Goldfish and Ghost Nets

The cable guy left three hours ago, taking the WiFi with him. Mom's DVR recordings were gone too, which meant my schedule for surviving the divorce collapsed.

"Spinach again?" I poked at my dinner, wilting like the relationship between the adults in this house.

"It's good for you," Mom said, staring at her phone instead of me.

Dad's new apartment had a goldfish pond. That's where he was probably now—feeding his new girlfriend's kids while I pushed vegetation around my plate. Meanwhile, my actual goldfish, Finnegán, floated in his bowl on my nightstand, oblivious to the family shattering around him. Sometimes I wished I could be that chill.

At school, everyone acted normal, like my parents' split wasn't the most catastrophic event since sliced bread.

"You coming to baseball tryouts?" Jordan asked at lunch.

"Probably not." Dad had loved baseball. Played in college. Every summer, he'd dragged me to games, explaining strategy I pretended to care about. Now, the thought of stepping onto a diamond felt like betraying him.

That weekend, Mom drove me to the rec center for something called padel. "Your cousin Maya plays," she said. "It might be fun."

Fun was not on my schedule. Fun was pre-divorce.

But then I stepped onto the court, racquet in hand. The game was tennis meets squash, and when I slammed my first serve against the glass walls, something unlocked in my chest. Not baseball, not Dad's thing—MY thing.

By Sunday, I'd begged Mom to sign me up for lessons. I even ate the spinach without complaining.

"You seem... lighter," she said, noticing the difference.

I carried Finnegán's bowl to the window. The sun hit his orange scales and he flared his fins, maybe sensing the shift. The cable was still disconnected, Dad was still gone, but for the first time since the world ended, I didn't feel like I was drowning in the deep end anymore.