Goldfish Mirror

Maya's iPhone glowed at 2 AM, another Insta story from Taylor's party lighting up her screen like a judgment. Everyone looked so effortless, so golden, while she lay in bed with dried mascara tracks on her cheeks.

Her cat, Barnaby, head-butted her chin with zero chill — basically the only living creature who didn't make her feel like she was failing at existing. He purred like a tiny engine, completely unimpressed by follower counts or who was hooking up with whom.

"At least someone doesn't think I'm a loser," she whispered into his orange fur.

Tomorrow would be worse. Taylor had posted that group photo without her — again. The caption read "core four never change" but somehow the core kept shrinking. Maya had spent forty-five minutes dissecting it with her friend Chloe, screenshotting and overanalyzing like it was a homework assignment due at midnight. "Maybe they just posted it late," Chloe had said, but they both knew better.

Downstairs, the WiFi router blinked through its little death throes. The cable had been fraying for weeks, her dad kept "forgetting" to replace it, and tonight it finally gave up. Maya stared at the "NO INTERNET CONNECTION" message like it was a personal attack.

Her phone buzzed one last time — a text from Taylor. "did u see the pic? sorry we missed u it was chaos lol"

Maya's thumb hovered over the screen. She could respond, play it cool, pretend everything was fine. That's what she always did.

Barnaby chirped, batting at her hand.

Instead, Maya set the phone on her nightstand. She watched her goldfish, Cornelius, swim lazy circles in his bowl on her desk — just going round and round, never getting anywhere, but doing it with way more dignity than she'd managed all week.

She thought about how much energy she spent trying to be visible in all the right ways, while feeling completely invisible in the ways that actually mattered. How she was basically performing for an audience that kept leaving the theater.

The cable was dead. The feed was gone. For the first time in months, nobody could watch her not being invited, nobody could witness her failing at being teenagers correctly.

Maya curled around Barnaby, listening to him purr like he knew something she didn't.

"Screw it," she said into the darkness.

Her phone stayed dark. Barnaby kept purring. Cornelius kept swimming. Outside her window, the world kept demanding she perform, but for tonight, Maya was just a girl with a cat and a fish and a broken connection, finally okay with being exactly that.