The Goldfish Signal

Maya's palms were sweating so much she could barely grip the red solo cup. This was it—her first real high school house party, and she was currently hiding in the bathroom, scrolling through texts from her friends demanding to know where she'd disappeared to.

"You good in there?" called a voice. Maya cracked the door open. Leo. The guy she'd had a crush on since seventh grade was standing there, holding a tangled mess of charging cables. "My phone died. You got an iPhone charger?"

Maya's brain short-circuited. "Uh, yeah, one sec." She dug through her purse, found a cable, and handed it over. Their fingers brushed for approximately half a second, and her face flushed hot.

"Thanks." Leo leaned against the doorframe, not leaving. "So, you avoiding everyone out here, or what?"

"Maybe," Maya admitted. "Parties aren't really my vibe."

"Same." Leo gestured toward the living room, where someone had just shouted something completely bull about being able to shotgun a soda in three seconds. "It's a lot of performing. Half these people are just doing bits for clout."

Maya laughed before she could stop herself. "Totally. Earlier, I saw Brett trying to do a keg stand with a Mountain Dew."

"Oh yeah, classic Brett energy." Leo pulled out his phone—now charging—and showed her a picture of a tiny goldfish in a bag. "This is why I'm actually here. I won him at the carnival earlier, and I have no idea what I'm doing. Does he need, like, a filtered tank or what?"

Maya stared at him, then at the fish. "You rescued him from a carnival?"

"I mean, yeah. His name is Cobalt." Leo's ears went pink. "It's dumb, I know—"

"It's not dumb," Maya said firmly. "My brother had fish. You need conditioned water, not straight tap. I can help you set it up tomorrow if you want."

"Really?" Leo's face lit up. "That would actually save me from googling stuff at 2 AM and probably killing him by accident."

They ended up sitting on the bathroom floor for twenty minutes, trading stories about their most embarrassing moments while Cobain (not Cobalt, Leo had corrected himself sheepishly) swam in his temporary bag-home. For the first time all night, Maya's hands stopped sweating. Turns out she didn't need to be the life of the party—she just needed to find the one other person hiding from it.