Lightning in a Bowl

My goldfish has a longer attention span than my ex-best friend.

I'm watching Neon float around his bowl while my phone buzzes with texts from everyone except Jordan. Three days of radio silence since the party, where she literally vanished mid-conversation to talk to some seniors from North High. Now my Insta is full of her looking aesthetic with people whose names I don't even know.

"She's not ghosting you," I tell Neon. "She's just... reallocating her social capital."

Neon bubbles at me. He gets it.

Coach is yelling something about "digging deep" at practice, but my head's not in the workout. I've been running varsity track since freshman year, and Jordan's been at every meet—until now. The 400-meter dash is basically my entire personality, and the one person who actually cared about my splits is too busy being basic for the popular crowd.

The sky turns that weird greenish color as I stretch at the starting line. Coach checks his phone, frowning at the weather radar.

"One more heat, then we're dipping!"

I'm in lane four, staring down the track. The gun goes off and I'm running, legs pumping, everything a blur. I'm thinking about Jordan and the way she looked at me like I was embarrassing her last week when I got excited about the new Percy Jackson series. Like being yourself is suddenly cringe when you're trying to impress people who don't actually care about you.

Then it hits—literally. Lightning strikes somewhere close, the sound cracking like the sky itself is breaking. The hair on my arms stands up. Everyone freezes. And in that split second of absolute stillness, I realize something:

Jordan didn't leave me behind. She left herself behind.

I slow to a walk as rain starts coming down, thick and warm. My teammates are scrambling for cover, but I'm just standing there, getting soaked, laughing because I finally get it. I'm not losing a friend—I'm outgrowing a version of myself that Jordan decided she didn't want to be anymore.

Neon's gonna love this character development.

"At least one of us knows who we are," I tell him later, feeding him his flakes. "Even if your memory resets every three seconds."

He eats like nothing happened. Sometimes that's the only way to move forward anyway—just keep swimming, even if you don't remember where you started.