Goldfish at the Deep End

I felt like a zombie at Tyler's pool party. Seriously. Dead inside. Walking mechanically toward the snack table while everyone else actually knew how to exist socially. My beanie was plastered to my forehead even though I was nowhere near the pool, because my nervous system had apparently forgotten how to human.

"Yo Marcus, you gonna swim or just stand there looking like you're contemplating existence?" That was Chloe, the girl I'd been lowkey crushing on since algebra. She was floating in the water, hair slicked back, looking effortless while I felt like a glitch in the simulation.

"I'm contemplating how I can exit without it being weird," I said, which was honestly the wrong thing to say because it immediately made it weird.

She laughed though. Not mean-laughed. The genuine kind that crinkled her eyes. "Come here. I need to show you something."

I hesitated. The water looked perfect, but I was still that kid who'd never learned to swim properly because my parents were always "too busy" with their careers to sign me up for lessons. Freshman year and I was still faking it.

But I waded in anyway because sometimes you have to do the thing even when your brain is screaming abort.

Chloe led me to the shallow end where the pool filter bubbled up weirdly. "Look."

There was a goldfish. An actual living goldfish, somehow surviving in the chlorinated water, orange scales shimmering like something that belonged in a different world entirely. It kept swimming toward the filter and getting pushed back, then trying again.

"That's literally my spirit animal," I said.

"Same. That's why I saved him from my cousin's carnival prize last week." She glanced at me. "He's stubborn. Keeps trying to swim upstream. Honestly? I respect the energy."

We sat there for twenty minutes while the party raged behind us, watching this goldfish refuse to give up on swimming nowhere. Something shifted in my chest—like maybe feeling like a zombie wasn't permanent. Maybe you could be dead inside and still find reasons to keep swimming toward nothing in particular.

"Hey," Chloe said, standing up and dripping everywhere. "You should come over tomorrow. We can attempt to teach him tricks. Spoiler: he'll ignore us completely."

"I'm there," I said, and meant it.

I walked out of that party with wet clothes, my hat finally off, and something that felt suspiciously like hope. Also a new friend who got it. The zombie was still there, honestly, but at least now I had company.