Zombie Summer

Kyle's beat-up fedora had seen better days, but it was his armor against the world. Standing behind the snack counter at the community pool, he felt like a zombie—the kind from his favorite video games, mindless and shuffling through another endless summer of minimum-wage hell.

'Yo, Kyle! My bro needs vitamin water, stat!'

That was Chloe, the girl who'd sat behind him in bio freshman year, now surrounded by her squad of popular girls. Her golden retriever, Max, panted beside her, looking way happier than any creature forced to endure July in suburbia had any right to be.

Kyle's hands moved on autopilot, grabbing the neon-yellow bottle. '$3.50.'

Chloe's friends were already drifting away, checking their phones, but she lingered. 'You okay? You look... dead.'

'Zombie, technically,' Kyle found himself saying. 'It's the summer aesthetic.'

She laughed, and something in his chest did that annoying fluttery thing. 'So I've been roped into planning my quinceañera,' she said, like they were actually friends who talked about stuff. 'My mom's going full zombie bride about it. Every detail is life or death.'

Kyle nodded, not trusting his voice. The truth was, he'd been crushing on Chloe since she'd helped him pick up his dropped notes that day in bio, notes about cellular respiration and ATP production. He'd been a zombie then too—socially awkward, barely existing on the periphery of her world.

'Max likes you,' she said, gesturing to the dog, who was now investigating Kyle's sneakers with suspicious enthusiasm. 'He doesn't like just anyone.'

'That's... actually kind of validating?'

'Hey.' She bit her lip, studying him with an intensity that made his stomach do flips. 'Some of us are going to the lake tomorrow. You should come.'

'The lake?'

'Yeah. To swim. In water. That thing your entire workplace is centered around?' She smiled, and it was different from her usual polite-expression-smile. Realer. 'Or do you have more important zombie stuff to do?'

Kyle looked at his reflection in the cooler glass—fedora, pool-stained polo, the whole invisible-boy package. Then he looked at Chloe, really looked at her, and realized something that made his heart pound: the pretty girls weren't actually an alien species. They were just people, waiting for someone to see them.

'Yeah,' he said, finally letting himself grin. 'I'll be there.'

Later that night, Kyle took off his hat and set it on the dresser. Maybe tomorrow he'd even leave it at home.