The Goldfish Incident

Maya's palms were sweating so bad she could practically irrigate a small country. This was it—her first real high school party, and she was currently hiding in the bathroom, staring at her reflection like it might offer up some escape plan.

"You got this," she whispered to herself, accidentally-on-purpose messing up her hair for that third-chill-try effort look. Not that Kyle would notice. Kyle, who'd somehow become the absolute bull of sophomore year—no, not like that gross macho stuff, but in that way where he just took up space in everyone's brain without even trying.

The bathroom door creaked open. Her best friend Jinx stumbled in, grinning like she'd just discovered the secret to eternal happiness. Or maybe just discovered someone's parents had way too much alcohol and zero supervision.

"Dude, you're missing it," Jinx announced, practically vibrating with chaos energy. "Zack's trying to impress everyone by eating literal bullshit—okay, not actual bullshit, but he's doing that thing where he claims he can eat a spoonful of cinnamon, and let me tell you, it is NOT going well."

Maya snorted before she could stop herself. "That's the worst idea ever."

"Exactly." Jinx grabbed her hand. "Come on. You've been in here psyching yourself out for twenty minutes. Kyle's not even that special. He's just some guy with decent hair and a skateboard."

"He has REALLY good hair though," Maya protested weakly, but let herself be dragged toward the party noise.

The living room was packed. People were everywhere, music thumping, someone had set up what appeared to be an actual goldfish in a tiny bowl as some kind of centerpiece like this was fancy or something. Poor fish was probably having an existential crisis.

And there was Kyle, standing by the goldfish, looking unfairly good in that effortless way that made Maya want to simultaneously combust and also maybe finally say something to him that wasn't just awkward silence.

She took a breath, wiped her palms on her jeans for the hundredth time, and walked over.

"Hey," she said. "Cool goldfish."

Kyle looked up, and actually smiled—not polite-smiled, but genuinely smiled. "Yeah, my sister won it at the fair last month. Named him Toast. He's out here living his best life."

"Toast the goldfish," Maya repeated, and for the first time all night, she didn't feel like throwing up. "That's actually kind of iconic."

"Right?" Kyle laughed, and okay, yeah. She could do this. Parties weren't so scary. Neither was talking to boys. Neither was high school, probably.

Maybe.

Definitely maybe.