The Goldfish Protocol

My life expectancy at Jefferson High was exactly seven seconds. That's goldfish memory time, right? The amount of time before someone new becomes invisible again. I'd calculated it carefully after my third转移 this year, watching how the friend groups operated like closed ecosystems with no vacancies.

Then I saw her at the padel courts—Maya Lin, juniors' number one, fierce with that deadpan stare that made everyone wonder what she was thinking. She played like she was solving a riddle no one else could see, movements precise and deliberate. The sphinx of the competitive circuit.

I started watching from the fence behind the courts, notebook in hand, telling myself I was just observing technique. That's what a spy would call it, anyway. Really, I was just a sophomore who'd accidentally developed a massive crush while pretending to care about backhand form. She caught me on day four, mid-scribble, and instead of calling me out like a normal person, she just raised one eyebrow like I'd passed some test I didn't know I was taking.

"You're holding your pencil wrong," she said afterward, when I'd somehow ended up at her table pretending to study Spanish. "If you're gonna document my game, at least do it properly."

"I wasn't—" I started, but she was already sliding her notebook toward me, filled with the same kind of observations I'd been making, except better. Analysis. Pattern recognition. The stuff that makes sense when your brain processes everything like data instead of feelings.

"I've been watching you too, Goldfish," she said, and for the first time in seven months, somewhere finally felt like home.