Goldfish in the Deep End

The pool party was supposed to be my social redemption arc. Instead, I was hiding behind a bush, clutching a plate of papaya chunks my mom insisted I bring because "nothing says welcome like tropical fruit."

I was seventeen. Nobody eats papaya at a pool party. They eat chips and suspicious hot dogs that have been sitting out for three hours.

Across the yard, I spotted it: The Bear. My childhood pool floatie—this giant, sun-bleated inflatable bear that my little sister had dragged out of storage and was now proudly bobbing in the deep end like some embarrassing mascot of my eternal lameness. Jordan, the guy I'd been lowkey obsessing over since September, was already in the pool, laughing with his friends. Every time he moved, the bear floatie drifted closer to him like a lonely planet getting pulled into orbit.

"You gonna stand there all night?"

I jumped. It was Leo, Jordan's cousin, wearing these ridiculous orange swim trunks that matched the sunset. He held up a net full of something squirming.

"Carnival goldfish," he explained. "My sister won, like, twelve of them. My mom said we can't keep them. We're doing a ceremonial release in the pool."

"That's terrible for the ecosystem," I said, because that's what I do. I say things that make everything awkward.

Leo shrugged. "They're carnival goldfish, Maya. They're practically already dead. They're living on borrowed time. Kind of like..." He gestured at my papaya plate, at the bear floatie, at me hiding behind a bush. "...all of this."

Something in his voice made me look at him differently. Not as Jordan's cousin. Not as the guy in orange trunks. But as someone who got it. The weirdness. The in-between-ness. The feeling that you're always one wrong move away from social catastrophe.

"Want to help?" he asked.

I should have said no. Should have gone home, changed out of my swimsuit that felt too small, too revealing, too everything. But instead I grabbed a net.

We released those goldfish into the pool one by one—stupid, doomed, beautiful fish darting between legs and under the bear floatie. Jordan and his friends didn't even notice. They were too busy being Jordan and his friends. But Leo and I sat on the edge of the pool, feet in the water, watching orange flashes dart through the blue, and I didn't think once about the papaya growing warm in my hand or the bear floatie or any of it.

"Next party," Leo said, "bring something people actually want to eat."

"Like what?"

He grinned. "I don't know. But definitely not papaya."

I laughed. For the first time all night, I wasn't counting down the seconds until I could leave. The goldfish were probably going to die. The bear floatie was still embarrassing. But something had shifted. Something small and real and unexpectedly good.

Sometimes that's enough.