The Night Everything Changed

Maya's palms were sweating so much she could practically fill a swimming pool. Standing outside Jake's house, music thumping through the door like a second heartbeat, she felt like the world's most awkward human being. This was IT—the first party of sophomore year, and somehow, loser-that-she-was, she'd actually been invited.

Okay, technically she was only there because her older sister Brianna had dragged her along. Brianna, who sat comfortably at the top of the school's social pyramid like it was her personal throne. Maya? She was somewhere in the basement, possibly under the stairs, hanging out with the spiders and unanswered homework assignments.

"You coming in or what?" Brianna yelled, already halfway up the driveway. "You're being weird."

"I'm always weird," Maya muttered, but she followed.

Inside, the party was everything Maya hated and kind of secretly wanted. People everywhere, red solo cups, someone's terrible rap playlist. And there he was—Jake Morrison, leaning against the kitchen counter like he owned the place. His hair was doing that annoyingly perfect thing it always did, and Maya's stomach did approximately forty-seven backflips.

She grabbed a random drink and made her way to the backyard for some air. That's when she found it—a plastic bag floating in the pool, with a single, miserable-looking goldfish inside.

"No freaking way," she said.

"Yeah, someone won it at carnival and just... left it," said a voice behind her. Jake. Great. Now she was talking to Jake Morrison about a rescued goldfish while a party raged inside. This was officially the weirdest night of her life.

"We should save it," Maya said without thinking.

Jake raised an eyebrow. "Save a goldfish from a swimming pool? You're different, Maya."

"Is that good or bad?"

"Good," he said, and actually smiled. Not the fake one he gave everyone at school. A real one. "Let's do it."

They spent the next hour creating the most ridiculous goldfish rescue mission ever—using a red solo cup to fish it out, finding a temporary home in a giant mixing bowl, naming it Toast (because it would always be bread, Maya joked, and Jake actually laughed).

"You know," Jake said, sitting on the pool edge with her, bare feet in the water, "this is way better than being inside pretending to care about being cool."

"The social pyramid is exhausting anyway," Maya said, then immediately wanted to die. Why did she say that out loud?

But Jake just nodded. "Yeah. It's actually pretty lonely at the top sometimes."

They talked for hours—about everything, about nothing, about how much they both hated that one math teacher and how goldfish probably have more fun than anyone gives them credit for. And when Brianna finally came out to find her, looking annoyed, Maya didn't even care.

"You coming?" Brianna asked. "Everyone's leaving."

Maya looked at Jake, who was still sitting there with Toast in their makeshift bowl, looking like maybe he didn't want her to leave either.

"Yeah," Maya said. "But I'm taking the fish."

And somehow, standing there with fish water on her hands and her palms sweating for a completely different reason now, she felt like she'd finally found her place in the world—and it had nothing to do with any pyramid at all.