Zombie Mode Activated

The chlorine stung my eyes as I floated in the **water**, iPhone clutched in a waterproof case like it was my only connection to the real world. Above me, the party raged—laughter, music, the splash of cannonballs into the pool. But down here, suspended in the blue silence, I could finally breathe.

"Zoe! You're missing it!" Kayla called from the deck, her voice muffled through the **water**. I ignored her, just like I'd been ignoring everything lately.

Lately, I'd been operating on permanent **zombie** mode. Wake up, scroll through TikTok until my eyes burned, drag myself through AP Bio, come home and do it all again. My life was a highlight reel of everyone else's best moments, filtered and curated until nothing felt real anymore.

I finally surfaced, gasping. My **iPhone** screen lit up with twelve notifications. Instagram likes, Snap streaks, a group chat blowing up about some drama I couldn't care less about. I felt dead inside, and my phone was the **zombie** keeping me that way.

"Finally," someone said beside me. I turned and saw Jordan—the new kid from my history class, sitting on the pool edge with his feet in the water. He was eating **papaya** from a Tupperware container, which was weird but also weirdly fascinating. "You've been under there for like five minutes."

"Needed to escape," I said, treading water. "What's with the fruit?"

"My mom's on this health kick," Jordan shrugged, sliding into the water beside me. "She thinks **papaya** has all these enzymes that literally everything. Good for digestion, good for skin, good for existential dread." He grinned. "Okay, I made that last one up."

I laughed before I could stop myself. "You're weird."

"Weird beats **zombie** any day." He held out a piece of **papaya**. "Want some? It's actually not bad."

I considered it. My phone buzzed again in my hand, another notification demanding my attention. But instead of checking it, I reached for the fruit. The **papaya** was sweet and strange against my tongue, nothing like the processed snacks I usually ate.

"My mom also swears by this **vitamin** D supplement," Jordan continued. "Says everyone in our generation is deficient because we never go outside. Which is ironic, considering we're literally at a pool party."

"Maybe that's the problem," I said slowly. "Maybe we're all just deficient in something real."

Jordan looked at me, really looked at me, in a way that made my stomach do this weird flip thing. "Then maybe we should do something real."

"Like what?"

"Like put down the **iPhone**, for starters. And then... I don't know. Talk about stuff that actually matters."

So we did. For the next hour, I floated there while Jordan told me about moving schools six times, about how his little sister had autism and he was the only one who could get her to eat vegetables, about how he secretly loved old jazz music. I told him about how I used to write stories until I started caring too much about what people thought, about how I felt like everyone else was living while I was just watching.

Eventually Kayla dragged us out for pizza, but something had shifted. The **zombie** fog had lifted, just a little.

Later that night, my **iPhone** sat on my nightstand, screen dark. For the first time in months, I opened the notes app and started typing. Something about **water**, and papaya, and how sometimes the weirdest moments make you feel the most alive.

A **vitamin** for my soul, Jordan had called it before we parted ways. I smiled at my screen. Yeah. Maybe he was right.