Goldfish & Lightning Strikes

The text message from Layla had been three words: *pool party tonight.* That was it. After six years of being basically inseparable, everything between us felt different since freshman year started. Layla had joined the cool crowd, and I was still the girl who brought a **goldfish** named Nacho to school for show-and-tell in seventh grade.

I stood at the edge of the **pool**, clutching a red solo cup like it was a lifeline. The water reflected flickering patio lights, turning the backyard into something magical and terrifying. My crush, Caleb, was by the deep end, laughing at something Layla said. Of course. Layla, with her perfect hair and her new vocabulary words like "aesthetic" and "valid."

"Hey, you coming in?" Caleb waved me over.

I panicked. In that moment of sheer desperation to seem chill, I grabbed a handful of what I thought was party mix from a bowl. Only later would I discover it was some kind of fancy **spinach** artichoke dip that immediately got stuck in my front teeth.

I spent the next twenty minutes doing that universal teen move—smiling with my lips pressed together while doing casual tongue gymnastics to dislodge the green disaster. Caleb finally noticed. "You got something—" he started, but I cut him off with a too-loud laugh and sank into the pool.

Then came the **lightning**.

Not real weather—the sky was perfectly clear. But Layla's phone lit up, and suddenly she was across the yard, FaceTiming someone else, leaving me floating alone while Caleb got dragged into a volleyball game. In that moment, watching my supposed best **friend** literally turn her back on me, something clicked.

I climbed out of the pool, spinach still trapped in my teeth like some green badge of insecurity. Layla caught my eye and gave me this tiny, almost guilty wave. I waved back, but I was already mentally packing up Nacho's memory and everything else.

"You leaving?" Caleb asked as I reached the gate.

"Yeah," I said, actually smiling now. "Think I'm gonna start being friends with people who don't need a crowd to be real."

The spinach was still there. Whatever. Real friends don't let you swim with spinach in your teeth alone.