The Goldfish Protocol

I felt like a zombie walking into homeroom, having survived approximately three hours of sleep and my mom's attempt at a motivational speech about "carpeing the diem." My iPhone was basically glued to my hand at this point—my lifeline, my portal to everything that actually mattered.

Which, currently, was watching Jake's Instagram story for the seventeenth time.

Okay, that sounds low-key creepy. Let me explain. Jake wasn't just some random crush situation. We'd been lab partners since freshman year, and we'd spent approximately four hundred hours discussing everything from Marvel theories to why cafeteria pizza defied the laws of chemistry. But this year? This year he'd joined varsity lacrosse and suddenly existed in this completely different social pyramid—one of those invisible structures that defined who mattered and who didn't. I was still figuring out where I fit.

"You're literally spying on him again," said Maya, dropping into the desk beside me and somehow already knowing what I was doing. Maya had this freakish sixth sense about my entire emotional state.

"I'm not spying," I protested, closing my phone. "I'm conducting casual research. There's a difference."

"Uh-huh. You're like that goldfish we had in bio class—always forgetting that you've already stared at the same rock twelve times."

I laughed despite myself. "That goldfish died, Maya. Not exactly the metaphor I'm going for."

"The point is," she said, spinning a pencil between her fingers, "Jake's literally been your friend for three years. Why are you acting like this is some covert operation?"

She wasn't wrong, exactly. But something had shifted. Maybe it was that I'd caught him watching me sometimes when he thought I wouldn't notice. Maybe it was that our conversations had started feeling different—more charged, like there was something we weren't saying. Or maybe I was just overthinking everything because that's what I did.

My phone buzzed. Jake: *Hey, can I borrow your bio notes? I was dead yesterday.*

I stared at the message. Maya peered over my shoulder.

"See?" she said. "Zombie boy needs your help. Go save him."

"You're the worst," I told her, but I was already typing: *Only if you admit my notes are superior to yours.*

His response came instantly: *Your notes ARE superior to mine. I surrender.*

Maybe the social pyramid wasn't as rigid as I thought. Maybe some things were worth climbing for. Maybe—I glanced at Maya, who was grinning like she'd orchestrated this entire situation—I didn't have to figure everything out alone.

"You're not a goldfish," Maya said quietly. "You're just scared."

I looked at my phone, at Jake's message still glowing on the screen.

"Yeah," I said. "Maybe I'm working on that."