Zombies Can't Swim

The padel court at the country club was basically social headquarters, and I was definitely not on the guest list.

"Just act natural," Maya whispered, adjusting her oversized sunglasses. "If you look like you belong, nobody will question it."

Easy for her to say. Maya could probably walk into a zombie apocalypse and the undead would ask for her TikTok. Me? I was still recovering from yesterday's papaya incident—where I'd confidently called it "pah-PYE-uh" in front of half the sophomore class. The gigging had lasted three full minutes.

We were crashing the end-of-summer pool party, hosted by Tyler, whose dad apparently owned half the zip code. Maya knew a guy who knew a guy, which was how we ended up standing awkwardly by the snack table while people who'd been popular since kindergarten played padel on the pristine courts nearby.

"They look like they're having fun," I muttered, watching a group laugh as someone smashed the ball against the glass wall.

"They're not," Maya said, flipping her hair. "They're performing. There's a difference."

She was right. I'd spent three months trying to perform my way into their orbit—wearing the right brands, laughing at jokes I didn't find funny, pretending to care about weekend plans I wasn't invited to. I was exhausted, functioning on borrowed sleep and caffeine, basically a zombie shuffling through the motions of being a teenager.

Then I saw it: Tyler's younger sister, alone at the deep end of the pool, dangling her legs in the water. She looked lonely, which seemed impossible in this crowd of curated perfection.

Before I could overthink it, I walked over and sat down beside her.

"The water feels amazing," I said, slipping off my sandals.

She looked up, startled. "You're not swimming?"

"Can't swim," I admitted. "Never learned."

Her eyebrows shot up. "Seriously?"

"My parents tried when I was little. I basically refused to put my face underwater. Traumatized by a particularly aggressive bubble."

She laughed—actually laughed, not performed-laughed. "I'm Evie. Tyler's sister."

"Lila. I'm here with Maya, but she's currently networking."

"She always does that," Evie said, like we were old friends. "Hey, you want to learn? Like, actually? I taught Tyler's friends, and they're hopeless. You'd probably be faster."

"Right now?"

"Why not? Everyone's too busy pretending to have fun on the padel court to notice us."

So there, at the edge of Tyler's fancy pool while cool kids pretended to be athletes and papaya sat untouched on the snack table, I learned to float. Evie was patient, cracking jokes about her brother's failed attempts at coolness, not caring who saw us.

By the time the sun started setting, I could doggy-paddle to the other side without panicking. Evie high-fived me like I'd won an Olympic medal.

"Tomorrow?" she asked. "Same time?"

"Definitely."

Walking home, Maya wanted all the details. But the best part wasn't networking or infiltrating the popular crowd. It was that I'd stopped being a zombie going through the motions and actually started living—even if I still couldn't say papaya correctly without thinking twice.