Zombie Fish, Two AM Lightning

The fourth Red Bull in three hours had turned Maya into something between a zombie and a vibrating string. She stared at her history essay—twelve pages of academic sludge about the Industrial Revolution—and then at her goldfish, Barnaby, who'd been watching her from his bowl on the desk like he knew something she didn't.

"You're judging me, aren't you?" she whispered. Barnaby did that mouth-opening thing that looked like laughter. "Okay, same."

The cable internet had been glitching all night—a preview of what would happen if she actually submitted this assignment on time. Her phone lit up: *study group?* from Lucas, the guy whose LinkedIn profile probably already existed. Maya had been dodging his texts since September because he made her feel like she was twelve kinds of behind on life.

Then lightning struck so close the room flashed white. The monitor went dark. The WiFi died. The universe had literally disconnected her from her problems.

"Nope," Maya said, reaching for her phone. "Hard pass on using this as a—"

But her phone was already lighting up again. Not a text. A knock on the front door.

She crept downstairs, heart doing that thing where it forgot how to rhythm. Her mom worked nights, so who the—

Lucas stood on the porch, soaked, holding his laptop like a shield. "The whole block's cable is down," he said, like this explained everything. "I couldn't submit my essay, and I thought maybe you'd want to die together?"

Maya stared at him. He was shivering. His hair was plastered to his forehead in a way that shouldn't have been cute but absolutely was. Behind her, Barnaby's bowl caught another flash of lightning, casting shimmering shadows across the entryway.

"I'm already a zombie," she heard herself say. "Join the club."

So they sat on the front steps in the rain, watching the sky crack open, complaining about everything—teachers, expectations, how much they hated that they were both the kind of people who wrote essays during lightning storms. And somewhere between the thunder and the admission that Lucas was failing algebra, Maya realized she wasn't tired anymore.

"Hey," Lucas said, as the rain slowed to a drizzle. "My cable's still down. You think Barnaby would mind if I came back tomorrow?"

Maya's goldfish did another one of those opening-and-closing mouth things from the window.

"I think," Maya said, "he just said bet."