Carnival Lights and Goldfish Prizes

The school carnival lights blurred through my tears as I stumbled away from the DJ booth. Mateo had barely glanced up from his phone when I finally worked up the nerve to ask him to dance. Three years of secretly crushing, and I got a casual "nah, maybe later" while he texted someone else.

I felt like a zombie going through the motions—smiling at people, pretending everything was chill, while inside I was completely dead. Maya found me by the snack bar, looking like a hot mess.

"He's not worth it, Lena," she said, handing me a snow cone. "He's been talking to Isabella all week. Everyone knows except you."

"Wow. Thanks for the reality check," I muttered, but she wasn't wrong. I'd been living in denial, holding onto memories that weren't even real anymore.

"Want me to win you something?" Maya pointed at the game booths. "Take your mind off it."

The line for the mechanical bull wrapped around the tent. Of course Jake was there, showing off for his friends, lasting all of three seconds before tumbling off. "That was brutal," someone laughed, and even I had to smile. Jake acting tough was always a joke.

But what really caught my eye was the goldfish booth—a bunch of clear bags with tiny orange fish swimming in circles. Winner after winner walked away with their new pets, and something about those goldfish just going round and round, never leaving their tiny world, hit me different tonight. That was me, stuck in the same patterns, going nowhere.

"Your cat would probably eat it anyway," Maya said, reading my mind. She knew my cat, Luna, was basically a tiny serial killer who left "presents" on my pillow regularly.

"Yeah, but it'd be worth it," I said. Something about those fish made me want to take one home, give it a better life, even if Luna had other plans.

The game guy looked me up and down. "Three bucks, three balls. Knock over the bear, win a fish."

The bear stood in the back, huge and imposing like the ones in fairy tales who messed everything up. But this bear was going down. I threw like my life depended on it, like every rejection, every awkward moment, every time I felt small was packed into those three throws.

First ball: clank against the bottles. Second: dead center, nothing. Third: perfect.

The bear collapsed. People cheered. I held my new goldfish bag like it was gold, like I'd actually won something real tonight.

"You know," Maya said as we walked away, "sometimes you've got to knock some stuff down to build something better."

She was right. Mateo was part of the old me—the scared version who waited for things to happen. The new me? She was ready to make her own moves, goldfish in one hand, best friend in the other, and honestly? That was enough.