The Goldfish Between Us

The sky was that weird purple-green color right before a storm hits, the kind where you swear you could count the seconds before thunder.

"Dude, you coming to baseball tryouts?" Tyler asked, not even looking up from his phone.

"Nah." I adjusted my backpack strap. "I'm trying out for padel."

Tyler's head snapped up. "Padel? Isn't that like tennis for people who can't commit?"

"It's different. It's—you know what, never mind."

This was the thing about Tyler. We'd been best friends since seventh grade, back when we both thought collecting Pokémon cards was the peak of cultural relevance. But something shifted over summer. He grew six inches. I grew... self-aware. He startedVarsity jacket at some point and made varsity baseball as a freshman. I discovered that most sports where balls fly at my face trigger a deeply unhelpful survival instinct.

The first bolt of lightning cracked across the sky, followed immediately by thunder that rattled the windows of the school bus stop shelter.

"You're gonna regret this," Tyler said, and for once, he didn't mean it as a joke. "Padel? Really?"

"Maybe I just want to try something new."

"Maybe you just want to be different."

The words hung there as rain started to sheet down, sideways and mean. We both knew what he meant—different from him, different from the person everyone expected me to be, the one who followed him around like a particularly loyal goldfish with absolutely no short-term memory of ever having his own opinions.

My phone buzzed. Mom: Don't forget to feed Goldie! And Grandpa's coming for dinner!

Goldie was my actual goldfish, the one living thing in my room that didn't expect me to be anyone but myself. Grandpa was the one who'd given me that weird mini racquet for my birthday, told me about how padel was huge in Spain, how the walls made it like chess meets tennis meets whatever chaos happened when you stopped trying to be someone you weren't.

"You know what?" I said, as the lightning struck closer, illuminating Tyler's face in that weird strobe-light way storms have. "I don't care if I make the team. I don't care if it's the 'wrong' sport. I just want to figure out what I actually like, not what Tyler-approved activity gets me closest to sitting at the right lunch table."

Tyler stared at me. For a second, I thought he'd laugh or make one of those comments that somehow managed to be both sarcastic and weirdly affectionate.

Instead, he shrugged. "Your loss. But if you miss baseball pizza Friday, don't come crying to me."

The rain stopped as suddenly as it started. Steam rose from the pavement in ghostly ribbons, and somewhere down the street, someone's car alarm was going off.

"I won't," I said, and realized I meant it.

The bus arrived, groaning and dripping. We got on, sitting in our usual seats, but everything was different now. Not worse, just—different. Like when you finally clean your room and can't believe you lived in the mess so long.

My phone buzzed again. Grandpa: Bring your racquet! I'll show you that backhand slice.

I smiled. Some things, it turned out, were worth striking out on your own for.