Zombie at the Bottom of the Pool

Maya felt like a zombie. Not the cool, glittery kind from TV shows—the actual exhausted, sleep-deprived, brain-has-turned-to-mush kind that resulted from staying up until 3 AM finishing AP Euro notes and scrolling through TikTok.

Now she stood at Lila's end-of-year pool party, clutching her iPhone like a lifeline. Around her, classmates splashed and laughed, their shouts ricocheting off the wooden fence. The water glimmered an artificial blue, scattered with inflatable flamingos that bobbed like drunk sailors.

"Maya! Get in!" someone called. Probably Lila. Everyone was always calling her to do something.

She forced a smile and waved her phone. "Just finishing something!"

But she wasn't finishing anything. She was doomscrolling through posts of people having fun at other parties, other lakes, other beaches. Everyone was living their best life except her, apparently.

Her phone buzzed. A text from her mom: You forgot your meds again, didn't you?

Maya typed back: No, took them. A complete lie. She'd forgotten. Again.

The sun beat down on her bare shoulders. She should get in the water. She should put down her phone. She should stop feeling like a zombie passenger in her own body.

"Hey."

She jumped. It was Caleb, the quiet swimmer guy with the nice smile and perpetually messy hair. Water droplets clung to his chest like diamonds.

"You gonna stand there all day?" He gestured at the pool. "Water's actually not terrible."

"I'm good," she said automatically.

"You look like a zombie," he said, and she almost laughed at how accurately he'd nailed it.

"Tired," she admitted.

"School?"

"Life."

He nodded like he understood. Then he did something unexpected. He reached out and gently plucked the iPhone from her hand.

"Hey—"

"Trust me," he said, and before she could protest, he tossed it onto a dry towel on a lawn chair.

"Now you have no excuse."

The pool looked deeper than she'd remembered. The water rippled with light and movement.

"I don't have a suit," she said weakly.

"You're wearing shorts and a tank top. It'll dry." Caleb's eyes crinkled. "Unless you're scared?"

Something shifted inside her chest. Maybe it was the sun. Maybe it was being seen—really seen—by someone who noticed she wasn't okay.

Maya pulled off her sandals and stepped to the pool's edge. The water lapped against the concrete, gentle and persistent. She wasn't a zombie anymore. She was just a girl, about to jump into a pool fully dressed, and that was okay.

She cannonballed into the deep end.

The shock of cold water swallowed her whole. For a second, everything was muffled and blue and perfect. She broke the surface, gasping, sopping wet and entirely alive.

Caleb was laughing. "Better?"

She pushed wet hair out of her eyes. Her iPhone lay safe and dry on the lawn chair, and for the first time in forever, she didn't care about it at all.

"Better," she said, and actually meant it.