The Goldfish Window

Marcus's basement was basically a sanctuary from the complete disaster that was sophomore year. He spent way too many hours down there, controller in hand, the frayed HDMI cable his mom kept forgetting to replace flickering whenever someone walked upstairs. It was fine. He was fine.

Then his cousin Leo showed up with a plastic bag containing the world's saddest carnival goldfish.

"His name is Glitter," Leo announced, dumping the fish into Marcus's old Minecraft tank. "You're on fish duty while I'm at band camp. Don't let him die, cuz."

"I'm not a fish person, Leo."

"You're a person person. That counts." Leo was already halfway up the stairs. "Also, my mom says those vitamins on your desk are expired, so maybe actually take them?"

Marcus stared at the orange fish dart around its new kingdom. Great. Another responsibility he hadn't asked for.

But here's the thing about Glitter — the fish was kinda living his best life. No homework, no awkward locker room encounters, no trying to figure out why Maya from chem class had started sitting at their lunch table when she definitely had better options. Just swimming, eating, occasionally staring at Marcus like *you're doing your best, little guy.*

Two weeks later, Marcus found himself crouched by the tank before school, having a full-on conversation with a fish that couldn't even hear him.

"She smiled at me yesterday, Glitter. But then she walked away. What does that mean?"

Glitter did a little flip, which Marcus chose to interpret as emotional support.

The cable chose that moment to finally give up, the screen going black right as Maya had actually started messaging him. His stomach dropped — she'd sent a "hey, what's up for the weekend?" text and now his WiFi was dead too because of course the cable was connected to everything.

He spent twenty minutes fixing the connection, hands shaking, because somehow this mattered. This girl noticing him mattered. This tiny, meaningless victory mattered.

When everything finally flickered back to life, Maya's message was still there. She wanted to hang out. Maybe.

Marcus sat back on his heels, Glitter swimming lazily through the artificial plants. He reached for the vitamin bottle Leo had mentioned — expired 2019 — and tossed them in the trash. Some things you didn't need to hold onto.

"Okay, Glitter," he whispered. "Okay."