Goldfish at Midnight

The blue light from my phone made everything feel underwater anyway, which was fitting considering who I was talking to.

"You get it, right?" I whispered, leaning closer to the bowl. Bubbles—the most creative name my seven-year-old self could come up with for a goldfish—stared back with his permanent bug-eyed expression. "Being a literal zombie by third period?"

He blew a bubble. I took it as agreement.

Junior year had turned me into something undead. Wake up, school, practice, homework, collapse, repeat. My friends said I looked like I was walking through a horror movie, but honestly? The zombie thing was working for me. No emotions, just function.

Until my mom dropped the bomb.

"You need to cut it," she'd said that morning, pointing at my hair. "It's getting too long. You look tired."

I'd stared in the mirror. The dark waves fell past my shoulders, same as always. Same as every girl in my grade, actually. That was the problem.

Now it was midnight, Bubbles was swimming in slow, melancholy circles, and I was holding a pair of scissors I'd stolen from the bathroom.

"This is insane," I told the fish. "I'm going to look like a disaster."

Bubbles did a little flip.

"You're right. I already look like a disaster."

My phone buzzed. Group chat: *Zombie apocalypse tomorrow? Study sesh at Maya's?*

I typed back: *Can't. Busy.*

The scissors felt cold and serious in my hand. My hair was heavy with expectations, with the careful cultivation of an image that wasn't even mine anymore. The girl who played it safe, who got good grades, who smiled when she was supposed to.

The first snip was the hardest.

Then came the second. The third.

By 1 AM, my hair was choppy and uneven and barely brushing my chin. It looked terrible and bold and completely unlike the girl who'd sat in third period biology that day, barely conscious, a perfect zombie in a sea of them.

Bubbles swam to the front of his bowl and stared.

"Yeah," I said, running a hand through the jagged ends. "I feel different too."

My phone lit up again. Another text: *For real though, you okay?*

I smiled, really smiled, for the first time in months.

*Actually,* I typed back, *I think I'm finally waking up.*