Zombie Mode Activated

Maya's alarm blared at 6:30 AM, but she remained dead to the world until her third slap of the snooze button. Monday mornings hit different, especially after staying up until 2 AM doom-scrolling through TikTok. She shuffled zombie-like through her morning routine, brain still buffering, eyes half-closed as she somehow managed to brush her teeth without stabbing herself with the toothbrush.

The cafeteria served something vaguely resembling food, so Maya grabbed the only green thing on her tray—a wilted spinach salad that looked like it had survived a natural disaster. Her friends side-eyed her choice.

"Since when do you eat rabbit food?" Chen asked, flicking a piece of the spinach. "Trying to impress someone?"

Maya's cheeks heated. So what if she'd finally worked up the courage to sit with Marcus at lunch? So what if he was on the track team and actually smiled at her last Friday when she'd literally walked into a door? Not even smooth. Her life was a constant simulation error.

But then it happened. The spinach. A single, betrayed leaf had wedged itself between her front teeth, mocking her existence, shining like an emerald beacon of social suicide. She caught her reflection in her phone screen and almost died ten thousand deaths.

Marcus walked by their table, and Maya's brain went full zombie mode—no thoughts, head empty, just pure panic. She covered her mouth with her hand and mumbled something that sounded like "mfffft" which definitely wasn't English or any language spoken by humans.

He raised an eyebrow. "You good?"

"FINE," she shouted through her fingers. "JUST FINE."

Later that week, the school's mascot—a guy in a grizzly bear costume that had seen better decades—crashed the spring assembly. The bear's head was sideways, one eye was missing, and the costume looked like it had been through a woodchipper. But when the bear started dancing to "WAP" with zero rhythm and maximum chaos, the entire gym lost it. Even Maya finally cracked, genuinely laughed, spinach-free, feeling something like real happiness bubble up in her chest.

Maybe high school didn't have to feel like walking through life in zombie mode forever. Maybe you just needed a guy in a janky bear costume to remind you that literally everyone was just figuring it out, one awkward moment at a time.