The Goldfish at the End of the World

Mara had been running for three months when the rental car died on the coastal highway. Not literally running—though she'd done plenty of that too, logging miles on foggy mornings, her lungs burning with something she couldn't name. Running from the foreclosure notices, the silent emails from her mother, the way her ex-husband's new girlfriend looked like a softer version of herself.

Now she was stranded at the only motel for miles, room 207, with a goldfish bowl she'd stolen from her office on her last day. The fish—named Keith, after her boss—circled endlessly in its murky prison, its memory supposedly three seconds long. She envied it.

The first night, she went swimming in the ocean at midnight, the black water sucking at her limbs, salt stinging her eyes. She stayed under until her chest burned, wondering what it would feel like to just keep going down. Then she surfaced, gasping, and walked back to the motel, dripping and alive.

On the third day, a black bear appeared at the edge of the parking lot, ripping into a dumpster like it owed the animal money. Mara stood on her balcony watching it, clutching a lukewarm beer, thinking: that's what I look like from a distance—wild, hungry, tearing through refuse to find something worth keeping.

She looked down at her palm, where the lifeline was supposed to be. The psychic at that bachelorette party in Vegas had told her she'd live to ninety-four, have three children, marry a man named Mark. She'd married Mark. He'd left her for someone named Jessica. The psychic hadn't mentioned that part.

"Keith," she said to the fish bowl. "You're the only thing that's still mine."

The goldfish bumped against the glass, mouth opening and closing in silent opinion.

That night, she packed the car's remaining gas money into her wallet, put Keith in a sealed cupholder container, and started walking toward the next town. Five miles later, a pickup truck pulled over. The driver was a woman with laugh lines and weathered hands, heading north to Seattle.

"You running to or from?" the woman asked.

Mara thought about the bear, the divorce, the foreclosure notices. She thought about Keith swimming in circles, three seconds of joy over and over again.

"Does it matter?" she said.

The woman smiled. "Not really. Hop in."

As they drove, palm trees blurred past in the darkness, and Mara finally let herself sleep, knowing only that tomorrow, wherever she ended up, she'd still be running—and that, she realized, might be enough.