Zombie Summer at the Pyramid

The heatwave turned everyone into zombies. Literally. By third period, Mr. Harrison's AP History class looked like a scene from The Walking Dead—heads on desks, groans echoing through the room, someone actually hissing "braaains" when lunch was mentioned.

I was the worst of them. Finals had killed my soul, and now I was just existing, barely functioning, riding the struggle bus to summer freedom.

"You coming to Tyler's pool party?" Maya asked, spinning in her chair to face me. "Everyone's gonna be there. It's, like, the kickoff to summer."

Tyler sat at the top of our school's social pyramid—varsity captain, rich parents, the kind of effortless cool that made you hate yourself for trying. His pool parties were legendary. Also my personal nightmare.

"I don't know," I mumbled. "I'm not really feeling it."

Maya's expression softened. "Still scared of the water?"

"It's not scared. It's... extremely cautious appreciation from a distance."

She laughed. "Same, girl. Same."

The truth was, I couldn't swim. Not a stroke. While everyone else was doing cannonballs and Marco Polo, I was the person awkwardly holding my phone at the shallow end, fully dressed, pretending I was above it all when really I was just terrified.

That night, my cat Jupiter jumped onto my chest, purring like a tiny motorboat. He looked at me with those judging yellow eyes, as if to say, "You're pathetic, human."

"You don't understand social dynamics, Jupiter," I told him. "There are layers to this. Complexities." He bit my chin. "Ow. Rude."

But maybe he had a point. The next day, I showed up at Tyler's party wearing my oldest bathing suit—the one with the weird stain on the side that I claimed was "artistic."

The pool was packed. People everywhere, laughter and music and that distinctive smell of sunscreen and chlorine. I stood at the edge, heart racing, feeling like everyone was watching.

Then I saw Tyler—Mr. Pyramid himself—struggling to keep his head above water in the deep end. He was flailing, arms slapping the water, going under for a second, then resurfacing with a gasp.

No one else noticed. They were all busy being cool and taking selfies and flirting.

I didn't think. I just jumped.

The water swallowed me—cold and shocking and terrifying. I kicked, I thrashed, I swallowed half the pool, but somehow, somehow I reached him. Grabbed his arm. We both went under again, choking and spluttering, and then we broke the surface together, gasping.

"You okay?" I managed, treading water like my life depended on it (which, technically, it did).

Tyler nodded, water dripping from his hair, looking completely un-cool for the first time ever. "Yeah. Thanks."

We dog-paddled to the shallow end, both of us shaking and breathless and absolutely pathetic.

"You saved me," he said, incredulous. "Also, your form is terrible."

"Your form wasn't exactly Olympic quality either," I shot back, and he laughed.

Maya appeared at the pool's edge, grinning. "Okay, that was actually kind of epic."

"I almost died," I informed her.

"Still epic."

Later, wrapped in a towel and shivering, Jupiter waiting for me at home, I realized something about the pyramid: it only looked solid from a distance. Up close, everyone was just treading water, trying not to sink.

And sometimes, the zombies were the ones who actually jumped in.