Lightning in a Fishbowl

I was basically the worst spy ever.

Friday night while everyone else was at Tyler's party, I'm perched on my windowsill like some extra in a coming-of-age movie, watching Sam's house across the street through binoculars I found in my garage. Literary, right?

My cat Luna decided this was the perfect moment to projectile-vomit a hairball onto my comforter.

"Seriously?" I hissed. Luna glared at me with that pure feline judgment cats have mastered. Like, excuse me for trying to figure out if Sam actually showed up to his own girlfriend's house or if she's being ghosted before homecoming.

Then it hit me—LITERALLY hit me. The realization, not lightning. Though that was coming too.

I'd been cyber-stalking Sam's posts for weeks, decoding his Spotify playlists like they were the Dead Sea Scrolls, analyzing his Instagram story timing like it held the secrets to the universe. And here I was, IRL spying like a creep, while my cat watched me fail at being a functional human being.

The goldfish situation didn't help.

My mom had brought home this carnival goldfish in a plastic bag two weeks ago, and I'd named it Mercury because it kept swimming in frantic little circles, unable to commit to a direction. Mercury and I were the same, really—trapped in these tiny bowls of our own anxiety, going nowhere fast.

"You're not a spy," I told the fish. "You're just dramatic."

Mercury ignored me, as it does.

Then the storm broke.

Lightning flashed so bright my whole room strobed like a broken TikTok filter, and for one crystal-clear second, I saw Sam walking up the driveway. WITH flowers. Like, actual flowers from an actual florist, not some gas station bouquet situation.

And then Chloe came running out, and she didn't look ghosted at all. She looked like she was about to cry happy tears, and they hugged, and I realized I'd spent three weeks obsessively cyber-spying on a relationship that was literally fine.

I put down the binoculars.

Luna jumped onto my lap and started purring, her whole body vibrating like she was laughing at me. Mercury did a particularly dramatic flip.

"Okay, message received," I said.

I closed the curtains. I'd go to Tyler's party next time. I'd talk to actual people. I'd stop treating everyone's lives like content I needed to consume and start living my own.

The lightning flashed again, closer this time, and I didn't jump. Some things, you can't spy your way into understanding. Some things, you just have to live through them.