The Goldfish Monologues

The party was already dead when I arrived, fashionably late according to my sister but actually just anxiety-paralyzed in my bedroom for forty-five minutes. I'd spent way too long deciding whether to wear my backwards baseball hat—my comfort blanket since seventh grade—or go full confident-kid-without-armor. The hat won.

"Yo, Marcus!" Jamal called from the kitchen, where he was failing spectacularly at flirting with Sarah. "Your goldfish is literally judging us right now."

He wasn't wrong. I'd rescued this goldfish—Captain Bubble, obviously—from the dollar store tank in my room because parties stressed me out, and apparently bringing a pet fish to a high school gathering was my version of bringing emotional support animal to therapy. The small bowl sat on the counter like an awkward third wheel to Jamal's game.

My iPhone buzzed in my pocket. Probably my mom asking if I'd made friends yet, or worse, my dealer text-thread about the homework I was pretending didn't exist. I ignored it.

"Dude, why is your hair orange?" Tyler asked, sidling up to me with that confused expression everyone used when I dyed it last week. "You look like a traffic cone that discovered emo music."

"It's called self-expression, Tyler. Look it up." I adjusted my hat lower, suddenly way more aware of the cotton blend against my forehead. "And it's tangerine sunset, not traffic cone. Get it right."

The goldfish chose that moment to do a tiny, dramatic backflip. Captain Bubble had zero chill.

"Okay but real talk," Sarah said, abandoning Jamal to check her Instagram. "Why the fish though? Like, is this a bit? Are we being ironic?"

I shrugged, wishing I'd stayed home to rewatch Jurassic Park for the fiftieth time. "He gets lonely at home alone. Also, he's better at parties than I am."

"That's facts," someone murmured.

My phone buzzed again. A text from my crush: "hey r u at tyler's?"

My heart did that stupid fluttery thing it always did when she messaged me first. I typed and deleted three different responses trying to sound chill but interested but not desperate but also available.

"Marcus is composing a novel," Tyler announced, because everyone was apparently watching my thumbs like it was spectator sport.

I pulled my hat down even further. Maybe I could just become the hat. Just a hat with a fish and a phone, no emotions involved.

"Leave him alone," Sarah said, with surprising gentleness. "He's just nervous. The fish is cute though."

Captain Bubble did another flip, like he knew.

"Tangerine sunset," I corrected, without looking up from my iPhone screen.

"Whatever, traffic cone boy," Tyler laughed, but he clapped my shoulder. "Glad you came."

Maybe the goldfish party wasn't such a disaster after all. Maybe neither was I.