Goldfish & The Great Escape

I hyperventilated in Tyler's bathroom, clutching a plastic bag like my life depended on it. Inside swam Goldfish—I'd named him that because I'm creative like that—a prize from the carnival I'd dragged my little sister to earlier. The music thumped through the door like my heart, and in the mirror, I caught sight of myself: an orange shirt I'd let my mom pick out because sometimes you're just too tired to fight back. I looked like a traffic cone. A nervous, sweaty-palmed traffic cone holding a fish.

Freshman year was supposed to be different. New me, new vibes, maybe even actual friends who weren't just lab partners. Instead, I was hiding in a bathroom at my first real high school party, surrounded by people whose lives seemed so much easier than mine. Jordan was out there somewhere, probably being charming and effortless, while I was in here rehearsing conversation openers that made me cringe just thinking about them.

The door flew open and some girl burst in, crying. She froze when she saw me.

"Sorry, I—" she started, then actually looked at me. "Is that a fish?"

"His name is Goldfish," I said, because apparently my brain had stopped working entirely.

She stared at me, then started laughing through tears. "That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard."

"Yeah, well." I shrugged. "I won him at the carnival. My sister wanted him, but my parents said no pets, so now I'm stuck at this party with a fish I can't bring home and nowhere to put him."

"That's tragically pathetic," she said, but she was smiling now. "I'm Chloe, by the way. And I'm hiding because my ex is here with someone new, and I may have accidentally dumped water on his new girlfriend's shoes."

We sat on the edge of the bathtub, passing Goldfish's bag back and forth, trading disaster stories like they were trading cards. The bathroom became our fortress, our awkward, fish-scented sanctuary. For the first time all night, my palms weren't sweating, and the orange shirt didn't seem so catastrophic.

"We should liberate him," Chloe said suddenly, staring at Goldfish. "Like, metaphorically. We're both stuck being people we're not. Let's just... go be the weird ones with a fish."

So we walked out together—me in my orange shirt, her with mascara-streaked cheeks, Goldfish between us like a tiny, finned rebellion. Someone pointed. Someone laughed. But Chloe just linked her arm through mine and said, "What, you've never seen someone bring their emotional support fish to a party before?"

And somehow, that was the moment I stopped trying so hard. Some friends find you in the cool moments. Others find you in a bathroom, hiding from the world, with a carnival goldfish and nowhere left to hide.