Green Leaves at the Bottom

The apartment complex pool hadn't been cleaned in weeks. Green algae slicked the surface like spoiled milk, and at the bottom, leaves had settled into their own grave—some of them spinach, blown in from someone's neglected garden. Elena sat on the edge, her bare feet in the murky water, waiting for Sarah.

They hadn't spoken since the pyramid scheme collapsed eighteen months ago. Sarah had convinced Elena to invest their savings—twenty-five thousand dollars, half of everything they'd saved for the life they were supposed to build together. Not romantically, but as friends, as soul-siblings who'd met in college and promised to take on the world side by side.

Now Sarah wanted to meet.

Elena adjusted her sun hat, its wide brim casting a shadow over eyes that had seen too many sleepless nights. The money was gone. The pyramid had crumbled from the top down, and by the time they realized it, Sarah had already convinced herself it was just bad timing. Elena knew it was betrayal dressed as ambition.

The gate clanged. Sarah appeared, thinner than Elena remembered, holding a Tupperware container. She sat beside Elena without speaking, dipping her fingers into the pool water.

"I made that spinach artichoke dip you love," Sarah said, setting the container between them.

Elena laughed, bitter and sharp. "You think spinach dip fixes twenty-five thousand dollars?"

"I don't think anything fixes it." Sarah's voice cracked. "But I found out yesterday—I'm pregnant."

The silence stretched between them, heavy as water.

"I'm not keeping it," Sarah continued. "I can't afford to. Not after everything."

Elena looked at her friend—really looked at her. The same friend who'd held her hair back when she was sick freshman year. The same friend who'd flown across the country when Elena's mother died. The same friend who'd convinced her that the pyramid scheme was their ticket to freedom, their chance to finally stop scraping by.

She took off her hat and set it on Sarah's head.

"You look ridiculous," Elena said.

Sarah smiled, tremulous. "I feel ridiculous."

"That's the dip talking," Elena said, opening the container. "It's terrible, by the way. You never could cook."

They sat there until sunset, eating cold spinach dip with their fingers, feet dangling in a dirty pool, neither one mentioning the money or the baby or the pyramid that had broken them. Some wounds don't heal—they just learn to exist alongside everything else.