Goldfish & Midnight Foxes

The vitamin D supplements sat on my bathroom counter like a daily reminder that my mom thought I was 'literally never going outside.' She wasn't wrong. Between online school and my anxiety deciding everything was too much, I'd basically become a vampire.

But tonight was different. Tonight was Jake's pool party, and I was actually going.

My stomach did that awful fluttery thing as I stared in the mirror. Was I trying too hard? Was I not trying enough? The classic sixteen-year-old dilemma.

"You got this," I whispered to my reflection, then immediately cringed. Who talks to themselves like that?

I grabbed my bike and started running through the mental checklist of everything that could go wrong. What if nobody talked to me? What if I said something weird? What if Jake didn't even remember I existed?

Then I saw it—a fox, just chilling in someone's yard like it owned the place. It stared at me with these crazy intelligent eyes, then bolted into the bushes.

For some reason, that fox gave me weird confidence. Like, if this random fox could just show up and live its best life, maybe I could survive a pool party.

When I got there, Jake was already in the pool, splashing around with his friends like being social was just something that came naturally to some people. Meanwhile, I stood by the snack table feeling like a goldfish in a bowl—just watching everyone else live their lives while I hovered near the edge.

"Hey!" Jake called, swimming over to the side. "You made it!"

I nodded, probably looking totally chill on the outside while internally losing it. "Yeah. Sorry I'm late."

"No worries, you're perfect timing. We're about to play chicken. You want to be on my team?"

My brain short-circuited. Jake Hanson. Asking me to be on his team. For chicken. Which meant shoulder-touching proximity.

"Sure," I managed, trying to play it cool. "Let me just put my stuff down."

That night, I learned that sometimes the scariest things—like parties, or talking to crushes, or just showing up—aren't as terrible as our brains make them out to be. And maybe those vitamin D supplements were right about one thing: sometimes you just gotta get out there and let yourself live a little.