Goldfish Summer

The papaya sat on the paper plate like an alien artifact, its orange flesh glistening under the relentless July sun. I'd only agreed to come to Jessica's pool party because my mom said I needed to "get out there," whatever that meant. Now I was sixteen, standing in a corner of the deck while everyone else laughed in the **water**, their bodies sleek and confident as seals.

"Try it," Marcus said, appearing beside me with his signature crooked grin. The boy who'd sat behind me in bio since freshman year, who I'd spent three entire semesters pretending not to notice. "Unless you're scared."

"I'm not scared," I said, maybe too quickly. My **iPhone** buzzed in my pocket—a lifeline to somewhere else, anywhere else—but I ignored it.

The first bite was sweet, then weirdly musky, like someone had mixed honey with something earthy and wrong. My face must have done something traitorous because Marcus laughed, and not in the mean way the popular kids did. In the way that made me want to memorize the exact pitch of it.

"My **bull** of a grandpa grows these," he said. "Swears they're a superfood. Think he's just trying to get us to eat anything that isn't pizza."

"It's... interesting," I managed. "Like, interesting-bad or interesting-good?"

"Interesting-interesting," he said, and his shoulder brushed mine when he reached for his soda. A tiny contact that sent electricity through my entire nervous system.

Later, as the sun dipped toward the horizon and people started leaving, Marcus led me to the small pond in the backyard. Three **goldfish** darted between lily pads, their scales catching the last light like scattered coins.

"My little sister won them at the carnival last year," he said quietly. "Supposed to die in a week, you know? They're still here."

We sat there until the mosquitoes found us, talking about nothing and everything. He admitted he was failing algebra. I told him I secretly watched romance anime. When I finally checked my phone, there were seventeen texts from my best friend asking if I'd died.

*I think I just started living*, I typed back, then deleted it. Some things were too big to say out loud, even in a text.

The papaya aftertaste lingered all the way home—familiar and strange, like the moment when everything changes and you don't even realize it's happening until it already has.