The Zombie's First Serve

Monday morning hit me like a freight train. I'd been up until 3 AM grinding ranked matches, my eyes glazed over, functioning on pure adrenaline and the terrible lighting in my bedroom. When my alarm blared at 6:30, I basically rolled out of bed and straight into my clothes — if you could call it an outfit. My hair looked like I'd stuck a fork in an electrical outlet, but whatever. It was PE day, and today we were starting the padel unit.

"Dude, you look like the walking dead," Marcus said when I met him at his locker. He wasn't wrong. I felt like a zombie, my brain operating on maybe 12% battery life. The hallway was a chaotic stream of noise and backpacks and people shouting across the corridor.

"New season dropped last night," I mumbled. "Couldn't stop."

He laughed and clapped my shoulder. "Classic."

The gym smelled like floor wax and old sweat. Coach Miller blew his whistle way too loudly, and my head throbbed. "Alright everyone, pair up! Padel tournament starts today!"

Of course, I got paired with Skylar Chen. The same Skylar who'd transferred in three weeks ago and somehow already had everyone whispering in the bathrooms about how her cousin was semi-professional. Great. My hands were already sweating, and we hadn't even picked up our racquets yet.

"You good?" she asked, looking at me with these weirdly intense eyes. "You look, uh... tired."

"Yeah, just — gaming stuff," I said, which was the understatement of the century. I'd spent the entire weekend glued to my setup, fueled by energy drinks and the spotty cable internet that cut out every twenty minutes like it had personal beef with my rank.

"Cool," she said, and something about the way she said it made me think she actually meant it. "I play, too. What's your main?"

Wait, what?

We spent the rest of the period absolutely destroying everyone on court three. Me and Skylar, this random alliance forged in the fires of sleep deprivation and shared trauma over terrible WiFi. When she smashed the winning point past Jake from algebra — who'd been talking smack all week — I actually forgot I was operating on zero sleep.

"Not bad, Zombie," she said as we walked off the court, and for the first time all day, I didn't feel dead anymore.

Later, my dog Buster greeted me at the door like I'd been gone for three years instead of seven hours. I collapsed onto the couch, and he flopped onto my legs, all seventy pounds of golden retriever enthusiasm. My phone buzzed.

Skylar: same time tomorrow? also cable internet sounds tragic, my dad knows a guy

I stared at the message for a full minute, then typed back: you're on

Maybe being a zombie wasn't so bad after all.