together. But these so-called vitamins? They hit different. Suddenly I'm organizing my life, making aesthetic to-do lists, having actual conversations with people instead of just awkward nodding.

But then I caught Lucas in the cafeteria, kinda just... staring at his phone, eyes totally dead. Not glowing anymore. Not alive.

"Hey," I said, sliding into the seat across from him. "You good?"

He looked up, eyes flat. "Yeah. Just tired."

That's when it hit me - the vitamins weren't fixing anything. They were just performance enhancers for the hustle. The zombie wasn't him being lazy. The zombie was ALL OF US trying to function in a system that literally wasn't built for human brains.

I pulled my hat down lower, shielding my eyes. "Same," I said. "Same."

Outside, the actual real sun was setting, and it was honestly kind of beautiful in a way my screen could never capture. I decided right then to start taking my actual prescribed vitamin D and maybe, just maybe, look up from my phone sometimes.

Baby steps.