Orange Hair and Goldfish Riddles

The orange hair dye had been Maya's rebellion against her mother's "natural is beautiful" speech. Now, standing in front of Pet Paradise with her bright copper curls frizzing in the humidity, she kind of regretted it. Kind of.

"You look like a traffic cone that learned to angst," said Leo, leaning against the store entrance with his work apron already stained.

"Shut up, Leo. At least I didn't get caught swimming in the school fountain at midnight."

"It was a PHASE, Maya."

Maya's first day at Pet Paradise was mostly cleaning fish tanks and avoiding eye contact with customers. That's when she noticed him—the sphinx of the store, some older guy who sat by the tropical fish display like he was guarding ancient wisdom. He never spoke, just watched with these intense amber eyes that made Maya feel like she should answer some riddle to pass.

By week three, Maya had named all the goldfish in the prize tank. There was Bubbles, Captain Fin, and the little one she secretly called Swimmer because it kept circling the bowl like it was training for something.

"You're talking to them again," Leo said, dropping fish food into a tank. "It's weird."

"They're better listeners than most people at our school."

"Ouch. Was that about Jordan?"

"Jordan who?"

"Jordan who ghosted you after homecoming?"

"I don't know what you're talking about."

The sphinx finally spoke on a rainy Tuesday. Maya was dramatically cleaning the goldfish tank, pretending she was in a music video.

"The small one's going to die first."

Maya nearly dropped the net. "WHAT? No!"

The sphinx shrugged. "Smallest fish, smallest chance. That's how it works."

"That's depressing."

"That's life."

"You're awful."

"I'm realistic."

Maya started spending her breaks sitting with the sphinx, whose name turned out to be Kieran. He was twenty-one, worked there to pay for community college, and had zero patience for Maya's teenage drama except somehow he had ALL the patience for it.

"Jordan posted pics with Taylor," Maya complained, stabbing at her salad. "At THE SAME boba place we went to."

"So?"

"So it's disrespectful! It's been THREE WEEKS, Kieran."

"Maya. You're sixteen. You dyed your hair orange because you were 'feeling chaotic.' You'll get over this."

"You don't understand anything."

"I understand that Swimmer's not looking great."

Maya rushed to the goldfish tank. Swimmer was floating sideways at the top.

"DO SOMETHING!" she screamed.

Kieran was already there, gently transferring the small goldfish to a separate bowl with special water treatment. "Sometimes you just need to isolate to heal."

They stayed late that night, both of them sitting on the floor watching Swimmer's bowl. Kieran ordered pizza. Maya told him about her parents' divorce, her anxiety about junior year, how she felt like she was constantly swimming upstream but never actually getting anywhere.

"That's deep," Kieran said, with actual zero sarcasm for once.

"Shut up."

"No, seriously. That's really real."

Swimmer survived. But more importantly, Maya stopped checking Jordan's social media. When she caught her reflection in the fish tanks one afternoon, she didn't see a traffic cone anymore. She saw herself—orange hair and all—and it was fine.

"You know," Kieran said, as she locked up that Friday, "you remind me of someone."

"Who?"

"Me. At sixteen. Angry at everything, scared of everything, pretending neither of those things were true."

"I'm NOT scared."

Kieran just smiled. "Whatever you say, little sphinx."

Maya flipped him off, but she was smiling too.