The Zombie 5K and the Hair Disaster

My mom stood in the bathroom doorway, holding out the orange bottle. "You need this vitamin," she said, like she'd been saying every morning since I could remember. "It's good for your energy."

I swallowed it without argument because arguing took energy I didn't have. Finals week had turned me into something resembling a zombie—pale, dark circles, shambling through school in a sleep-deprived daze. But today was Saturday, and I had bigger problems.

"Your hair," Maya said when she picked me up, giving me a look. "What happened?"

"What do you mean?" I touched my ponytail defensively. We'd spent forty-five minutes on it this morning.

"Nothing," she said, but I could tell something was wrong. Maya always knew when something was wrong. We'd been best friends since seventh grade, back when my hair had been this awkward curly situation and hers had already been perfect.

The Charity Zombie 5K was packed—hundreds of people in fake blood and torn clothes, raising money for the food pantry. I'd been running track since freshman year, but this was different. This was for fun. This was with people.

"You ready?" Maya asked, adjusting her zombie makeup.

I wasn't. My stomach did that thing it did before races, before first dates, before anything that mattered. But I nodded anyway.

The gun went off and we were running, all of us together, this mass of teenagers in zombie makeup and normal clothes, people shouting encouragement from the sidelines, music pounding from speakers somewhere. My legs found their rhythm automatically—left right left right—the same rhythm they'd found a thousand times before on the track.

Then it happened—that lightning moment, sudden and sharp, cutting through everything. Maya grabbed my hand, laughing, her zombie makeup smeared, her perfect hair messed up, and she shouted something I couldn't hear over everything else but it didn't matter because I was laughing too, really laughing, not the fake laugh I'd been using all week.

We crossed the finish line together, hands still gripping, breathless and messy and absolutely alive.

"So," Maya said afterward, drinking from a water bottle. "Your hair actually looks kinda cool now."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. You look like you survived something."

I looked at her—really looked at her, my best friend who somehow always knew what to say—and thought about vitamins my mom made me take and feeling like a zombie and how maybe that's just what being seventeen was, some days more than others.

"Yeah," I said. "I guess I did."