Goldfish at the End of the World

Leo felt like a **zombie**. Not the cool Netflix kind with dramatic makeup and tragic backstory, but the exhausted, I-got-four-hours-of-sleep-because-I-stayed-up-watching-tiktoks kind. Which, honestly, was worse.

"Dude, you good?" Marcus asked, slapping him on the back. Leo's body jerked forward, nearly sending his prized possession flying. The small plastic bag containing his sister's replacement **goldfish**—because he'd accidentally killed the first one while she was at sleepaway camp—swayed dangerously.

"Bro's literally vibrating," Jasmine added, examining her chips like they contained the secrets to the universe. "You good, Leo?"

He wasn't good. He was fifteen, he was at his first real party, and he was sweating through his favorite hoodie because he'd stupidly agreed to babysit a fish that Maya's college friends would definitely judge him for. The social hierarchy at school had already placed him somewhere near "person who exists," and showing up with a bagged fish wasn't helping.

Then Ryan—Maya's ridiculously chill older brother who somehow made eating organic food seem cool—materialized with a plate of fruit. "Yo, anyone want **papaya**? My mom went full farmers market today."

Leo had never had papaya. What if he hated it? What if his face did something weird? What if the goldfish chose that exact moment to die and everyone would know he'd failed at the one responsibility he'd been given?

"I'll try it," Leo heard himself say. Because apparently his mouth had decided tonight was the night to stop being a background character in his own life.

Ryan handed him a piece. Leo took a bite. It was—unexpected. Sweet but not too sweet, kind of musky, with a texture that made his brain do a little reset. His face definitely did something weird. But Ryan just laughed, not mean-laughed, and Marcus was too busy failing to convince Jasmine that papaya was "basically just nature's candy" to notice Leo's existential crisis.

The goldfish bag swayed again, and Leo carefully placed it on a nearby shelf. Somehow, the fish was still alive. Somehow, he was still standing here, eating tropical fruit with people who actually seemed to want him around.

The zombie feeling faded, replaced by something terrifying and wonderful: the possibility that maybe, just maybe, he was actually living.