Zombie Mode at the Pool Party

I showed up to Tyler's pool party looking like absolute烤—cheeks sunken, eyes doing that twitchy thing, moving like I'd personally died and come back as a mediocre reanimated corpse. Three consecutive nights of grinding ranked Valorant until 4 AM will do that to you. My little sister Maya took one look at me and started doing that dramatic whisper-shout thing: "Mom! Kai's gone full zombie again!"

Not totally wrong. The world felt like I was experiencing everything through three layers of cotton. I'd been crushing on Harmony since September, had somehow secured an invite to her best friend's party, and now I was about to embarrass myself in front of literally everyone while operating on two hours of sleep and an energy drink that had stopped working hours ago.

The pool water glittered like something out of a music video. People were cannonballing, shrieking, living their best lives. Harmony was there, looking effortless in this black bikini that made my brain short-circuit, and suddenly I remembered: I couldn't actually swim. Like, at all.

"You coming in or what?" Tyler called, already waist-deep.

I froze. This was it—the moment. The choice between admitting I couldn't swim in front of Harmony or trying to fake it and probably drown ignobly in six feet of chlorinated water.

Then Luna's cat Figaro—who'd been slinking around the edge of the patio like he owned the place—made this sudden weird noise and bolted straight toward the pool, leaping before anyone could react. The cat hit the water with this undignified splash and immediately started flailing like something from a horror movie.

I didn't think. I just moved.

Water surged around me as I jumped in, grabbed the scrambling, howling cat, and somehow dragged us both to the edge. My feet found concrete. I was gasping, Figaro was clinging to my shoulder like a furious wet monkey, and everyone was staring.

Then Harmony started laughing. Not mean laughing—genuine, doubled-over laughing that made her snort. The tension broke. Someone tossed me a towel. Figaro shook water all over Maya's phone, which honestly was karma for all the zombie comments.

Later, Harmony found me sitting on the patio steps, wrapped in a towel, watching Figaro groom his wounded dignity by aggressively licking his paw.

"That was actually kind of heroic," she said, sitting beside me. "Even if you both look like drowned rats now."

"I didn't even think about it," I admitted. "Also, I can't really swim. That was pure adrenaline."

She bumped my shoulder with hers. "Well. You can't really do sleep either, apparently."

We sat there while Figaro finished his very thorough bath operation, and I realized something: sometimes showing up as your most exhausted, unprepared self is better than not showing up at all. And sometimes a cat falling in a pool is exactly the plot twist you need.