Summer of the Goldfish

The goldfish was named Splash, which was basic as hell, but I was twelve when I won him at the county fair and naming things wasn't exactly my strong suit. Five years later, this tiny orange fish was the only thing I could actually talk to about how much I was screwing up baseball.

"Another bad practice?" I'd ask his bowl, and he'd just float there like, *Bro, I can't even remember what happened three seconds ago.*

Coach Miller — everyone called him Bear, partly because he was built like a grizzly and partly because he'd hibernate in his office if we played like garbage — had benched me. Third time that month. My batting average was dipping below .200 and my pitching arm felt like it belonged to someone else. Someone who didn't know how to throw a strike.

"You're overthinking it," Bear grunted at me after practice, his cap pulled low over eyes that had seen too many seasons of disappointed kids. "Baseball's ninety percent mental. The other half's physical."

"That's, like, mathematically impossible," I said, because sometimes my mouth worked faster than my survival instinct.

He just stared at me. "Get out of here, Marcus. And fix whatever's going on in your head."

The problem was, I didn't know what was wrong. Everything felt off — my mechanics, my timing, my confidence. Even my phone was blowing up with texts from the group chat asking if I was coming to Jordan's party tonight. Jordan, whose perfect baseball swing and perfect hair and perfect everything made me want to scream.

My phone lit up again. **Jordan**: u coming brooo we need u for beer pong

I typed *can't* and backspaced. Typed *busy* and backspaced. Finally just sent a thumbs-up emoji because I was pathetic.

"You going tonight?" Jordan asked me the next day at lunch, sliding into the booth across from me like we were still tight. Like he hadn't spent the last three months slowly replacing me with Tyler, whose batting average was .340 and whose parents had a pool.

"Probably not," I said, pushing my tray around. "Bear's got me doing extra practice."

"Dude, you need a break. You're gonna burn out." Jordan's forehead crinkled with what looked like genuine concern, but what did I know? I was the guy whose best friend was a fish with a three-second memory.

That night, I sat on the floor of my room and watched Splash do laps around his plastic castle. My phone buzzed. **Jordan**: party starts at 9. **Jordan**: please come **Jordan**: it's not the same without you

I stared at those messages until my eyes burned. Then I grabbed my glove and walked to the park at midnight because what else was I supposed to do? The field was empty under the yellow-orange streetlights, and I threw pitch after pitch against the backstop, each one harder and wilder than the last until my arm screamed and I collapsed onto the grass, staring up at stars that looked exactly the same as they had when I was a kid and everything made sense.

My phone buzzed again. **Unknown Number**: This is Tyler. Jordan's wasted and won't stop talking about how much he misses his best friend. Just come over bro.

I lay there for a long time. Then I called my mom and told her I was staying at Jordan's, and when she said okay because she trusted me and I'd never given her a reason not to, I felt like garbage but I got up and started walking anyway.

The party was exactly what you'd expect — red solo cups, bass shaking the windows, people I'd known since kindergarten pretending to be adults. Jordan was in the corner looking miserable, his perfect hair messy, and when he saw me, his face did this thing that made my chest hurt.

"You came," he said, like he hadn't expected me to.

"Yeah, well." I shrugged. "Tyler said you were being embarrassing."

"I wasn't that bad," Jordan protested, but he was already smiling, and that smile was still my favorite thing in the world, which was absolutely pathetic and also completely true.

We ended up on the roof, both of us a little buzzed, talking about baseball and Bear and how terrifying it was that we were supposed to figure out what to do with our lives when we could barely decide what to eat for lunch.

"I replaced you with Tyler because I was jealous, okay?" Jordan said suddenly, staring at his shoes. "You're the better player. You always have been. I just... I wanted to be the one people noticed for once."

I stared at him. "Are you serious? You're literally the team captain."

"That doesn't mean I don't feel like garbage about myself sometimes." He looked up at me. "I miss you, man. I miss how we used to talk about everything."

"I talked to my goldfish about everything," I admitted. "That's how bad it got."

Jordan laughed, and it was this real, messy sound that made me realize I'd missed it too. "We're such a disaster."

"Yeah," I said, and for the first time in months, the tightness in my chest loosened. "Yeah, we are."

The next day at practice, Bear watched me throw five strikeouts in a row, then nodded once, almost imperceptibly, like he'd been waiting for me to figure something out.

"Better," he said, and that was it.

That afternoon, I came home to find my little sister standing in front of Splash's empty bowl, tears streaming down her face.

"I'm sorry," she sobbed. "I just wanted to give him a treat —"

"It's fine," I said, and it surprisingly was. "It was time anyway."

We buried him under the oak tree in the backyard, and I said a few words because my sister looked like she needed it, and because maybe I did too. Later, Jordan came over and we sat on the roof with baseballs and gloves until the sun went down, neither of us saying much, just the sound of the ball hitting leather over and over again, somehow saying everything.

Some things end. Some things don't. And sometimes you have to lose the little things to figure out what actually matters.