Goldfish at the Bottom of the Pyramid

I'd been running from the truth all semester, but the day my mom brought home that case of 'Revitalize+ Wellness Elixir,' I couldn't run anymore.

'It's a pyramid scheme, Mom,' I said, dropping my track bag on the kitchen floor. My legs still burned from practice, that good kind of fire I chased three hundred days a year. 'These things always collapse.'

She looked at me with those eyes that had seen everything—dad leaving, my GPA dropping, my spiral last spring. 'It's not a scheme, Maya. It's opportunity. Your aunt Lisa made three thousand dollars last month.'

I slumped to the floor, letting Spooky, my goldfish, swim in lonely circles in his bowl on the counter. He'd been my confidant since seventh grade, the only one who didn't ask why I wasn't happy, why I wasn't enough.

The worst part wasn't the pyramid scheme. It was the vitamins. Those little orange pills sat on the counter like accusations. Every morning with my oatmeal, my mom would place two in my palm.

'Take them,' she'd say. 'They're for focus.'

But they weren't for focus. They were for everything I wasn't. The girl who didn't quit track when her knee gave out. The girl who didn't cry in the bathroom during lunch because the popular table whispered when she walked by. The girl whose dad actually called back.

One Tuesday, I found myself running harder than usual, lungs burning, everything burning. I collapsed on the grass behind the bleachers, gulping air like I'd never breathe again. That's when Jordan found me. Jordan, with her perfect hair and her SAT tutoring and her life that seemed to unfold exactly according to plan.

'You okay?' she asked, sitting beside me in the dirt like it was normal.

'The usual,' I managed.

She pulled something from her pocket—those same orange vitamins. 'My mom sells them too.' She laughed. 'I've been flushing them down the toilet for months.'

I stared at her. 'But you're—'

'Perfect?' She shrugged. 'I mean, I guess that's the word. But I'm still running. Just like you.'

That night, I flushed the vitamins. I told my mom I wasn't taking them anymore, that I didn't need them to be enough. She cried a little, but she didn't argue.

Spooky swam in his bowl like nothing had changed. Some things didn't need changing.

The pyramid scheme collapsed two weeks later, just like I'd said. But for the first time, I wasn't running from anything. I was just running—toward something I couldn't see yet, but something that was mine.