Goldfish Lessons at Midnight

Maya stared at her reflection in the bathroom mirror, her frizzy **hair** defying the $45 curl cream she'd begged her mom to buy. Three hours before Jordan's party, and she looked like she'd stuck her finger in an electrical socket.

"You're overthinking it," her best friend Priya texted. "Just come through. Everyone's gonna be there."

Maya's stomach did that thing where it felt like she'd swallowed a **water** bottle whole. Being the new girl at Northwood High was exhausting enough without Jordan's legendary parties, where social hierarchies got rewritten in real-time.

She downed three **vitamin** gummies — biotin, collagen, whatever the TikTok wellness influencers swore by for effortless glow. Because obviously a couple of gummies would fix three months of feeling like the world's most awkward human.

"MAYA." Her little brother Leo burst in. "**Goldfish** isn't moving. AGAIN."

Maya groaned. Their mom had brought home another replacement goldfish after the last one's funeral, which Leo had conducted with disturbing enthusiasm.

"He's probably sleeping, Leo. Fish do that."

"He's FLOATING. At the TOP."

Sure enough, Goldfish II was doing the backfloat at the water's surface, definitely not sleeping. Maya sighed, calculating exactly how long she could fake grief before escaping to Jordan's.

But Leo's face crumbled. "It's because I forgot to feed him yesterday, isn't it? I KILLED it."

Something in Maya's chest twisted. She remembered being twelve, accidentally killing her succulent because she'd overwatered it, crying for two hours straight because it felt like proof she couldn't handle anything.

"Leo, listen." She knelt beside him. "Fish do this thing sometimes. It's not you. We'll get another one. A better one. A fish that knows how to not die."

He looked up with wet eyes. "You promise?"

"Promise. But we're doing the funeral RIGHT NOW so I can still go to this party. Deal?"

"Deal."

They conducted Goldfish II's send-off with maximum drama — toilet paper coffin, eulogy about how he'd been a good swimmer, the works. By the time Maya got to Jordan's, she was forty-five minutes late, hair still frizzy, no time for makeup.

She walked in, bracing herself for the judgment, the whispers about the new girl.

"YOUNG!

"Where have you BEEN?"

"Who's that?"

Maya froze. But then Jordan himself appeared with a red solo cup. "You made it. Sorry about the goldfish, man. That's rough."

Wait, how did he—?

Priya mouthed: I told them.

And suddenly Maya was being pulled into conversation after conversation, nobody caring that her hair was doing its own thing or that she'd arrived late with fish funeral residue on her Converse.

At 2 AM, walking home with Priya, Maya realized something: none of it mattered. Not the $45 cream. Not the biotin vitamins. Not showing up "fashionably" late with perfect hair and curated Instagram-ready vibes.

She splashed her face with cold **water** before bed, **hair** wild, no makeup, and thought about Goldfish II's brief, meaningful life. Sometimes you had to let things float to the surface before you could really see them.

Including yourself.