The Goldfish in the Bag

The party's already giving ick when I spot the plastic bag floating in the kitchen sink.

Inside, a single goldfish swims in tiny, panicked circles. My heart does this weird little glitch thing because I know exactly whose idea this was.

"Dude," I say to Maya, who's leaning against the counter, phone in hand. She's been doomscrolling for twenty minutes straight. "Tell me you didn't."

She doesn't even look up. Her iPhone casts this blue glow on her face that makes her look ghostly, like she's not even really here. "It's a carnival prize, Bri. Won it off Jacob."

Jacob. The guy she's been lowkey obsessed with since September, who barely knows she exists.

"And now you're keeping him in the sink?"

I reach for the bag. The fish presses its nose against the plastic, like it's trying to say something.

"I'll take him home tomorrow. My mom said no more pets after the hamster incident." Maya finally meets my eyes. "You think Jacob won it for me? Or just happened to have it on him?"

The unspoken thing hangs between us. She wants me to lie. She wants me to say maybe this is his way of finally noticing her.

"He probably won it for someone else and she ditched him," I say, because being a friend means saying the stuff she doesn't want to hear.

Her face falls, just for a second. Then she's back on her phone, swiping like her life depends on it.

But then I see it - the notification. A text from Jacob. My stomach does this weird flip because maybe I was wrong. Maybe she was right.

She reads it. Her expression doesn't change. Then she hands me the bag.

"What?"

"Take him," she says. "Please. Just... keep him."

"Maya, what did Jacob say?"

She shrugs, but her smile doesn't reach her eyes. "He was at the party with someone else. The goldfish was just... I don't know. He probably didn't even remember winning it."

I want to hug her, but she's already turned away, her face illuminated by that screen again. So I take the bag and the fish inside it, swimming his frantic little circles.

Later that night, sitting on my bedroom floor with a proper fishbowl I found in the garage, I name him Glitch. Because sometimes life does these weird little flips that don't make sense until later.

I text Maya a picture of him in his new setup. She replies with a single emoji: 🐠

And maybe that's enough. Maybe sometimes being a friend means holding onto things for each other - even goldfish won by boys who don't notice you, even the words we can't quite say yet.

Outside my window, the neighborhood glows with everyone's screens, all these tiny blue lights like we're all swimming in our own separate bags, waiting for someone to finally see us.

I look at Glitch. He's finally settled down, just floating there like he belongs.

Maybe that's the secret. You stop fighting the circles and just learn to swim them.