The Goldfish Incident

The house felt too quiet without my parents. First weekend alone, and I was already sweating the small stuff. Like the fact that Jordan — Jordan with the perfect hair and the vintage Docs — was coming over in twenty minutes, and my cat, Luna, had just decided the ethernet cable was her personal enemy.

"No, Luna, stop!"

I lunged across the living room, but she was faster. One satisfying *crunch* later, my internet connection lay severed in fuzzy pieces across the carpet. My phone buzzed.

*"omw 😝"*

Panic surged through my chest like ice water. No WiFi meant awkward silence. Awkward silences were fatal.

Then I remembered: the goldfish. Mom's prized commemorative tank from her college days, glowing with this weird LED cable that changed colors. Not exactly ambient lighting, but it was something.

I lifted the bowl onto my desk, tilting it toward the wall to catch the reflection. Goldie — creative, I know — floated there, orange and indifferent to my crisis. The LED cable cycled through blue, pink, purple. Cool enough?

A knock at the door.

Luna bolted.

Directly into my desk leg.

Time moved in sick slow motion. The bowl teetered. I reached out, fingers brushing smooth glass, but momentum had already taken over. It didn't fall, though — it slid.

Water — approximately 2.5 gallons of it — sloshed across my notebook, my sketchbook, my phone. Goldie flopped onto my desk, gasping.

"What the actual —"

Jordan stood in my doorway, taking it all in: the soggy homework, the dying fish, me clutching a drippingLED cable like an idiot, Luna looking weirdly proud of herself from the floor.

Then Jordan started laughing. Not mean laughing, but *laughing* laughing, doubling over, phone out.

"You're documenting this?"

"Bro, I have to. This is cinema."

We spent the next hour trying to save Goldie in a mixing bowl, using my ruined homework as paper towels, making TikToks about "how to be smooth." Jordan's following blew up. We sat close on the floor, shoulders touching, and somewhere between Luna's second attack on the replacement cable and Goldie's dramatic recovery in the soup pot, Jordan's hand found mine.

"Worst first hang ever, right?" I whispered.

Jordan squeezed my hand. "Nah. Pretty sure it's exactly right."