Goldfish in the Thunder

The summer before sophomore year, I learned that embarrassing yourself in front of your crush is basically a rite of passage. Like, you can't enter tenth grade without at least one moment that makes you want to dissolve into the atmosphere.

I was at Tyler's pool party—standing awkwardly by the snack table, nursing a flat soda when my mom's voice echoed through my brain: "Did you take your vitamin?" She'd made me promise before I left, something about immune systems and summer colds. I'd literally swallowed it with water in front of her, but the memory made me grimace anyway.

Then Tyler's golden retriever, Buster, came charging out of nowhere, wet from swimming, shaking himself like a malfunctioning sprinkler. I scrambled backward—directly into the table where Mason (THE Mason, who I'd been lowkey obsessed with since seventh grade) was standing.

"Whoa, you good?" Mason asked, steadying me.

"Yeah, just—"

That's when I saw it. Mason's prize-winning carnival goldfish, which apparently Tyler's family was petsitting, had been in a bowl on that same table. The collision sent it flying.

Slow motion. I swear.

I watched the goldfish arc through the air—its orange scales catching the late afternoon light like it was auditioning for a nature documentary—before landing with a pathetic *plop* on the concrete patio.

Everyone stared. The music kept playing like nothing happened, which somehow made it worse.

"My fish," Mason whispered, horrified.

I dropped to my knees, cupping my hands around it. It flopped frantically against my palms, gills opening and closing like it was gasping for its last breath. Behind me, someone giggled.

Then—LIGHTNING. Actual forked lightning split the sky, followed by thunder so loud it vibrated in my chest. The sky opened up, rain pouring down like someone overturned a massive bucket.

"Perfect," I muttered, scrambling toward the pool with the goldfish still cupped in my hands. "Just perfect."

I slid it into the pool, watching it dart away into the chlorinated water. Who knows if carnival goldfish can survive in pools? I definitely didn't.

Mason appeared beside me, soaked from the sudden downpour. "That was..." He shook his head, rain dripping from his hair. "That was actually pretty heroic."

"Heroic?" I laughed bitterly. "I literally almost murdered your fish."

"But you saved it." He smiled—and for real, his smile was better than any filtered Instagram post I'd ever spent way too long analyzing. "Most people would've just let it flop."

The party moved inside. I spent the rest of the evening on the couch with Mason, both of us damp and slightly sunburned, watching his goldfish navigate its new territory. We talked about everything—school, his band, why I'd taken that vitamin so seriously.

Maybe humiliating yourself isn't the worst thing. Sometimes it's exactly what you need to finally start talking to the person you've been too scared to approach since seventh grade.

And maybe, just maybe, that goldfish was having its own glow-up, living its best life in a backyard pool, thankful for the storm that changed everything.