Goldfish Memory at the Fair

Maya stood in front of the mirror, fixing her crop top for the third time. Her first fair without her parents hovering, and she was lowkey freaking out.

"You look fine, Maya. You always look fine." Her best friend Leo leaned against her doorframe, scrolling through TikTok. "Riley's gonna be there. This is your moment."

Riley. The Riley. The one who'd smiled at her in algebra yesterday.

At the fair, the air smelled like funnel cake and desperation. Maya and Leo walked past the carnival games, where some dude with a backwards cap was trying way too hard to impress his friends.

"I bet you can't hit the bull's eye," one of his friends shouted, pointing at the dart game target.

Maya rolled her eyes. Typical.

Then she saw him—Riley, standing by the goldfish pond. His rusty-colored hair caught the sunset, and Maya felt her stomach do that annoying flip thing.

"Go talk to him," Leo pushed her lightly. "I'll be over by the food truck. You got this."

Maya's palms were literally sweating. She'd never had a real conversation with Riley that wasn't about quadratic equations. But Leo was right—she had to shoot her shot.

She started walking toward him, her heart pounding like crazy. But then suddenly, this massive dog came barreling through the crowd, knocking into her. Maya stumbled, her phone flying out of her hand and splashing into the goldfish pond.

"Nooo!" She scrambled to grab it, but it was already sunk to the bottom, lost among confused orange fish.

Riley was there instantly, laughing but not in a mean way. "That was legendary, honestly."

Maya wanted to die. "My phone. My life."

"I'll help you fish it out," Riley offered, rolling up his sleeves. "I'm good at rescuing things. Last week I pulled this fox out of a ditch behind my house. Little guy was stuck."

They spent the next twenty minutes fishing for her phone with a makeshift net made from a fair souvenir bag. By the time they finally retrieved it, Maya had forgotten to be nervous.

"So," Riley said as they walked back, "you doing anything tomorrow? Maybe something less catastrophic?"

Maya's face hurt from smiling. "Maybe."

From across the fairground, Leo gave her a thumbs-up. Sometimes the worst moments turned into the best ones. And maybe having goldfish-level memory wasn't so bad—forgetting the embarrassment, keeping only the good parts.