Zombie Cats and Broken Palms

Maya's palms were sweating so much she felt like she'd dip-dyed them in a pool. Standing outside Tyler's house, she smoothed her costume for the millionth time—a hastily assembled cat-eared headband paired with zombie makeup she'd practiced on YouTube for three hours.

"You good?" Jax asked, his bull-headed confidence exactly what she needed right now. "Or should we bail?"

"Nope. I'm doing this." Maya straightened her spine. "Can't ghost the first real party of freshman year."

Inside, the bass thumped like a second heartbeat. The air smelled like cheap body spray and something slightly burnt—probably the spinach dip someone had definitely ruined in the microwave. Maya spotted Tyler immediately, laughing with his friends near the drinks, his palm tree Hawaiian shirt glowing under the blacklights.

She'd been crushing on him since bio class, when he'd helped her pick up her spilled notebook instead of laughing like everyone else. Now here she was: half-cat, half-zombie, fully terrified.

"Nice costume," Tyler said, appearing beside her so suddenly she nearly dropped her phone. "Very... meta?"

"It's complicated," Maya managed, her face heating up. "Identity crisis, you know?"

He laughed—not mean, actually genuine. "I feel that." His phone buzzed. "Hey, want to see something wild? My cat basically turned into a zombie after she got into my neighbor's garden. Ate all their spinach plants and now she walks around like she's undead."

Maya cracked up. "No way."

"Swear on my life." He showed her a video of a cat stumbling around like it had definitely seen some things. "Living her best afterlife."

They spent the next hour talking about everything—how high school felt like a performance, how everyone pretended to have it figured out when they were all just making it up. Tyler admitted he'd lied about knowing how to surf to sound cool. Maya confessed she'd only worn the cat ears because she'd ripped her original costume.

"You know what's funny?" Tyler said. "We're all just zombies trying different outfits until something fits."

Maya looked at him—really looked at him. The guy she'd put on such a pedestal was just as confused as she was. And somehow, that made everything better.

"Want to get out of here?" she asked. "There's a diner down the street. They have actual food that won't give you food poisoning."

Tyler grinned. "Only if you promise to keep the ears."

Maya touched her cat ears, feeling surprisingly okay with being a work in progress. "Deal."