Zombie Mode Activated

I'd been running on zombie mode for three weeks straight. Finals, graduation prep, the endless college application anxiety attack — my brain felt like a glitching screensaver. My dog Barnaby, a chaotic golden retriever mix, was the only living thing who didn't expect anything from me.

"You coming to the courts?" Maya texted. "Jamie's bringing his padel gear."

Padel. Because apparently tennis wasn't pretentious enough for the country club crowd. But Maya was Maya, and I'd been crushing on her since sophomore year, which meant I was about to spend my Friday evening pretending to understand sport rules.

"Yeah," I typed back. "Whatever."

The courts were behind the community center, cluster of teens I barely knew. Jamie was explaining padel rules like he'd invented them.

"It's basically tennis but cooler," he said, tossing me a racket. "You play with these walls, see—"

"Got it." I adjusted my oversized hoodie, fully prepared to embarrass myself.

But then Barnaby, who'd somehow escaped the backyard, came barreling across the grass like a furry missile. He spotted me and leaped — straight into the padel court, knocking over Jamie's water bottle and sending the ball flying.

"Barnaby!"

Maya started laughing. Not like oh-how-cute laughing. Full-on wheeze laughing.

"That's your dog?" she managed. "He's got better moves than half the JV team."

I froze. This was it. Social suicide. The moment my last two weeks of high school became a cringe compilation.

Instead, Maya walked over, scratched Barnaby behind the ears, and looked at me with something like actual interest. "Hey, you want to get out of here?"

We ended up at the rec center pool, night swimming with the outdoor lights reflecting off the water. Maya talked about her fear of leaving for college, how she felt like everyone expected her to have it figured out. I told her about my zombie brain, how I'd been sleepwalking through the end of childhood.

"We're all zombies," she said, floating on her back. "Just pretending to know what we're doing."

Barnaby waited patiently outside the fence, occasionally whining when we went underwater.

"Tomorrow," Maya said, "we're playing padel for real. You and me. And your dog can be mascot."

"Deal."

I wasn't a zombie anymore. Just a kid who was finally learning how to swim through the weird, messy in-between parts of growing up.