Goldfish Summer

The first time I felt like a zombie, I'd stayed up until 4 AM watching Jordan's livestream. Three hours of him laughing with his new baseball team, making inside jokes I didn't understand. My eyes burned. My brain felt like it had been replaced with cotton balls.

"You look dead," my sister said the next morning, poking at my breakfast. "Your hair's a mess too."

I ran my fingers through it. Greasy, tangled. It was the same hair Jordan had always liked—long, the way he said it looked "witchy" in a good way. That was back when he'd called me his best friend. Back before we drifted into awkward silence and he found people who actually understood sports.

Something snapped. I grabbed the kitchen scissors.

"Whoa, what—" my sister started, but I was already cutting.

Chunks of hair fell onto the linoleum. Short, croppy, ugly. I kept going until it barely brushed my ears. When I looked up, my sister was staring.

"It looks... intentional?" she offered.

"It's a start," I said.

That afternoon, I found myself at the pet store. I don't know why. Maybe because I needed something alive that wouldn't leave. I bought a goldfish with fins like sunset clouds. Named it Phoenix.

Two weeks later, I was sitting on my bed, watching Phoenix swim in lazy circles, when my phone buzzed. Jordan.

"Hey," he said. "Haven't seen you. Everything cool?"

The irony made me laugh out loud. Him noticing NOW, after weeks of nothing, right as I'd started figuring out who I was without him.

"Yeah," I said. "Actually, everything's great."

It wasn't a lie. The zombie feeling had faded. My hair was growing out in ways I actually liked. And Phoenix? Phoenix was just a fish, but somehow, watching it figure out its tiny world made me feel like maybe I could figure out mine too.

"We should hang," Jordan said.

"Maybe," I said, and meant it. But not yet. First, I had some living to do.