When the Spinach Hit the Fan

Maya's legs were burning, but she kept running. Three miles down, two to go. This was what she did now — run from the feelings, run from the fact that her mom had moved out three weeks ago and nobody talked about it. Run from the group chat that kept blowing up with drama she couldn't care less about.

"ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE IN THE CAFETERIA," Jenna's text read. Maya slowed to a walk, chest heaving. This was the thing about senior year — everyone was either performing panic for clout or actually losing it.

She'd barely touched her phone all week. Weird flex, but okay. Her older brother, Devon, had cut the cable three years ago. No streaming, no scrolling. He said it made his brain feel like it belonged to him. Maya thought he was dramatic, until she tried it. Now she got why he looked at everyone else like they were the zombies.

Back home, she opened the fridge to find a container of wilted spinach from who knows when. "This is so sad," she muttered, reaching for it anyway. Cooking had become her thing — something real she could hold onto when everything else felt like one big performance.

Her phone buzzed. Jenna, again: "Where ARE you? Everyone's at Theo's."

Maya stared at the spinach, at the pan heating up on the stove, at her phone lighting up like it was more important than whatever was happening in this exact moment. She thought about Devon, about how he'd stopped running from himself and just started being whoever that was. Unfiltered. Uncut. No cable needed.

She typed back: "Cooking spinach. Come over if you want actual food."

Jenna responded in seconds: "That's weirdly specific but I'm in."

Maybe the zombie thing wasn't about the apocalypse. Maybe it was about waking up. Maya turned up the music and started chopping, finally not running anymore.