Goldfish at the End of the World

The pool water glowed that fake electric blue that only exists at teenage house parties, the kind where everyone stands around holding red cups they're too young to legally fill. Maya pressed her back against the rough stucco wall, feeling like a zombie going through the motions of being alive.

Three weeks ago, her goldfish—won freshman year at some carnival where the guy operating the duck pond booth had smiled at her—had gone belly up. She'd buried it in a Tupperware container under the rosebushes. That same week, her friend group had started quietly making plans without her. Small things. Study groups she wasn't invited to. Inside jokes that landed while she stood there smiling like she understood.

"You okay?"

Cal. He'd moved here sophomore year, still wore those same beat-up Vans, somehow made the whole school thing look effortless. He sat beside her, not too close, not too far.

"Just thinking about my goldfish," she said, then immediately wanted to die. Who said that at a party?

But Cal didn't laugh. "My dog ate my hamster once. I found it in pieces. Worst day of my life, honestly."

"That's terrible," she said, and then they were both laughing, this ugly snort-laugh that made her nose sting.

"You know what's worse?" he said. "My parents canceled cable because they found out I was watching zombie movies until 3 AM on school nights. Now I have to actually—I don't know—experience things?"

Maya looked at him, really looked. The water reflected across his face in shifting blue patterns. Everyone else at this party was performing—laughing too loud, leaning in too close, posting stories that would disappear in twenty-four hours but felt like they needed to last forever.

"Experience things?" she said. "Like what?"

"Like this." He gestured at nothing and everything. "Sitting against a wall with someone who gets that sometimes the saddest thing in the world is a dead fish."

Somewhere inside, something small and gold-finned swam back to life.

"Yeah," Maya said. "Like this."

The party kept going around them, but they stayed there by the water, two zombies who'd somehow found each other in the dark.