Three AM Zombie Runs

My body moved on autopilot, sneakers slapping against empty suburban streets at 3:14 AM. Most nights, this was the only time I felt real anymore—running until my lungs burned, trying to outpace the everything that had become my life since Maya moved.

I'd been a zombie since finals week. Four hours of sleep nightly, energy drinks for breakfast, existing somewhere between barely functional and completely gone. My mom called it "senioritis." I called it survival.

Then I heard it: a whine from someone's driveway, low and wounded.

A dog—a chocolate lab mix—stood shivering near an open mailbox, its collar reading "BUDDY." He looked at me with these impossibly sad eyes, like he'd been waiting forever for someone who wasn't coming back. And suddenly I couldn't keep running, not past this.

"Hey, buddy," I whispered, sinking to my knees. His tail gave the tiniest thump against the pavement.

I sat there for twenty minutes, this random dog's head in my lap, something unlocking in my chest. Thinking about Maya's carnival goldfish—the one she'd won and we'd buried in her backyard when it died three days later. We'd cried over a fish that lived for seventy-two hours, but we couldn't fix what broke between us after six years.

I don't know what made me do it, but I called her.

"You're literally calling me at three-thirty in the morning," she answered, voice thick with sleep. But she didn't hang up.

"I found a dog," I said. "And I think I stopped being a zombie."

Silence. Then: "You're such an idiot."

"I know."

"I'm coming over."

We sat on that driveway until sunrise, me, Maya, and Buddy, watching the sky bleed purple and pink. She brought dog treats from her pantry like she'd been preparing for this moment forever. And for the first time in months, I wasn't running away from anything anymore.

Some things aren't fixable. But sometimes, at 3 AM on a Tuesday, you find a dog and call your best friend, and suddenly you remember how to be human again.