Goldfish & The Game

My therapist says I should picture the social hierarchy like a pyramid, but honestly? It feels more like Jenga — one wrong move and the whole thing collapses. Which is exactly how I ended up standing on a padel court at 7 AM, clutching a racquet like it might save me from social extinction.

"You're up, Maya," called Tyler, the junior varsity captain who I'd been crushing on since September. I adjusted my glasses and tried to look like someone who definitely knew what padel was. (Spoiler: I didn't. It's like tennis met squash and had a weirdly adorable baby.)

The night before, I'd spent forty-five minutes explaining my anxiety to my goldfish, Barnaby. He's a good listener. Mostly because he has a seven-second memory and therefore can't judge me for the same thought looping through my head on repeat: *What if I humiliate myself? What if I miss every ball? What if Tyler thinks I'm a loser?*

But then something weird happened. I actually hit the ball back. And then again. Tyler grinned, and I felt something shift — not in the pyramid, but in me.

"Dude, where'd you learn to play like that?" asked Sarah, who I'd mentally categorized as Way Out Of My League.

"YouTube," I lied, because the truth — *Barnaby listened to me practice swing motions in my bedroom at midnight* — felt too pathetic to admit.

By the end of practice, I wasn't Maya the Invisible Girl anymore. I was Maya Who Could Actually Play. And yeah, maybe the social pyramid hadn't collapsed, but I'd found a way to climb it without losing myself.

That night, I dropped an extra pellet into Barnaby's bowl. "Guess we're both expanding our world," I told him. He swam to the surface, mouth opening and closing like he was whispering back: *Seven seconds from now, neither of us will remember being scared.*