The Zombie in the Mirror

Maya's dog Buster had eaten the internet cable again. Literally chewed through the coaxial like it was a rawhide bone, leaving her completely offline on Friday night.

"You've got to be kidding me," she groaned, texting her best friend Leo. Her parents were out, and she'd been planning to live-spy on the Instagram story of Skylar—the girl who'd somehow become the center of their sophomore year's social universe without even trying.

Maya pressed her phone against the darkened window like a desperate detective. Three blocks away, Skylar's house glowed with warm light, visible through the trees. Maya felt pathetic doing this, stalking someone who barely knew she existed. But lately, Maya had been feeling like a zombie anyway—walking through school with dead eyes, forcing smiles that never quite reached her face.

The next day at lunch, catastrophe struck with a side of spinach. Maya was eating her salad when Leo practically tackled her, whispering, "Spinach. Teeth. NOW."

Her heart stopped. She'd been sitting across from Skylar and her impossibly cool friends for twenty minutes.

Maya sprinted to the bathroom, eyes burning. Of course. Of course this would happen. She stared at her reflection in the mirror—green specks stuck in her braces, hair frizzy from humidity, eyes watery.

"That's it," she muttered. "I'm actually done."

But Monday brought a text from Skylar herself: "Hey, you were at my party Friday, right? I saw you walking by with your dog. He's super cute."

Maya blinked. Buster had dragged her past Skylar's house while she'd been mourning her destroyed cable.

"Yeah," she texted back. "That was me."

"Cool," Skylar wrote. "We're doing a zombie movie for film club. You should join. You've got this intense vibe."

Maya stared at her phone, then at herself in the mirror. No makeup. No filter. Just her.

Maybe being a zombie wasn't so bad after all. Sometimes the walking dead were the only ones brave enough to really show up.