Goldfish at Midnight

I felt like a zombie. Not the cool, dramatic kind from movies - more like the actual walking dead, stumbling through sophomore year with permanent bags under my eyes and three energy drinks in my system.

"You look rough," Maya said, sliding into the cafeteria booth next to me. She smelled like vanilla and chlorine from swim practice. "Rougher than usual, I mean."

"Thanks," I said, staring at my tray. "Been up since 3 AM. Could not sleep."

"Again?"

"Again."

The truth was, I'd been awake watching my cat, Binx, stalk invisible prey across my bedroom ceiling. Something about the way her pupils dilated in the darkness made me feel like I was missing something huge about the universe. Or maybe I was just overthinking everything because that's what you do when you're fifteen and the world feels both too small and too big simultaneously.

Friday night, Lucas's house. His parents were out of town (obviously - when are they ever in town?) and someone brought a zombie apocalypse movie that was so bad it looped back around to genius. We sat in his basement, twelve of us crammed onto mismatched furniture, passing around a Costco-sized bag of cheddar goldfish.

"These are disgusting," Chloe said, but she kept eating them. "Why do we always buy these?"

"Because they're culturally iconic, Chloe," Lucas said, and we all groaned because Lucas used words like "culturally iconic" unironically now.

I was wedged between Maya and this guy Tyler from physics, who I'd been lowkey obsessing over since September. His knee kept brushing against mine, and I was hyperaware of every point of contact, every accidental touch, like my nervous system had been recalibrated for maximum awkwardness.

"The cable's out," someone announced. "Again."

We watched static flicker across the screen for approximately three seconds before someone's phone produced a backup plan. But in that moment, something shifted.

"Let's go outside," Maya said.

It was midnight. Perfectly illegal, perfectly us. We spilled into Lucas's backyard, where the air was thick with summer and possibility. Tyler ended up next to me by the oak tree, our shoulders touching deliberately this time.

"I like your cat," he said, and it took me a second to realize he'd seen my Instagram story from 3 AM.

"Binx?" I laughed. "She's a philosopher. She stares at walls like they contain the secrets of the universe."

"Maybe they do."

We talked about everything and nothing while somewhere in the distance, a neighbor's cat screamed like a dying banshee. It wasn't romantic, not really. But it was something.

"I feel like a goldfish sometimes," I admitted. "Just swimming in circles, forgetting things every three seconds."

Tyler looked at me, really looked at me, like he was actually seeing me instead of just the version of me that existed in hallways and classrooms. "Maybe that's not so bad. Maybe you just notice things differently each time around."

We stood there until my phone died, until the zombie movie ended, until the rest of the group was back inside complaining about the cable company. And for the first time in months, I didn't feel like I was sleepwalking through my own life.

"Same time next week?" Tyler asked.

"Definitely," I said. "Same time."

Binx was waiting on my windowsill when I got home, judging me with golden eyes. I fed her the last of the goldfish from my pocket, feeling somewhere between dead and alive, somewhere between asleep and awake, somewhere exactly in the middle of becoming someone new.