The Zombie in Left Field

I felt like a zombie standing at the edge of the pool party. Summer school physics had me running on three hours of sleep and whatever random snacks I'd scrounged from the pantry. Which explained why I currently had a piece of spinach stuck between my front teeth—discovered two hours too late, naturally.

Across the pool, Jason Rivera was doing that thing where he flipped his wet hair out of his eyes like he was in a slow-motion movie scene. He played varsity baseball and had that effortless confidence I'd been faking since seventh grade. He waved at me, and I mentally screamed.

"Hey Maya! You gonna come in or what?" It was Chloe, who somehow managed to make a bikini look like a fashion statement while I stood there in my one-piece that my mom said was 'practical.' Whatever that meant.

"Yeah, just warming up," I lied. What I was actually doing was psyching myself up to bear the absolute mortification of being seen in swimwear by approximately half my sophomore class. The pool water glittered like something out of a commercial, while I felt like I'd swallowed a handful of sand.

Jason climbed out of the water, droplets running down his arms. "Baseball practice killed me today. Coach had us running until I literally thought I was gonna die."

"Rough," I managed,同时在 frantically checking my teeth with my tongue. Still there. The spinach of doom.

"Hey, you coming to the game Friday? We're playing North Valley, and it's gonna be epic."

"Wouldn't miss it," I said, already calculating how much gum I could reasonably chew without looking like a cow.

Chloe swam up behind Jason and splashed water at both of us. "Less talking, more swimming! Or are you guys just gonna stand there being awkward all day?"

I laughed. It was weirdly freeing—the exact moment I realized nobody was actually scrutinizing me as hard as I was scrutinizing myself. Jason wasn't thinking about my teeth. Chloe wasn't analyzing my swimwear. Nobody cared except me.

I cannonballed into the deep end, surfacing to find Jason grinning at me.

"Finally," he said. "I was about to send a search party."

Spinach still in my teeth, hair probably a disaster, I floated on my back and looked up at the perfect blue sky. Maybe zombie-mode wasn't so bad after all. At least zombies didn't overthink everything.