Zombie Summer

Mia dragged herself to the pool party like a **zombie**, running on three hours of sleep and one cold coffee. Summer between sophomore and junior year was supposed to be epic, but so far it was mostly just awkward encounters with people she barely knew from school.

"Hey, Mia!" Chloe waved from the diving board. Her perfect beach **hair** somehow defied humidity, physics, and all laws of nature. Meanwhile, Mia's curls had already declared independence.

Mia's palms were sweating. She wiped them on her shorts, then realized that looked weird, so she crossed her arms. Then uncrossed them because that looked defensive. Social dynamics were exhausting.

"You coming in?" someone called.

"Yeah, just, uh, warming up?" Mia choked out. Why was she like this?

She scanned the pool area. Everyone seemed so confident, so effortless. Meanwhile, she was **running** through scenarios in her head, overthinking every possible move, calculating social risks like she was solving for x on a math final.

The truth was, she'd been avoiding the pool all summer. Her mom kept asking why she wasn't **swimming"** anymore, like she used to when she was little. But somewhere in middle school, the joy of splashing around had been replaced by the crushing weight of self-consciousness.

"Mia?" It was Dylan. The guy she'd had a crush on since eighth grade, who had suddenly become unreasonably attractive over the last year. "You okay? You look like you're plotting something."

"I'm fine," she lied, her heart doing that thing where it forgot how to work properly.

"Cool." He smiled. "Anyway, Chloe dared me to do a zombie walk off the diving board. Want to watch?"

Mia laughed, actually laughed, and the weird tension in her chest loosened. "Absolutely. If you bellyflop, I'm documenting it."

"Deal."

And just like that, something shifted. She spent the rest of the afternoon actually talking to people instead of overthinking everything. Dylan's zombie impression was ridiculous, Chloe's hair frizzed from the pool water and she didn't even care, and Mia found herself **swimming** laps with Dylan while everyone else took selfies.

Maybe summer wasn't about being perfect. Maybe it was about showing up as your awkward, sweaty-palmed, overthinking self and letting people surprise you.

"Same time tomorrow?" Dylan asked as they headed out.

"Yeah," Mia said, and for the first time all summer, she didn't overthink it. "Yeah, definitely."