Goldfish Boy

The goldfish blinked at me with its dead, glassy eye.

"You're still alive?" I whispered, sprinkling those weird flakes that smelled like regret. "My great aunt won you at a carnival in 2019. Please just let me be a normal teenager without a geriatric fish."

Bubbles the Third ignored me, swimming in slow, depressing circles. Like my social life.

I was technically starting sophomore year tomorrow, which meant I had exactly one night to reinvent myself. No more quiet kid who sat in the back. No more guy who brought a sandwich baggie of his mom's gummy **vitamin** C to parties because he "didn't want to get sick before finals."

(Direct quote. Ryan from chem had laughed for five minutes straight.)

I opened my phone. Three new Instagram stories from people who were definitely having more fun than me. Why was being sixteen so exhausting? Why did I have to figure out who I was while also figuring out trigonometry and whether Chloe from English actually smiled at me yesterday or if I was just reading into things because my emotional state was basically a house of cards built on hope and caffeine?

My backyard fence creaked.

I froze. My room was on the second floor, but my window faced the alley, and I'd left it open because Iowa humidity didn't understand personal space.

Something moved on the fence line. Orange-red, pointed ears, a tail that brushed against the wood like it owned the place.

A **fox**. In suburban Iowa. At 11:47 PM on a Tuesday.

We stared at each other. Its eyes were clever and ancient and completely unimpressed by my Spider-Man pajama pants.

"Hey," I said, soft.

The fox tilted its head. Like it was waiting for me to say something actually interesting.

"Tomorrow's my first day of sophomore year," I told it. "I'm supposed to be someone new. But I don't know who that is."

The fox's whiskers twitched. Then it did something completely unexpected—it hopped down from the fence and trotted toward my open window, pausing on the patio roof just outside.

Up close, it was breathtaking. Wild gold and copper fur, eyes like polished amber. It looked at Bubbles the Third's tank, then back at me.

"Yeah, I know," I said. "He's basically immortal."

The fox let out this weird little chuffing sound—like a laugh, almost.

Then it turned and melted back into the darkness, gone as quickly as it had appeared.

I sat there for a long time, my heart doing something complicated in my chest. The fox had been in my yard for maybe two minutes, but everything felt different. Wilder. Like the world was bigger than my school and my fish and my carefully curated anxiety.

My phone buzzed. Chloe from English.

*hey are u coming to jason's tomorrow*

My hands were shaking a little but I typed back:

*yeah actually see u there*

The fish did a little flip.

"Don't look at me like that," I said. "We're both evolving."