The Fish at the Bottom of the Pool

Summer before freshman year, Marco and I made a pact. We were gonna stay best friends forever, etched in Sharpie on our Converse. Forever lasted exactly three weeks.

That's when he started swimming with the popular crowd — literally. The swim team. The ones who hung out at the community pool like they owned the chlorine supply. Marco filled out, got tall, and suddenly I was just the friend from before.

I took up running. Track sucked but at least nobody asked me to pool parties.

The day everything changed, I was sprawled on my couch nursing fresh blisters, watching cable TV while my parents fought about money again. Static interrupted my show, then the doorbell.

It was Marco. Dripping wet, holding a plastic bag with a goldfish inside.

"I won him at the carnival," he said, like that explained everything. "My mom says I can't keep him. Can you?"

I stared at him. We hadn't spoken in two weeks. "Seriously?"

"Please. He's got, like, three days of life left anyway." Marco shrugged. "Just... you're good with stuff like that."

I took the goldfish. Named him Relentless because he kept swimming to the corner of his bowl, turning, doing it again.

The next morning, Relentless was floating sideways. I knew nothing about fish care but Google suggested an aquarium air pump could save him. My mom wasn't buying it — we were barely making rent.

So I did what any desperate fourteen-year-old would do. I snuck into the community pool at dawn with Relentless in his bowl, a length of cable I'd found in the garage, and a plan that made zero sense.

The pool had those underwater lights right? Connected to power. I figured I could splice the cable, rig something to aerate the water, save my fish, and be out before anyone noticed.

I was wrist-deep in electrical tape I definitely stole from my dad's toolbox when the pool lights flickered on.

Marco stood there in swim trunks, holding a coffee mug.

"You're literally —" I started, then Relentless's bowl tipped.

Everything happened at once. The bowl shattered. Relentless hit the deck, flopping toward the pool. Marco lunged. I lunged. We collided, tangled in cable, and both went straight into the deep end.

Water everywhere. My phone, my dignity, probably Relentless.

We surfaced sputtering. Marco's hair was plastered to his forehead. He looked ridiculous.

"Your fish," he said, pointing.

Relentless was swimming laps around us like he owned the place.

Marco started laughing. I started laughing. We floated there as the sun came up, and he told me about how much he hated swim team, how the popular kids were actually kind of terrible, how he missed hanging out.

"I thought you didn't want to be seen with me anymore," I said, finally saying it.

"Dude, no." Marco splashed me. "I thought you thought I was being a sellout. I was waiting for you to tell me to quit it."

We stayed in that pool until the first swimmer showed up for practice. We grabbed Relentless, left the cable mess for someone else to figure out, and walked to my house dripping wet.

Relentless lived for three more years. Marco quit swim team that week. We didn't stay friends forever — nobody does — but we stayed real.

And sometimes, when life feels like I'm swimming toward a corner just to turn around and do it again, I remember that fish in the deep end, and how sometimes you have to let everything break to find out what actually floats.