The Goldfish in My Pocket

The cafeteria was a minefield, and I was walking through it with spinach stuck in my braces.

"You got a little... thing," Maya said, gesturing at her own teeth. I froze. This was it. The social execution. Freshman year, third week, and I'd already become That Girl With The Spinach Incident.

I spotted him immediately across the lunch room. Lucas. The sphinx of sophomore year—mysterious, unreadable, rumored to have once made a teacher cry by asking one question too many. He was watching me. Or was he? Was he spying on my humiliation?

My phone buzzed. Unknown number: *I see everything.*

I shoved my phone in my pocket, heart pounding. Someone was watching. Someone knew.

The goldfish in my pocket—that's right, a live one—flipped against my thigh. I'd rescued Jerry from biology class where Mr. Henderson was about to dissect him. Because apparently that's who I was now: The Girl Who Saves Vertebrates And Has Spinach In Her Teeth.

"Zoey!" Maya hissed. "Lucas is coming over."

I considered diving under the table. Instead, I gripped Jerry's baggie through my sweatpants and prepared for impact.

Lucas slid into the seat across from me, all orange hair and leather jacket and stuff that shouldn't look good but somehow did. The cafeteria went silent. Literally everyone was spying on this moment.

"You're Zoey, right?" His voice was deeper than I expected.

"That's me," I squeaked. "The spinach girl. Forever remembered."

He smiled. Just a little. "I was gonna say the girl who rescued Jerry. That was pretty badass."

"You saw?"

"I see everything." Something clicked. The text. "Also, I might have accidentally taken a video of your escape move. You moved like a ninja."

"You SPY on people?"

"Only the interesting ones." He leaned in. "Want to know what happens to goldfish in the wild?"

My heart did something embarrassingly enthusiastic. "They get eaten by bigger fish?"

"Or they grow." His eyes locked on mine. "Sometimes the small ones end up being the ones who change everything."

Jerry squirmed in my pocket. Maya made a face like she might throw up from all the tension. And somewhere, in the bathroom mirror I'd checked ten minutes ago, there was probably still spinach.

But Lucas was still sitting there. Still smiling. And I was definitely, absolutely going to need to hear more about this goldfish theory.

"Tell me everything," I said. And for the first time since starting high school, I didn't feel like the small fish in a huge, scary pond anymore.