Gutted Goldfish Summer

The papaya sat on my counter like an alien artifact, mocking my attempt at sophistication. I'd bought it because Tyler posted about them on his Instagram story—just a casual "this fruit is fire" caption that sent me to three different grocery stores.

"You're doing what again?" Maya leaned against my doorframe, eating actual normal food (chips).

"Tyler loves papaya," I said, attacking the fruit with a knife. "I'm going to bring him some tomorrow. It's gonna be our thing."

Maya snorted so hard she choked. "Brianna, you don't even like papaya. You said it tastes like 'wet gym sock.'"

"People change, Maya. Growth mindset." I gestured at my newly dyed hair—burgundy, because Tyler mentioned once that he liked girls with 'bold hair choices.' "Exhibit A."

"Exhibit B: your hair looks like a Kool-Aid accident." She paused. "Also, isn't this the same Tyler who called you 'Brianna-with-two-n's-like-the-spelling-error' for three years straight?"

"It was a joke. We have banter now." I finally got the papaya open. It smelled... complicated. "He texted me last night. Unprompted."

"To return your math homework?"

"That's still unprompted!"

The truth was, I didn't care if Tyler was kind of a tool. He was the first boy to look at me like I was worth noticing since seventh grade, when everyone still thought I was weird for carrying my backpack with both straps. This was supposed to be my glow-up era. New hair, new vibes, new boy who appreciated exotic fruit.

Then I noticed Bubbles wasn't swimming.

Bubbles—my carnival goldfish from last summer, the one survivor of five—was floating sideways at the top of his bowl. I dropped the papaya knife. It clattered against the counter, the sound too loud in the sudden quiet.

"Oh no," Maya said, suddenly behind me. "Bri, I'm sorry."

"He was fine yesterday," I said, but my voice cracked. "I literally just fed him yesterday."

We buried Bubbles in the backyard with a plastic spoon, my hair dye staining my forehead where I'd sweated through the afternoon heat. The papaya sat sliced on a plate, untouched, growing warm and weirdly sweet-smelling in the dusk.

"This is the worst day ever," I said, staring at the dirt mound where my fish was decomposing. "Changed my hair for nothing. About to bring fruit I hate to a boy who definitely won't care. Fish is dead. Summer's basically over."

Maya kicked at a dandelion. "You know what's weird?"

"Everything?"

"No, like—Bubbles lived for a whole year. That's actually kind of impressive for a carnival fish." She sat cross-legged in the grass. "My lasted, like, three days. You kept him alive through literally everything. That chemistry final, your parents' divorce, that time you dyed your hair blue and cried for two hours. He was a trooper."

I thought about that. Bubbles had been there through all of it, swimming in his corner of my room while I figured out how to be a person.

"We should toast him," Maya said suddenly. "With the papaya."

"It's disgusting."

"Exactly. He'd want us to suffer." She grabbed a slice and made a face. "For Bubbles. The longest-serving soldier in the War of Not Being Completely Embarrassing."

I took a slice. It tasted like grief and poor decision-making, sweet in a way that was almost cloying, wrong and perfect at the same time. We sat there until the mosquitoes came out, eating the terrible fruit while the burgundy dye ran down my neck in the humidity, talking about everything and nothing.

I didn't text Tyler that night. I didn't bring him papaya the next day. I washed the dye out of my hair and let it return to its regular brown, watching the swirls of red disappear down the drain—beautiful and temporary, like a lot of things.

Some glow-ups aren't about becoming someone else. Sometimes they're about realizing the version you already were—the one who keeps carnival fish alive for a year, who eats exotic fruit out of spite with her best friend in the backyard—was already worth noticing.