Zombie Mode at the Party

I looked in the mirror and literally wanted to die. Bright green **spinach** lodged right between my front teeth, framing the brace-face situation I'd been rocking since seventh grade. This was fine. Everything was fine. Except that Maya was supposed to be here any minute, and I was basically a walking reject from a salad bar.

You know when your brain feels like it's buffering? That was me. I'd been up until 3 AM gaming—Zombie Apocalypse 4, obviously—and now I was operating on full **zombie** mode. My eyes were doing that thing where they felt like they'd been rolled in glitter and glue.

My phone buzzed. Maya: *hey I'm outside!*

Panic mode activated. I grabbed my phone, checking for the hundredth time that my **cable** internet was actually working. Because obviously the ONE time I need to look up conversation starters on Reddit, my WiFi decides to ghost me. Classic.

I wiped my sweaty **palm**s on my jeans. Black jeans. Because obviously I wore black jeans to a summer party. The sweat stains were gonna be iconic.

Maya was already surrounded by her friends when I got there. The popular crowd. The ones who somehow looked like they'd gotten exactly eight hours of sleep and drank green juice for breakfast. Meanwhile, I was out here looking like I'd been personally attacked by a vending machine.

"Hey!" she waved me over, and my stomach did that thing where it forgets how to organ.

I stood there, frozen, while my brain supplied absolutely nothing helpful. The spinach situation still haunted me. What if I'd missed some? What if there was more? What if my entire life was just a series of vegetable-related embarrassments?

"You good?" Maya asked, tilting her head.

And in that moment, I realized she was waiting for me to say something. Anything. But instead, I just stood there, feeling like the most awkward person to ever exist in the history of awkward teenagers.

"Yeah," I somehow managed. "Just. Zombie mode. Late night gaming session went wrong."

She laughed. Not the fake laugh. The real one. "Dude, same. I stayed up until 4 watching this terrible zombie show on Netflix and now I'm basically one of the walking dead."

We spent the next hour bonding over our mutual zombie-state existence, and I may have forgotten about the spinach entirely. Maybe being awkward wasn't the end of the world. Maybe having spinach in your teeth—or in your soul—was just part of the whole teenager experience.

Plus, Maya's laugh when I finally told her about the spinach? Worth it.