The Goldfish Incident
Maya's brain felt like a zombie's after scrolling TikTok until 3 AM on her iPhone. Now she stood in Tyler's massive kitchen, surrounded by the popular crowd, clutching a red Solo cup like it was a lifeline.
"Hey Maya, come see something!" Tyler called from the living room. His voice made her chest do that stupid flutter thing it always did.
She followed everyone through the sliding glass door to the backyard. There, in the middle of Tyler's perfectly manicured lawn, sat the world's weirdest setup: a kiddie pool, a very confused cat wearing a tiny cowboy hat, and—Maya squinted—yes, that was definitely a mechanical bull.
"My uncle rented this for the company picnic," Tyler grinned, hopping onto the bull's saddle. "Thought we'd make it interesting."
The bull started moving, Tyler waving his arms like a rodeo clown while the cat sat on a lawn chair, judging everything. The whole scene was bizarre and perfect and Maya found herself actually laughing, real laughter, not the fake stuff she usually deployed at parties.
"Who's next?" Someone shouted.
Before she could overthink it, Maya's hand shot up. She climbed onto the mechanical bull, heart hammering against her ribs. The machine lurched forward and she grabbed the handle, screaming as it bucked and spun. Her phone slid out of her pocket and landed somewhere in the grass—she didn't even care.
Eight seconds later, she flew off into the kiddie pool with a massive splash. Water everywhere, hair plastered to her face, dignity gone. But Tyler was helping her up, his face lit up like she'd just won the Olympics.
"That was legendary," he said.
Later, as Maya retrieved her soggy iPhone from the grass, she noticed something in the puddle where she'd landed. A tiny goldfish, somehow still alive, flopping in the shallow water. She scooped it up and carried it to Tyler's garden pond.
"That was the weirdest thing that ever happened to me," she whispered to the fish as it swam away. "And I didn't even get a photo for my story."
Somehow, that made it better.