Static and Goldfish

The thunder crackled like my mom's knuckles when she's mad.

"You invited WHO?" she'd asked when I told her Jordan was coming over. Jordan, who I'd been crushing on since seventh grade. Jordan, who finally noticed me at lunch last Tuesday when my so-called friend decided to 'helpfully' announce that I'd written her initials on my history notebook. (I hadn't. Okay, maybe I had. Whatever.)

Now my whole room was staged. Fairy lights? Check. Playlist? curated. My cat, Mochi, was locked in the hallway so she wouldn't pull her usual move of knocking over everything precious in sight. And the goldfish — my little sister's, actually, named Mr. Glub because twelve-year-olds have zero creativity — was positioned on my desk like some kind of conversation starter. Because what says 'I'm chill and normal' like a fish in a bowl?

Then the sky decided to absolutely lose it.

Lightning flashed purple-white through my window, turning my room strobe-lit for half a second. The power flickered. My monitor went dark. The router's little green lights died.

"No, no, no," I whispered, grabbing my phone. No WiFi. The cable was dead.

Which meant no Netflix. No streaming. None of the plans I'd painstakingly outlined in my notes app like the overthinker I am.

A knock at the door. Jordan. Drenched hoodie. Messed-up hair. Looking stupidly good even though the rain had absolutely wrecked their vibe.

"Cable's out," I said instead of hello. Smooth.

Jordan laughed, shaking rain from their curls. "I saw the trucks down the street. Something about a transformer?"

"Transformer?" My voice squeaked. "Like, robots?"

"The electrical kind, dork." Jordan stepped inside, toeing off soggy Vans. "So what's the plan?"

We ended up on my floor, Mr. Glub bubbling away beside us, talking about everything and nothing for three hours while the storm raged outside. About how Jordan's parents were divorcing. About how I felt invisible most of the time. About my goldfish obsession (yes, I'd had five. They all died. It's fine.)

The cat scratched at the door, mournful and pathetic.

"Let her in," Jordan said.

I did. Mochi immediately went for Mr. Glub, and I had to tackle her before she turned my sister's pet into a snack. Jordan cracked up, helping me wrangle the cat, and somehow that clumsy moment — me on the floor in mismatched socks, Jordan laughing so hard they couldn't breathe — was better than any perfectly planned movie night.

The cable didn't come back until morning. But by then, Jordan had fallen asleep on my shoulder, and Mr. Glub was still alive, and maybe friendship wasn't as complicated as I'd made it out to be.

Sometimes the best moments happen when everything goes wrong. Lightning really does strike, I guess.