Neon Hair and the Goldfish Prophet

Maya slammed her locker shut, the bang echoing through the empty hallway like a gunshot. Three days since Jason dumped her over text, and she'd been moving through life like a zombie — literally staggering to first period with dark circles under her eyes that rivaled her actual undead aesthetic.

Her mom's solution? A bottle of neon-orange vitamin gummies shaped like cartoon bears. "Take two, you'll feel better," she'd said that morning. Maya had popped four. Now she wasn't sure if the jittery feeling was heartbreak or an overdose of B12.

"Yo, Maya!" Keisha appeared at her elbow, eye-level with Maya's newest disaster. "What happened to your hair?"

Maya touched the blue-dyed chunk at her temple, still wet from the bathroom sink emergency session at 6 AM. "Impulse decision."

"It's... a look," Keisha said, which was basically code for 'you look like a mermaid that escaped from a toxic waste spill.'

Whatever. Jason hadn't appreciated her anyway. Last week he'd called her goldfish tank "boring" while they were supposed to be studying. Said watching Goldie swim in circles was making him dumber.

She found herself at the pet store after school, staring at a wall of plastic bags filled with fish. The clerk with the stretched earlobes and nametag that said "Zombie" — because apparently that was his actual nickname — watched her with mild concern.

"First fish?" he asked.

"Nah, replacement," Maya said. "The old one died of natural causes."

(Translation: her little brother fed it a whole canister of fish food last Tuesday. Goldie had gone out stuffed.)

"Take this one," Zombie said, tapping a bag. "Feisty little guy. He's been here three months, survived a filter malfunction and a cat invasion. This fish has main character energy."

Maya bought the fish. Named it Phoenix. Put it on her nightstand next to the vitamins she forgot to take and the photo of Jason she'd turned face-down.

Two weeks later, the blue in her hair had faded to a weird greenish tint, and she was sitting at Dutch Bros with Keisha, actually laughing at something dumb. Phoenix was alive, swimming aggressively in tiny circles like it owned that five-gallon tank.

"So," Keisha said, nursing her boba. "You're like, not a zombie anymore?"

Maya watched a couple fight about something stupid two tables over. The guy was wearing the same cologne Jason used to wear.

"I think," Maya said, stirring her drink, "I just needed to stop waiting for someone else to remember I existed."

Phoenix the fish did a little backflip. Maya's greenish-blue hair caught in the sunlight through the window.

"Also," she added, "I think those vitamins were expired. That might have been half the problem."