The Zombie Who Caught Lightning

I'd been a zombie since seventh period math began. Seriously. Walking through high school like my brain had been replaced by fog, fueled by the vitamin C gummies my mom shoved into my backpack every morning. "Stay healthy, stay focused," she'd say, while I felt like I was decaying from the inside out.

"Earth to Maya," Chloe said, snapping her fingers. "You're doing it again. That thing where you look like you've been dead for three centuries."

I shrugged. We were at Jade's party, the kind where people stood in awkward circles pretending to have deep conversations while someone's older brother's playlist echoed too loudly from the speakers. I wanted to want to be here. I just didn't.

Then the storm hit.

Outside, lightning cracked the sky open — brilliant, terrifying, perfect. Everyone flinched. I couldn't look away.

"Whoa," said Ryan, the guy I'd been crushing on since September without ever figuring out how to say a complete sentence around him. He stepped beside me. "You see that?"

I nodded, suddenly hyperaware of his shoulder brushing mine. "Yeah. It was..."

"Like the world's trying to tell us something," he finished, and something in his voice — this quiet intensity — made my dead zombie heart actually beat.

"Maya," he said, turning to me. "I've been wanting to ask you something. About the photography contest. Your photos. They're incredible. The way you capture light? It's like you see things nobody else does."

I stared at him. He'd noticed my photos?

"I was hoping," he continued, "you'd help me with mine. I've got this idea about storms, but I can't make it work. You understand lightning, I think."

Outside, another flash. But this time, I didn't feel dead anymore.

"Yeah," I said, and my voice actually sounded like mine. "I'd love that."

I wasn't a zombie anymore. The lightning had struck something awake inside me. And maybe those vitamin gummies had been doing something all along.

Sometimes it takes a storm to remember you're alive.