Goldfish Memorial

Bubbles the goldfish wasn't supposed to live four years. Definitely wasn't supposed to become a metaphor for whatever was happening between me and Chloe.

"He's barely moving," Chloe said, staring into the bowl on my dresser. She'd shown up with her backpack slung over one shoulder, wearing that oversized hoodie she stole from some junior last month. We used to steal hoodies from each other. Now she steals them from strangers.

"He's fine," I said, even though Bubbles had been doing this weird float-sink thing for three days. "Want a vitamin gummy?" I held out the bottle. The dinosaur-shaped ones that tasted like artificial grape and childhood.

Chloe made a face. "I'm vegan now."

Since when? Since when, since her Instagram went all aesthetic and she started hanging with the theater crowd? Since when she started speaking in lowercase texts and posting stories with cryptic song lyrics?

"Since when?" I asked anyway.

"Like, two weeks. My mom says I need more iron anyway." She checked her phone. "Also, Justin's having people over Friday. You should come."

Justin. The junior whose hoodie she was wearing. The one who'd somehow pulled her into this orbit where everyone was suddenly into wellness and appropriative spirituality and saying things were "vibes."

I looked at Bubbles, doing his little float-sink routine in water that definitely needed changing. We'd won him at the county fair the summer before eighth grade, back when Chloe and I were the kind of friends who did everything together. We'd named him Bubbles because neither of us could come up with anything better and we'd laughed until our stomachs hurt.

"I can't come Friday," I said. "I have to—" I didn't have anything. I just didn't want to go.

Chloe nodded like she expected it. "Okay. Well." She pushed her hair back, the way she did when she was uncomfortable. "Maybe we should... you know."

"What?"

"Flush him," she said, nodding at Bubbles. "It's time, Maya. It's been time."

Something in my chest tightened. Not just about the fish. "You want to flush our fish?"

"Our fish?" Chloe laughed, but it wasn't her real laugh. It was the new one she used around Justin and his friends. "Maye, we won him when we were twelve. We're not those people anymore."

I looked at her, really looked at her. The vegan thing, the new laugh, the hoodie. She wasn't wrong. We weren't those people. But I wasn't ready to be these new people either.

"I'll do it," I said. "After you leave."

Chloe stayed for ten more minutes, talking about Justin's party and her new skincare routine and how she was probably going to try out for the spring play. I nodded in all the right places.

After she left, I sat on my bed and watched Bubbles float-sink, float-sink. Then I went to the kitchen, got a small bowl, and carefully netted him out of the old water. I changed his tank completely, added the drops the pet store lady had sold us four years ago. I crushed one of my dinosaur vitamins into tiny pieces and sprinkled a fleck into the water, because maybe he needed iron too.

By morning, Bubbles was swimming normally again.

I texted Chloe a picture. He's fine, I wrote. Maybe we're not those people from seventh grade. Maybe we're not these new people either. Maybe we're both just float-sinking until we figure it out.

She left me on read. But that's okay. Bubbles is still swimming, and I still have the vitamins, and maybe friendship doesn't have to be all or nothing. Maybe sometimes it's just about keeping the water clean enough that something keeps swimming.