Vitamin Z

Maya swallowed her **vitamin** D supplement with lukewarm office coffee, the fluorescent lights humming above like the dying breath of an insect. Three years at Mercer & Stein, and she'd become what her younger self would have called a **zombie** — the walking dead, conserving energy, wearing neutral colors, perfecting the art of looking busy while her soul quietly packed its bags.

"You're doing it again," said Lucas, leaning against her cubicle wall. He held a Tupperware container of **spinach** that had seen better days. "That thing where you dissociate until your eyes glaze over."

Maya blinked. The office spun back into focus. "I'm fine. Just tired."

"We're all tired. That's the point." Lucas's **palm** was rough when he pressed it against her forehead, an old-fashioned gesture that made her chest ache with something she couldn't name. "You're burning out, Maya. The **lightning** storm yesterday knocked out power for three hours, and you said you wished it had stayed off forever."

She hadn't meant to say it out loud. But she had. Standing in her dark apartment, watching the sky crack open, she'd felt more alive than she had in years. The city's grid had failed, and for three hours, nobody expected anything from her.

"I applied to that farm in Vermont," Maya said quietly.

Lucas's hand dropped from her forehead. "The one from the article?"

"They need people for harvest season. No cell service, just vegetables and dirt and real work."

"You'd hate it. You love air conditioning and delivery apps."

"I love not feeling like I'm disappearing."

The silence stretched between them, thick with everything they'd almost said for years. Outside, rain began to hammer against the glass, and Maya thought about vitamins and zombies and all the ways she'd been trying to keep herself alive while forgetting how to live.

Lucas set his spinach on her desk. "They have a guest cabin."

"What?"

"The farm. I looked it up after you sent me the link." He smiled, crooked and uncertain. "Someone has to make sure you don't accidentally eat something poisonous."

Maya felt something spark in her chest — small, dangerous, terrifyingly like hope. For the first time in three years, she didn't feel like a zombie at all.