Goldfish Summer

The pool party was everything Maya dreaded. Jenna's Instagram stories had been hyping it for weeks—**iphone** glowing in Maya's face every time she opened the app, promises of the Best Night Ever, the whole squad would be there. But Maya wasn't really part of the squad anymore. Not since the Incident with Tyler, which nobody talked about but everyone definitely remembered.

She stood by the **pool** in her one-piece from Target while the other girls floated in bikinis that cost more than Maya's entire wardrobe. Somewhere inside, someone was playing the same five songs that had been playing at every party since seventh grade. Maya gripped her phone like a lifeline, thumb hovering over an Uber ride home that would cost twenty dollars she didn't have.

Then Jenna's cousin Leo appeared beside her, holding a plastic bag with water.

"You win this?" she asked, gesturing to the **goldfish** swimming frantically in circles.

"Yeah," Leo said. "Carnival game. My mom's gonna kill me."

They stood there awkwardly until the first rumble of thunder made everyone freeze. Before anyone could process it, the sky opened up. Rain poured down in sheets while **lightning** flashed so bright the whole backyard turned strobe-lit white. Girls screamed, guys scrambled, and suddenly Maya was huddled under the gazebo with Leo, both of them soaked, watching his goldfish bag get refilled by the storm.

"This fish is having a worse night than me," Leo said. Maya laughed before she could stop herself.

The power went out. No music, no pool lights, just lightning illuminating flashes of chaos—Jenna screaming about her hair, Tyler looking ridiculous trying to carry three towels at once, the absolute mess of everyone trying to act cool while totally not being cool.

"You know what?" Maya said. "I'm kind of glad I came."

Leo looked at her, really looked at her, for the first time all night. "Yeah. Me too."

They spent the rest of the storm talking about everything and nothing—why Leo had moved to town, why Maya had stopped sitting with their group at lunch, how goldfish were supposedly low-maintenance pets but were actually pretty high-stress if you thought about it.

When the rain stopped and power came back, the party kept going like nothing had happened. But something had shifted. Maya walked home with Leo's number in her phone and the realization that sometimes the best things happen when you stop planning everything and just let yourself get caught in the storm.