The Goldfish Incident

The cable was supposed to be fixed by noon, but of course the Comcast guy was running late. Typical.

"My parents are gonna kill me," I groaned, flopping onto my bed while Maya scrolled through her phone, barely looking up. "We've been waiting forever, and I promised I'd help set up for the party tonight."

"Chill," Maya said, finally glancing over. "It'll be fine. Want to just hang?"

But hanging felt weird lately. Ever since she started dating Jason, our dynamic had shifted. She was always on her phone, always somewhere else mentally.

I got up to check on my goldfish – weird coping mechanism, I know, but watching Goldie swim around was actually kind of therapeutic. Or it was supposed to be.

"No way," I whispered, staring at the empty bowl.

"What?" Maya appeared behind me.

"Goldie. He's... gone."

We both looked at the carpet. There, under my bed, was my cat Mochi, looking ridiculously guilty with orange fish scales stuck to her whiskers.

"DUDE," Maya practically shouted. "Your cat just murdered your emotional support goldfish!"

We both burst out laughing, which felt amazing. Like, actually laughing together for the first time in months.

"Okay, we need to give him a proper send-off," Maya said, suddenly serious. "This is tragic. This is a whole thing."

So we did. We dug this tiny grave in the backyard with plastic spoons from the kitchen drawer. Maya said this whole eulogy about how Goldie was "a literal legend" and "lived his truth, however short that was." I was crying by the end, but like, good crying? Release crying.

"You know," Maya said quietly as we packed down the dirt, "I've been kind of a trash friend lately."

I shrugged. "You've been busy. It's whatever."

"No, it's not whatever." She looked at me, really looked at me, for the first time in forever. "Jason's great, but I miss this. I miss you."

The cable guy finally showed up at 4:30, but we didn't even care. We sat on the porch talking until my mom got home from work, and it felt like something important had shifted back to how it was supposed to be.

Sometimes it takes a cat murdering a goldfish to realize what actually matters.