Goldfish in the Burning Dark

Maya ran through the storm, the plastic bag sloshing against her thigh. Inside, the goldfish—Caroline's goldfish, now hers—swam in furious circles, oblivious to the funeral it had escaped. The hat, Caroline's favorite straw thing with the ridiculous velvet ribbon, kept flying off Maya's head. She'd snatch it back, drenched, refusing to let it go.

They'd promised each other at twenty-two: if one died first, the other would take care of everything. The goldfish. The plants. The unfinished manuscript. Caroline had died at thirty-four, and Maya had spent three years avoiding that apartment, avoiding the guilt of being the one who lived, the one who kept running when Caroline got sick.

The truth was uglier than survival. Maya had stopped being Caroline's friend the year before the diagnosis. She'd fallen in love with Caroline's husband—quietly, desperately, certain it was unrequited until the night she found herself in his kitchen, both of them drunk on grief and exhaustion, his hands on her waist. They'd never spoken of it again. She'd faded from Caroline's life like a bruise.

Lightning cracked the sky open, illuminating the hospital entrance where she'd last seen Caroline alive, pale against the pillows, whispering take care of him. Maya had assumed she meant the husband.

She'd found the letter yesterday, tucked inside a copy of The Bell Jar: take care of HIM. The goldfish, named HIM for reasons Caroline had never explained, a joke about her ex-boyfriend or perhaps existential dread about male insignificance.

The goldfish darted through its tiny kingdom, three seconds of memory at a time. Maya envied it. She'd give anything for three-second memory instead of this: the weight of secrets, the way Caroline's husband looked at her now with haunted hunger, the hat pressing wet against her skull like a crown of thorns.

She reached the river, the water churning below. Thunder rattled her chest. The goldfish surged toward the bag's surface, mouth opening, closing.

"I'm sorry," she whispered, and tipped the bag into the dark water.