Zyla & Kai
Alum - Creative Writing at The New School
Kokila, 2024
While on a school trip to the Poconos (in the middle of a storm), high school seniors, Zyla Matthews and Kai Johnson, run away together, leaving their friends and family confused. As far as everyone knows, Zyla and Kai have been broken up for months. And honestly? Their break up didn’t surprise anyone. Zyla and Kai met while working together at an amusement park the previous summer, and they couldn’t have been more different from each other.
Zyla was a cynic about love. She witnessed the dissolution of her parents’ marriage early in life, and it left an indelible impression. Her only aim was graduating and going to fashion school abroad. Until she met Kai.
Kai was a serial monogamist and a hopeless romantic. He put a temporary pause on his dating life before senior year to focus on school and getting into his dream HBCU. Until he met Zyla.
Alternating between the past and present, we see the love story unfold primarily from Zyla’s and Kai’s perspectives: how they first became the unlikeliest of friends over the summer, how they fell in love during the school year, and why they ultimately broke up. . . . Or did they?