The Vitamin A Apocalypse

Maya stared at her iPhone screen, thumb hovering over Jenna's selfie with *that* group from lunch. The one that never seemed to notice when Maya quietly disappeared to the library again. She'd been doing that a lot lately—fading into the background like some NPC in someone else's game.

"You look like a zombie," her little brother Leo commented from the couch, barely glancing up from his video game. "Seriously, Maya. You need vitamin or something."

"It's 'a vitamin,' and I'm fine."

She wasn't. Junior year was turning her into something unrecognizable—this exhausted, anxious person who checked her phone every thirty seconds and still felt invisible. So she started The Experiment: force herself into the living, glowing version of who she used to be.

Her mom's smoothies became weaponized. Orange juice, spinach, some gross protein powder, and a fistful of vitamins that tasted like chalk. Maya drank them every morning, gagging through the green sludge, telling herself it was fuel for reinvention.

"You know," Jenna said one day, actually noticing her at lunch, "you've been kinda... glowy lately."

Maya almost choked on her spinach-packed salad. "I guess?"

"No, seriously. It's a vibe." Jenna slid into the seat beside her. "We're doing this zombie makeup challenge for Halloween. You should totally help."

Something shifted. Not big, not dramatic. But Maya found herself at Jenna's house that weekend, helping contour undead faces while cheap orange soda stained their fingers. She posted a picture—not a curated perfect one, just her and Jenna laughing with smeared gray makeup.

The likes rolled in. But for the first time in months, Maya didn't check them. She was too busy living.

That night, she made herself another smoothie. Orange, spinach, the works. She gulped it down without gagging once. The vitamins could wait—she'd already found what she actually needed.