Zombie Mode Off

I'd been walking through sophomore year like a literal **zombie** for three months — skin pale from staying inside, eyes half-glazed from 2 AM gaming sessions, brain definitely not operating at full capacity. Mom kept leaving **spinach** smoothies on my desk like some kind of desperate peace offering. I'd pretend to drink them, then silently dump them in the bathroom sink when she wasn't looking. The texture alone was enough to activate my gag reflex.

Then Maya transferred in from Austin.

Maya, with her **running** club sweatshirt and actual sun exposure (weird concept, right?), sat behind me in AP World. We got paired for a project on the Industrial Revolution, which should've been the kind of awkward silence situation that makes you want to dissolve into the floor. But instead, she caught me mid-yawn during our third meeting and asked if I'd ever tried **padel**.

Padel? I'd never heard of it in my life. "It's like tennis met squash and had a baby," she explained, and I swear her eyes actually lit up. "My dad's club has open courts on weekends. You should come."

I said yes before my brain could process what I was agreeing to.

The next morning, I actually drank the spinach smoothie. I went for a run around the block and immediately regretted everything. I showed up at the padel courts feeling like I was going to throw up, but Maya was already there waiting, grinning like this was genuinely the best thing that could happen on a Saturday morning.

I played terrible. Like, impressively terrible. I tripped over my own feet twice. I hit the ball into the net approximately 47 times. At one point, I served it directly into the fence. But Maya kept laughing — not in a mean way, in a way that made me forget I was supposed to be self-conscious.

Afterward, we sat on the bench drinking water from the fountain. "You're actually not bad for a first-timer," she said. "Like, you've got potential. Same time next week?"

I walked home that afternoon feeling something weird in my chest, something unfamiliar and unsettling. Not the zombie feeling, not the endless scrolling feeling, not the dissociation I'd been carrying around like a backpack full of rocks. Something lighter. Something that felt suspiciously like hope.

That night, I didn't scroll TikTok until 3 AM. I actually looked up padel tutorials on YouTube. I texted Maya about strategies like I was suddenly this athletic person. I drank another spinach smoothie without dumping it.

Baby steps. But maybe, just maybe, I was finally waking up.