The Last Sleepover

The goldfish blew bubbles against the glass, its orange scales catching the last of the sunset through Maya's bedroom window. Three years we'd had stupid Bubbles, won at some carnival ring toss neither of us remembered anymore. Tonight, everything felt final.

"You're really going?" I asked, not for the first time.

Maya nodded, still shoving clothes into her duffel like she was trying to punish the fabric. "Dad's job transfer. What can you do?"

What could you do when your best friend since second grade was moving three hours away? When your person, the one who knew every secret crush, every embarrassing moment, every family drama, was just... gone?

Her golden retriever, Buster, nosed open the door and trotted in, tail wagging like he hadn't already sensed the house eating itself in cardboard boxes. He flopped onto Maya's bed, right on top of her favorite hoodie.

"Buster, no!" She laughed, but it came out weirdly thick. "You're literally the worst."

"He's a dog, Maya. He operates on chaos and snacks."

"Unlike us," she said, her voice cracking. "We operate on carefully curated chaos and emotional damage."

I snorted. "Facts."

We ended up on the floor, backs against her bed, sharing headphones like we were twelve again. The cable from her aux cord stretched between us—this ridiculous umbilical tether that had seen us through eighth grade heartbreak, high school firsts, that time we both got our periods during her brother's graduation party and had to stage a covert operation to the bathroom.

The playlist was all middle school throwbacks. songs about friendship and forever and things we'd apparently outgrown without noticing.

"Hey," Maya said quietly. "You know that goldfish memory myth? That they only remember stuff for seven seconds?"

"Yeah?"

"I looked it up. It's not even true. They remember for months. Sometimes years." She turned toward me, and in the blue light from her LED strips, her eyes were swimming. "I'm not gonna forget you, dumbass."

"I know," I said, and immediately started crying too, because we were both dramatic disasters who'd spent way too many nights watching sad movies together.

Buster whined and licked Maya's knee, then mine, like he'd appointed himself emotional support animal for the evening.

"We're still going to college together though," Maya wiped her face with her sleeve. "That's the plan. We talked about it freshman year."

"Unless you meet someone cooler."

"Not possible. I literally peaked in seventh grade when I became friends with you. It's all been downhill since." She grinned through tears. "But for real—none of this friendship is gonna expire. Not unless you let it."

We sat there until the goldfish stopped blowing bubbles and the sun finished dying behind the trees. Three hours away wasn't the other side of the world. It wasn't even that far, really.

But it felt like the end of something, and beginnings always hurt a little.