Zombie In A Snapback

I felt like a **zombie** walking through the halls Monday morning. Three hours of sleep will do that to you. Marcus's party had been legendary—fire pit on the beach, someone's older brother's amps—but the consequences were hitting me hard during first period AP Chem.

"You look dead," Maya whispered, sliding into the seat next to me. "Rough night?"

"Don't even ask." I adjusted my dad's old snapback—**hat** pulled low to hide the circles under my eyes. It was my armor lately. Shield, disguise, whatever.

Then the double doors swung open and Tom walked in. My former **friend**. The one who'd ditched our group for the basketball guys the second he made varsity. The one who'd stopped texting back somewhere around October.

But Tom looked wrecked.

He locked eyes with me across the classroom, then did something bizarre: he pointed at my hat, mouthed "cool," and actually sat at our old table at lunch.

"Your grandma's in the hospital," he told me, picking at his pizza. "That's why you've been MIA, right?"

"What? No. I just—"

"Oh." Tom's face fell. "I thought... I don't know. I thought maybe you were mad at me."

The awkwardness was absolutely brutal. But then his phone buzzed—game group chat exploding—and I saw it: that tiny wince. The same one I'd been making all week, hiding behind snapbacks and fake smiles and the exhausting performance of being fine.

"You know," I said, "I'm kind of tired of **running** from stuff."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. You wanna skip seventh?"

Tom's grin was genuine. "Absolutely."

We ended up at the arcade, playing zombie apocalypse shooters until our thumbs were sore. Not because we were hiding anymore, but because sometimes you need to shoot pixelated monsters with someone who gets the bruising weight of expectations.

"We good?" Tom asked later, as we walked back.

"We're working on it," I said, tilting the snapback up. "We're working on it."