Zombie Goldfish Summer

The zombie apocalypse didn't come with brains or barricades. For Maya, it showed up as junior year fatigue—dragging through AP Chem like the walking dead, checking notifications that never came, watching the goldfish in her room swim in endless circles.

"You're literally a zombie," her best friend Priya said, dumping Goldfish crackers onto Maya's bed. "You need to sleep more than four hours."

Maya just groaned. Her goldfish, Bubbles, floated near the surface. Again.

"He's not looking so good," Priya said.

"He's fine. He's always been weird." But Maya's stomach did that thing where it remembered that Bubbles had been a birthday present from her mom, two years ago.

Friday night, she found herself at Tyler's party because Priya refused to let her rot at home. Maya stood by the wall, phone in hand, feeling like the most awkward zombie to ever awkwardly zombie. Tyler was there, laughing with his friends, being effortlessly Tyler.

Then someone's Golden Retriever burst through the back door.

Chaos. Shrieking. The dog—weaving through legs, knocking over cups, pure golden joy unleashed—bounded straight toward Maya, who was suddenly the least wallflower person in the room because a DOG was selecting HER.

She dropped to her knees and buried her face in soft fur. For ten seconds, she wasn't the quiet girl who couldn't find the right words or the right clothes or the right anything.

"He likes you," someone said.

Maya looked up. Tyler. Smiling.

"Yeah," she managed. "Hi."

"I'm Tyler."

"Maya."

"Cool party, right?"

She laughed before she could stop herself.

That night, Bubbles was gone. Maya buried him in the backyard at 2 AM, crying harder than made sense, but maybe it wasn't about the fish at all. Maybe it was about how everything was ending and beginning all at once—how being a zombie meant you were still walking, how dogs saw everything, how you could be dead tired one minute and alive the next.

Monday, Tyler found her at her locker. "Hey, Zombie Girl."

She smiled. "Hey, Dog Boy."

And just like that, Maya wasn't dead anymore.