The Goldfish Monologues

Dante's text lit up my phone screen at 2 AM. nothing says friendship like existential crisis hours, right?

i cant do this anymore

I stared at the message, my chest doing that stupid flutter thing. Dante—my Dante—had been drifting since summer started, his replies growing shorter like someone slowly turning down the volume on our favorite song.

The goldfish bowl on my desk caught the moonlight. Finneas, my carnival-won companion from eighth grade, floated near the surface, mouth opening and closing in what I pretended were profound observations. He'd outlived three pairs of headphones, my awkward bangs phase, and approximately 47 bad decisions.

can u come over?

Seconds later: r u awake??

I grabbed my hoodie and slipped out the window, my heart pounding like I was about to rob a bank instead of comfort my best friend.

Dante's treehouse smelled like old memories and cedar. He was sitting cross-legged, surrounded by the remains of what used to be his social pyramid—the diagram Ms. Hernandez made us create in AP Psych, mapping our friend groups by closeness. His perfect triangular hierarchy had been demolished into an abstract expressionist disaster.

"They don't get it," Dante said, not looking up. "Everyone thinks just because we're going to different schools, we're supposed to like, become different people."

"Screw 'em," I said, dropping beside him. "We're not those people."

He pulled something from his pocket—those stupid gummy vitamins his mom made him take because he 'never ate real food.' He handed me one.

"For strength," he deadpanned.

"You're literally the weirdest person I know."

"And yet, here you are at 2 AM."

We sat there until the sky turned that weird purple-gray that exists only between tonight and tomorrow. Finneas would've been proud—goldfish were supposedly smarter than people gave them credit for, capable of recognizing faces, forming preferences. Maybe what they really understood was that some things didn't need to be said to be real.

"Different schools don't change anything," I said finally. "You're stuck with me, vitamin gummy emotional blackmail and all."

Dante cracked a real smile. "Good. Because that social pyramid was trash anyway."

"Literally the worst art I've ever seen."

"Agreed."

Some friendships aren't about perfect triangles or calculated distance. They're about showing up at 2 AM with zero questions asked. They're the ones that survive everything—even the stuff that's supposed to tear them apart.