Zombie Mode and Fox Dreams

I was running on three hours of sleep and basically operating in full zombie mode, which was honestly fine because my whole high school was basically walking dead at this point. But then Connor's party happened, and my iPhone died at like, nine PM—which is practically a social death sentence.

So I'm standing there, trying to look normal without my digital crutch, when Maya Garcia walks over. Maya, who I've had a massive crush on since freshman year. Maya, who looks effortless in a cropped sweatshirt while I'm over here mentally calculating how many days I've gone without proper human interaction.

"Your lip gloss is really working for you," she says, and I immediately touch my mouth like an idiot.

"Thanks! It's, uh, from Sephora."

Cool, Leo. Mentioning the makeup store to the girl who definitely knows where Sephora is. This is going great.

Then she laughs and points at my teeth. "You have..."

Spinach. From the stupid spinach artichoke dip I'd aggressively consumed earlier. I wanted to actually die right there. But instead of being grossed out, Maya just hands me a napkin and says, "Happened to me last week at lunch. I walked around with parsley in my braces for like, three periods."

We end up on the back porch, talking about everything and nothing—how school feels like a zombie apocalypse sometimes, how our parents don't get why we're always on our phones, how we're both secretly obsessed with this niche fox sanctuary account on Instagram because the baby fox videos are literally the only thing keeping us sane.

"The way they play?" Maya's eyes light up. "It's like they're not trying to be anything. They just are."

"Yeah," I say, and I'm not just talking about foxes anymore. "We should be more like that."

She takes my phone—my newly charged phone—and opens Instagram. "Add me. And maybe next time, we can watch fox videos together without pretending it's for biology homework."

Sometimes the most embarrassing moments become the ones that change everything. And sometimes, you just need to run out of battery, have spinach in your teeth, and talk about foxes until 2 AM to finally feel like you're actually living.