Zombie State of Mind

Emilio hadn't slept properly in three days. Finals week will do that to you—turn you into something that shuffles through hallways, eyes half-lidded, brain operating at maybe 20% capacity. A literal zombie.

"You look like you've been reanimated from a grave that was not," said Marisol, sliding into the seat across from him at lunch.

"Thanks," Emilio mumbled into his cafeteria tray. "That's exactly the glow I was aiming for."

"You should come tonight. The zombie run downtown. It'll be fun."

"Marisol, I can barely walk to class without falling asleep standing up. Now you want me running five kilometers? While people in zombie makeup chase me?"

"It's for charity!" She grinned. "Besides, you're already halfway there with the whole undead aesthetic."

That was the thing about Marisol—she had this way of making things happen. Like, Emilio found himself standing at the starting line at 9 PM wearing glow sticks and questionable running shoes, surrounded by three hundred people dressed like the apocalypse.

The first kilometer wasn't terrible. By the second, his lungs were screaming. By the third, he understood why zombies moved so slowly—it wasn't apathy, it was just efficient energy conservation.

He'd stopped to wheeze against a fence when someone slowed down beside him. Maya, from his history class. She looked absolutely terrible, which somehow made her look perfect.

"You okay?" she asked.

"Just channeling my inner undead," he managed.

She cracked a smile. "Same. I think I saw Jesus in that last water station."

They ended up walking together, and the conversation went from how much they hated running to how much they hated Mr. Harrison's history lectures to how neither of them had any idea what they were doing with their lives, and wasn't that terrifying?

Mayya's mom owned that Caribbean market on 4th Street, and she kept trying to get Maya to eat papaya because it was "a fruit of vitality" or something. "I hate it, honestly," she admitted. "But she won't stop buying it."

"I've never had it," Emilio said.

"Try it sometime. You'll understand my struggle."

They finished the race walking. At the end, there was fruit being handed out—ironically, papaya. Maya held one out to him, this weird, oblong thing that looked like it was having an identity crisis.

"Your turn," she said.

He took a bite, made a face, and she laughed—a real laugh, not her polite school laugh. They sat on the curb while runners shuffled past, sharing a papaya that tasted like a melon having an existential crisis, feeling like zombies but feeling, somehow, more alive than they had all week.

"You know," Maya said, "this wasn't terrible."

"No," Emilio agreed. "Not terrible at all."

He'd sleep eventually. But the zombie state could wait a little longer.