The Goldfish Test

Maya's iphone felt like it weighed a thousand pounds as she crouched behind the fake palm tree at Tyler's party. She wasn't even supposed to be here—her parents thought she was studying at Jasmine's. But Tyler was having people over, and Maya had been lowkey crushing on him since homeroom, and her friends had been hype-womaning her all week to just talk to him already.

"You're literally acting like a spy," Jasmine had texted earlier. "Just say hi."

But Maya couldn't just say hi. She had to observe first. Gather intel. That's what spies did, right?

The patio was packed. Someone had bumped into a table, sending a cascade of water crashing down. Maya scrambled backward, her phone slipping from her grip—straight into the decorative fountain.

"No, no, no," she whispered, watching her iphone sink past three surprised goldfish. The orange one seemed to judge her.

"Did you just...?" A voice behind her. Tyler. Of course it was Tyler.

Maya's face burned. "I was just—I dropped my—"

"Your iphone in my mom's fountain?" Tyler raised an eyebrow. "Bold move."

She expected him to laugh. Instead, he rolled up his jeans, reached into the water, and fished out her phone. The goldfish scattered like tiny orange witnesses to her humiliation.

"Thanks," Maya mumbled, accepting her dripping phone. "I'm just gonna..."

"Stay." Tyler handed her a napkin. "I was gonna come find you anyway."

Maya's stomach did that thing where it forgot how to be an organ. "You were?"

"Yeah. I've been trying to talk to you all week but you're always with Jasmine." He grinned. "Kinda thought you were avoiding me."

"I was literally spying on you from behind a palm tree five seconds ago," Maya admitted. "Not avoiding. Just... tactical."

Tyler laughed, and something unclenched in Maya's chest. Maybe high school didn't have to feel like a mission impossible. Maybe sometimes you just had to drop your phone in a fountain and embarrass yourself in front of a goldfish audience to figure out that the scary thing wasn't that bad after all.

"Tactical," he repeated. "I respect that. Next time, though? Maybe just say hi."

"Next time?"

"Tomorrow at lunch. If your phone survives the night."

The goldfish swam lazily through the ripples, completely unaware they'd just witnessed Maya's entire personality evolution. And okay, her phone was probably waterlogged beyond repair, but somehow she didn't even care.