Pool Light

The baseball team's end-of-season pool party raged around me, but I couldn't stop checking my iPhone. Twelve notifications. All from the group chat where they were dissecting my dropped fly ball from earlier—basically the moment I officially became the reason we lost the championship.

"Yo, Marcus!" Carlos yelled, cannonballing into the deep end. "Stop doomscrolling and get in here!"

I forced a laugh. "Yeah, one sec."

My fingers hovered over the screen. Someone had posted a slow-mo video of me running toward the ball, arms outstretched, then stumbling as it bounced off my glove. The caption: *when u try but u also dont*. It had already racked up thirty-two reacts.

I slipped away from the noise, finding myself staring at the prize table from the carnival games. There, in a tiny plastic bag, swam a lone goldfish—the one I'd won earlier before the game even started. Its mouth opened and closed, opened and closed, like it was screaming in silence.

"You heading out?" Maya appeared beside me. She'd been watching from the edge of the pool all night, never getting in. Her phone stayed facedown on the table.

"Yeah," I said. "Just need some air."

"Want company?"

We ended up at the community pool down the street, which should've been closed but the fence was bent open. The water looked like liquid moonlight.

"I'm not actually on the team next year," I admitted, sitting on the edge. "My dad signed me up. I hate it."

Maya nodded. "I quit competitive swimming last month. My parents had my whole career mapped out since I was seven."

"So what now?"

"Now I do things I actually like." She stood up, pulled her hair into a messy bun. "Like swimming at night with no coach screaming splits. Coming?"

I jumped in.

The water was shock-cold, and for a second I was just weightless, no notifications, no expectations, no missed balls. Just me and the quiet and Maya laughing somewhere behind me.

We stayed until our fingers pruned, floating on our backs staring at the stars. My iPhone sat on the pool deck, dark and silent.

"You know," Maya said, "goldfish only grow to the size of their bowl. People say it's a myth, but it's actually true. They stop growing when they stop having space."

I thought about my room, my schedule, my life—all these bowls I'd been swimming in circles inside.

"Tomorrow," I said, "I'm telling them I'm quitting."

She grinned, splashing water in my face. "Finally expanding your bowl."