Goldfish Memories

Maya's **goldfish** memory used to be a joke between her and Kai, but after the incident at the pool, nothing felt funny anymore. She kept replaying that Friday in her head—the **orange** sunset bleeding across the sky as she stood frozen at the edge of the diving board while everyone watched.

She'd been **running** from that moment for three weeks. Literally. Her mom's **cat**, Barnaby, would stare judgmentally from the windowsill as Maya laced up her sneakers at 6 AM every day, pounding the pavement until her lungs burned and the panic receded.

"You're ghosting everyone, dude," Lexa had texted. "Even Kai's asking about you."

Maya couldn't explain how her brain just ... glitched. How the pool deck had suddenly looked like the bottom of the ocean, how the water seemed to reach up and grab her ankles in a memory she couldn't quite access. It was mortifying.

Tonight though, Barnaby was having none of her avoidance tactics. The **cat** knocked over her water glass, then her phone, then sat directly on her chest and stared until she couldn't pretend to sleep anymore.

"Fine," Maya groaned, pushing him off. "I'll go to Jace's party. Happy?"

The party was loud and sticky and exactly what she needed. Jace's basement smelled like cheap body spray and desperation. Kai found her immediately, handing her a drink with that familiar crooked grin.

"Where you been, bro?" he asked, but not in an annoying way. The genuine way.

Maya looked around at everyone laughing, dancing, existing like it was easy. Like they weren't all carrying around goldfish brains full of things they couldn't remember and things they couldn't forget.

"Just ... dealing with stuff," she said, and Kai nodded like that made sense. Because maybe it did.

"Wanna **swim**?" Jace called from the back door, pointing to his above-ground pool. "Water's heated!"

Something shifted in Maya's chest. The panic was still there, but smaller now. Manageable.

"Yeah," she said, surprising herself. "Yeah, I do."

And when she slipped into that water, surrounded by friends who didn't need her to be fine, just to be there—she finally felt like she could remember again.