Goldfish Funeral at Stacy's Pool Party

My hand's already sweating before I even reach the gate. I wipe my **palm** on my jeans for the third time, heart hammering like I'm about to jump off a cliff instead of walking into Stacy Martinez's backyard pool party.

"You coming, Leo?" Maya asks, already three steps ahead. She's my oldest **friend**, which basically means we've known each other since kindergarten and haven't figured out how to drift apart yet.

"Yeah, just—"

Then it happens. Stacy's golden retriever, Buster, comes bounding out of nowhere and knocks into me. I go down hard, knees hitting the concrete, phone flying out of my pocket and landing with a splash—right in the shallow end of the pool.

Everyone stops. Someone giggles. I freeze.

But then Buster's nudging my hand with that wet **dog** nose of his, tail wagging like he just won the lottery, and I hear myself laugh. Actual laughter. The tension breaks, people are helping me up, asking if I'm okay, and suddenly I'm not the new kid anymore. I'm the kid who got taken out by a friendly dog.

The party's actually going okay until Maya grabs my arm. "Stacy's goldfish died. She's, like, devastated."

"What?" I stare at her. "We're at a pool party."

"Exactly. She wants a proper funeral. You're good at this stuff. You gave that eulogy for your grandma's cat."

"That was different. I knew Muffin."

"So? Just say something nice about the **goldfish**. His name was Captain Fin. He liked swimming. He lived. He died. He's in a better bowl now."

I end up standing by the pool's edge, holding a tiny cardboard box with twelve teenagers staring at me like I'm supposed to make sense of mortality for a fish they barely knew.

"Captain Fin was..." I pause, **swimming** in the absurdity of it all. "A fish who knew what he wanted. Food. And more food. And in that way, he was all of us."

Someone snorts. Stacy starts crying. I keep going.

"He taught us that life's short. Sometimes really, really short. And that it's okay to just float sometimes, you know? To let things carry you instead of always fighting the current."

By the end, half of them are crying. The other half is pretending not to. Even Buster looks solemn.

Later, Maya sits beside me on the pool deck, feet in the water. "You okay?"

"Yeah," I say, and it's weirdly true. "I think I am."

She bumps my shoulder with hers. "Good. Because you're speaking at my hamster's funeral next month."

I laugh, and for the first time, I don't feel like I'm faking it.