Goldfish in the Window

Maya pressed her forehead against the **cable**-spun window of the campus coffee shop, watching him. Him. The guy with the art history notebook and the signature coffee order—oat milk latte, extra foam.

She wasn't a **spy**, technically. Spies got paid. Spies had cool gadgets. Spies didn't spend their free period memorizing the way someone's hair fell across their forehead when they laughed at their phone.

But here she was, three weeks deep in an accidental stakeout.

"You're doing it again," her best friend Priya said, sliding into the booth beside her. "The creepy staring thing. It's giving main character energy, but, like, not in a good way."

Maya jumped, nearly knocking over her untouched matcha. "I wasn't staring. I was observing. There's a difference."

"You've been observing him since September. At some point it stops being observational and starts being actionable." Priya pulled out her phone. "Talk to him, or I'm sliding into his DMs myself."

"You wouldn't."

"Try me."

The problem was, Maya felt like a **goldfish** in a too-small bowl—going in circles, forgetting why she'd started something, constantly knocking her nose against glass. Everyone else at Northwood High seemed to have this whole being-a-teenager thing figured out. They knew how to talk to crushes without sounding like they'd swallowed a thesaurus. They knew how to dress like they hadn't gotten dressed in five minutes before running out the door.

She knew none of these things.

Then he looked up.

His eyes met hers across the café, and Maya's heart did that embarrassing thing where it forgot how to heart properly. She froze—goldfish syndrome in full effect—while he gathered his things and started walking toward her table.

No. Nope. Absolutely not.

She was **running**. Not literally—though that would have been on brand. Emotionally. She was definitely emotionally booking it out of there.

But her legs stayed put.

"Hey," he said, stopping at their booth. "You're in my art history class, right? The one with Mr. Henderson?"

Maya made a sound that might have been "yes" if words were still something she could do.

"Cool." He smiled, and it was better than the latte foam. "I'm Liam. I noticed you always sit by the window. Nice view?"

The cable-knit sweater she was wearing suddenly felt too warm. "The light's better for studying," she managed, which was a lie. She sat there because of him.

"Right. Same." Liam gestured toward the empty seat across from her. "Mind if I join? This table's got better outlets, and my laptop's basically on life support."

She nodded.

As he sat down, Maya thought: maybe goldfish weren't just going in circles. Maybe they were just preparing for something bigger. Maybe eventually, they'd get a bigger bowl.

Or maybe, just maybe, they'd figure out how to jump.