Operation Goldfish

I named him Barnaby. My pet goldfish, I mean. Not that anyone else knew he existed. In my house, if you didn't have a GPA above 3.5 or varsity letters, you were basically invisible. Kinda like Barnaby, swimming in endless circles in his bowl on my desk.

That's why I started spying on Ella. She was everything I wasn't—popular, confident, somehow able to pull off ripped jeans without looking try-hard. Every day during third period, when we were supposed to be watching a documentary in Mr. Harrison's class, I'd watch her instead. The way she doodled in her notebook. The way her friends gathered around her locker like she was gravity itself.

"You're being creepy," my best friend Jesse whispered one day, sliding into the seat beside me. "Again."

"I'm not being creepy. I'm doing... research."

"On what? How to be a stalker?"

I ignored him. Because today was different. Today, Ella had dropped something when she grabbed her books—a folded piece of paper that landed right near my foot.

My heart hammered against my ribs like a trapped bird. This was it. My chance. Operation Goldfish was finally happening.

I waited until the hallway cleared before picking it up. A sketch. A fox—sleek and clever, with eyes that seemed to know something you didn't. And underneath, in tiny letters: 'I see you too.'

The paper slipped from my fingers.

That afternoon, I found a note in my locker. 'Roof. After school. Bring the fish.'

Barnaby? In a portable bowl?

Ella was already there when I pushed open the door, sitting on the edge of the raised platform where seniors ate during nice weather. She didn't look surprised. She didn't look like the untouchable goddess from the hallway either. She looked tired.

"So," she said, swinging her legs. "You're the girl who's always watching me in Harrison's class."

"I—sorry."

"Don't be." She nodded toward Barnaby's bowl. "He looks lonely."

"He has great memory though. He remembers everything."

Ella smiled, and something in her face softened. "Yeah? Me too."

She wasn't a fox—sly and untouchable. She was just Ella, someone who remembered faces in the crowd the way I remembered how many times Barnaby had circled his plastic castle.

"Wanna know what I sketched in class?" she asked. "When you thought I wasn't paying attention?"

I nodded.

She pulled out her notebook. Page after page of sketches—of the back of my head. Of me, looking determined. Of me, looking scared.

"You're not a goldfish, Maya," she said quietly. "You're not invisible."

Barnaby swam to the front of his bowl, staring at us both with his unblinking gold eyes.

"Yeah, well," I managed, my voice barely there. "Neither are you."

The fox in her sketch seemed to wink, and for the first time since middle school started, I didn't feel like I was underwater anymore.