Mika Reyes Is Not Living Through Anything in Particular

Mika Reyes is fourteen years old and lives in Tempe, Arizona. She was born in September 2018, which means she exists right now, in your world, as a seven-year-old. We spoke over video call on a Tuesday night in July 2032, 10:15 PM her time, which she assured me was "not even late." She was eating Cinnamon Toast Crunch. Behind her, a window showed a neighborhood lit amber by streetlights, the sky still holding a faint orange band at the horizon. Her dog, Bean, a small and judgmental-looking mutt, slept on her bed. Mika runs the 400-meter for her school's indoor track team, gets mostly A's, and has opinions about which electrolyte brand is overrated. She does not think of herself as living through anything in particular.

You're eating cereal at ten o'clock at night?

Mika: It's summer. This is like my lunch? We eat dinner around midnight usually. My dad gets home at nine because his shifts run late. He does HVAC, so summer is basically his Super Bowl. Then my mom cooks, and we eat whenever. On school nights it's different, but yeah. This is normal.

Walk me through a summer day.

Mika: Okay so I wake up around noon, maybe one. Bean needs to go out but I check the app first, always, because if the ground temp is over 130 you literally cannot walk a dog.¹ Their paws just... yeah. So if it's bad I take him to the turf patch in the backyard and he does his thing and we go back in.

Then I just hang out. Watch stuff, text people, practice if I'm on my training block. The real day starts at like eight, eight-thirty, when it drops under 105 and you can actually be outside without it being a whole situation. That's when everyone comes out. The park by our house has lights and there's always people there at ten, eleven PM. Little kids on the playground, people grilling. It's honestly the best part of summer.

What do you mean by "check the app"?

Mika: HeatWatch? It just tells you surface temps and air temps for your area and whether it's advisory or whatever. Everyone has it. My mom has alerts set so it pings her if it crosses a certain number. It's like checking the weather except it is the weather. I don't know. You just do it before you go anywhere. Like putting on shoes.

Do you remember when you started doing that?

Mika: No? My mom's been making me do it since I was little. Before I had a phone she'd just tell me. It's a red day, stay inside. At school they have the color thing too. Every morning they announce what color day it is and that decides if you go outside for anything.² Red means inside all day. Orange means maybe early morning but that's it. Green days are amazing but they're mostly in December and January.

I think we had eleven green days last school year? Something like that. Everyone gets so excited. It's kind of embarrassing how hyped people get. Like, we're in high school. But also I get it.

You run indoor track. Was there ever outdoor track?

Mika: Technically? My coach says they used to do outdoor but that was before I started. I think they stopped it in like 2027 or 2028 because the season kept getting shorter and shorter. By the time spring meets came around it was already too hot and they'd cancel everything anyway.³ So now it's all indoor. We have a decent facility, 200-meter banked track, and we travel to Flagstaff sometimes for meets, which is fun because it's actually cool up there.

I like indoor. I don't really think about it.

Do you ever wish you could run outside?

Mika: I do run outside. Just early. If I'm doing distance work in summer I go at five-thirty AM with my mom. It's actually nice then. Like 95, which sounds hot I guess but it feels fine if you're moving. By seven-thirty it's done though. You learn the windows.

I think people from other places think we just never go outside, but we do. You just have to be smart about it. I have a friend who moved here from Michigan last year and she was so dramatic about it at first. "How do you LIVE here." And now she checks the app before I do. You adjust. It's not that deep.

Your parents moved from San Diego before you were born. Do they talk about it?

Mika: My mom does sometimes. She gets weird about water. Like she'll talk about how they used to just... run sprinklers? On grass? And I'm like, okay, that sounds fake but sure. She showed me pictures of the beach she grew up going to and it looked like a movie. She gets quiet sometimes and I know she's doing the thing where she's comparing. I just let her have it.

My dad doesn't really talk about it. He says Phoenix has been good to us, which is true. He has more work than he can handle.

You said your mom "does the thing where she's comparing." What does that feel like from your side?

Mika: [long pause]

It's like she has this whole other version of things in her head that I can't see. And sometimes she looks at me like she's sorry about something? But I don't know what she'd be sorry about. This is just where we live. I'm fine.

I don't know. That's a weird question. Can we talk about something else?

Sure. Tell me about Bean.

Mika: Oh my god, Bean. Okay so Bean is a mutt, he's like chihuahua and something else, maybe some terrier, and he is the most dramatic animal alive. He has these little boots for when we go on walks, the pavement ones, you know, and he acts like I'm torturing him every time I put them on. Full betrayal eyes. But then if I don't put them on he won't walk because it's hot. He wants to suffer but only on his own terms.

Hold on. [holds up dog to camera] Look at this face. This is the face of a dog who has never experienced a single hardship in his life but wants you to think he has.

He's very cute.

Mika: He knows.

Last question. If someone from 2025 could see your life right now, what do you think would surprise them most?

Mika: [thinks]

Probably that it's just... normal? Like, I think people expected the future to be all crazy and apocalyptic or whatever, and it's not. You eat cereal at ten PM and you check the app before you walk your dog and track is inside and your school has a color system. It's just life. It's not like a movie.

[pause]

Although the cereal is different now. They changed the Cinnamon Toast Crunch recipe and it's not as good. That's the real tragedy.

Mika asked me to clarify that Bean is "a rescue and a king" and that she is available for follow-up questions "after noon, obviously." She will turn fifteen in September. She has never seen a green day in April.

Footnotes

1. In 2025, Arizona Mirror reporters measured Phoenix sidewalk surface temperatures at 136°F and road surfaces at 146°F at midday in late June. At 125°F and above, contact burns can occur in under sixty seconds. Arizona Mirror ↩

2. By 2025, Phoenix-area schools were already operating on a daily color-coded heat advisory system, with morning emails to staff determining whether students could go outside. "Red" days meant all recess and P.E. remained indoors. A 2025 ASU study found that 93% of Maricopa County elementary schools had modified outdoor recess due to heat. PMC ↩

3. The Arizona Interscholastic Association requires teams to move practice when extreme heat falls between 10 AM and 5 PM, with its "Critical Zone" threshold triggering mandatory modifications or cancellations. By 2025, Phoenix-area high school teams were already practicing as early as 6 AM and shifting to indoor facilities. Act on Climate ↩