The Vitamin D Zombie Chronicles

I was basically a zombie by third period. Not the cool, coordinated dance kind from TikTok. The tragic, brain-mush kind that comes from staying up until 3 AM doomscrolling through my iPhone, watching everyone else's highlight reels while my life felt like a blooper reel.

"You need to go outside," my mom announced at breakfast, sliding a bottle of orange gummies across the counter. "Vitamin D deficiency is real, Maya."

"I'm fine," I muttered, though I was wearing the same hoodie for the third day straight and my skin had achieved peak vampire chic.

"Pool party at Tyler's house," she said. "You're going. You will socialize. You will absorb sunlight like a normal human."

Tyler. The guy I'd been lowkey crushing on since seventh grade, when he still had braces and couldn't pronounce 'rhetorical.' Now he was quarterback material, and I was still the girl who once laughed so hard at lunch that milk came out her nose.

The pool party was exactly the kind of social torture I excelled at avoiding. Twenty of the most popular people in our grade, flawless and glowing, while I stood on the deck clutching my towel like a security blanket.

"Maya!" Tyler waved me over, dripping wet and annoyingly gorgeous. "You coming in or what?"

I hesitated. My iPhone sat in my bag, safely dry, but suddenly I wanted something real. Something that wasn't filtered or curated or performed for an audience.

"Yeah," I heard myself say. "Yeah, I'm coming."

I cannonballed into the deep end, phone-free, fully immersed in the shock of cold water and the way everything went muffled and quiet beneath the surface. When I broke through the surface, gasping and laughing, Tyler was grinning at me.

"Took you long enough," he said.

"Shut up," I splashed him, and for the first time in months, the zombie fog lifted. Maybe my mom was right about the vitamin thing. Or maybe I just needed to put down the phone and actually live in the world instead of watching everyone else live theirs.