I was mid-sentence explaining why I'd been late when my friend's eyes went completely still—not blinking, not wandering, just locked on my face like I was a hostage negotiation. I kept talking about traffic, but my brain had switched to thinking, *Is there a spider on my forehead? Am I having a stroke?* By the time I finished, I'd somehow convinced myself I'd said something deeply offensive, and he'd just been deciding whether to end our friendship or call someone. He blinked once and said, "Sorry, I zoned out about thirty seconds in." So the whole thing was him practicing his death stare while I performed for an audience of absolutely no one.