Poolside Confidence Game

The goldfish had been living in my closet for three weeks. Steve from biology gave it to me as a "going away present" even though I wasn't going anywhere, and now I was stuck with a fish I couldn't name and parents who didn't know I had it.

"You coming to Jordan's pool party?" Marcus asked, spinning his baseball between his fingers like he always did when he was nervous about something. Which was weird, because Marcus was never nervous about anything. That's why everyone liked him.

I shrugged, trying to play it cool. "Probably. Why?"

"No reason. Just that Riley's gonna be there."

Riley. The girl who'd sat behind me in English since September and whose laugh I had memorized like it was song lyrics.

The pool party was exactly what you'd expect from Jordan's house - too many people, too much noise, everyone pretending to be having the best time ever. I ended up in the shallow end, holding a red solo cup and watching Marcus do cannonballs off the diving board.

Then Riley climbed out of the pool, water dripping from her hair, and my brain went into emergency shutdown mode. She walked over and said something about how Jordan's little sister had named all the fish in the pond behind the house.

"There's like, twenty goldfish out there," she said. "They all have breakfast food names. Pancake, Waffle, Bacon. It's kinda cute but also kinda weird, right?"

"Yeah, totally weird," I managed, while internally screaming.

She looked at me, actually looked at me, and asked what my deal was. Why I was always so quiet in English, why I never really hung out with anyone besides Marcus.

"I don't know," I said. "Maybe I'm just running out of things to say."

"Or maybe you're just overthinking everything," she said, and I swear time stopped. "Not everything needs to be a whole production, you know?"

Later that night, lying in bed with the closet door slightly cracked so Fishenstein could get some air, I realized something. Maybe confidence wasn't about being the person who made speeches or did perfect cannonballs. Maybe it was just about showing up and saying actual words to actual people, even if those words came out wrong.

I fell asleep planning exactly what I'd say to Riley on Monday. Nothing fancy. Just something real.