The Goldfish Incident

My brain was moving at lightning speed, which was honestly not ideal for someone trying to look chill at the first party of junior year. I'd spent forty-five minutes arranging my hair just right under my favorite beanie—okay, my friend Maya called it a 'hat' but we all know beanies are basically personality extensions—and now I was standing in a corner of Tyler's basement like I was part of the decor.

'So, you gonna stand there all night or what?'

I jumped. This guy with fox-like amber eyes and messy brown hair was smirking at me. Great. Hot guy with zero boundaries.

'I'm contemplative,' I said, which was maybe the worst sentence I'd ever spoken.

He laughed, and it was annoyingly genuine. 'I'm Leo. I'm currently hiding from my ex-girlfriend, who decided to show up with her new boyfriend who looks like he plays lacrosse competitively.'

'Same,' I lied. 'Hiding from my ex too. He's devastatingly handsome.'

'The worst kind,' Leo agreed solemnly.

We were both lying through our teeth, and we both knew it. But there was something about the way his grin crinkled his eyes, and maybe it was the slight buzz from the lukewarm soda I'd been nursing, but I found myself actually talking to him. Like, real conversation. About how high school felt like a performance we hadn't rehearsed for, about how everyone seemed to be playing a game we didn't understand the rules of.

And then—because the universe has a terrible sense of timing—someone knocked over the bowl on the kitchen counter.

The goldfish.

The single, solitary goldfish that Tyler's mom had insisted needed to be at the party, for reasons that made zero sense to anyone, flopped onto the linoleum in a tragic arc of shimmering orange scales. The room went silent. Forty teenagers frozen in collective horror.

Leo moved before I could process what was happening. He scooped up the fish with his bare hands—no hesitation, no grossed-out face—and sprinted toward the bathroom sink. I followed, grabbing a random red cup from the counter because it seemed like the responsible thing to do.

We stood there in Tyler's tiny bathroom, watching a fish we'd known for approximately forty-five seconds swim around in a tap-filled cup, and Leo looked at me with those fox eyes and said, 'Well, that was the weirdest bonding experience of my life.'

I started laughing and couldn't stop. Maybe it was the adrenaline or the absurdity or just finally, finally feeling like I wasn't performing anymore, but something in my chest loosened.

'Friend,' I said, holding out my hand. 'I'm Riley.'

'Friend,' he agreed, his palm warm against mine. 'I'm glad you were in that corner.'

The goldfish lived, by the way. We named him Lightning, because he was fast and also, you know, we'd just been struck by how random life could be.