Gabe's Goldfish Summer

The neon blue hair dye sat on my bathroom counter like a challenge I'd been avoiding all summer. A dare from myself, basically.

"You're not actually gonna do it," my older sister Maya had said, leaning in my doorway with that look. The one that said she knew me better than I knew myself.

"Watch me."

I'd been talking about going blue-green since freshman year ended. Since my goldfish—RIP Bubbles, you were a legend—decided to do a backflip out of his bowl and onto the carpet while I was at camp. Classic Bubbles, honestly. The guy had zero chill.

But here's the thing about changing your hair the summer before sophomore year: suddenly everyone has opinions. My dad said I'd "regret it when school pictures happened" (he said the same thing about my Minecraft phase in seventh grade, and we all know who was wrong there). My mom offered to "make an appointment at a salon" because doing it myself would be "a disaster."

Translation: they thought I'd chicken out.

So that's how I ended up at 2 AM with plastic gloves and a mirror, watching my brown hair turn this color that looked like someone spilled a slushie on my head. It was messy. It was uneven. It looked like I'd lost a fight with a highlighter.

And I loved it.

The real test came Monday, when I was dogsitting for Mrs. Chen across the street. Her golden retriever, Buster, had zero respect for my new aesthetic. He basically dragged me down the sidewalk like I was made of treats.

"Nice hair," said this girl from my English class. I'd been secretly crushing on her since the poetry unit. She was sitting on her porch, sketching in this notebook she always carried.

"Thanks?" I said, like a total awkward disaster. "It's... happening?"

She laughed. "It's giving mercore."

"Mercore?"

"Mermaid-core," she said, like I should know this. "It's working."

Buster chose that moment to attempt an escape, lunging at a squirrel with zero warning. I almost face-planted into a hydrant.

Smooth. So smooth.

But she was still there when I wrangled Buster back. "I'm Riley, by the way."

"Gabe."

"You're in my creative writing elective next semester, right?"

"Yeah."

"Cool." She stood up. "Walk with me?"

We talked about everything. How she'd dyed her hair purple last summer and her mom freaked. How Bubbles' death had somehow been the catalyst I needed to just do something already. How sophomore year was going to be different.

Later that night, I caught my reflection in the window. The blue-green wasn't perfect. It was messy and patchy and definitely mercore.

But for the first time in forever, I looked like someone who was ready for whatever was coming next.