The Orange Sea at Third Base

Maya pressed her forehead against the glass of the pet store aquarium, watching the goldfish dart through neon-lit weeds like tiny, flame-colored thoughts. They didn't care about high school's brutal pyramid scheme—varsity at the apex, freshmen like her buried somewhere in the sediment.

"You gonna buy those fish or just vibe with them?" Leo's voice behind her made her jump. He was the baseball player everyone talked about, the one whose orange jersey seemed to follow her through the halls like a persistent sunset.

She'd been avoiding him since that party where he'd caught her mid-sentence about how goldfish actually have three-second memories—that was a myth, she'd started explaining, before realizing he was definitely not listening and she was definitely talking too much again.

"Just observing," she said, turning around. "They're underrated."

"You're underrated." The words fell out so fast she almost missed them.

Wait—what?

Leo rubbed the back of his neck, suddenly very interested in a bag of fish flakes. "I mean, like, at parties. You say interesting stuff. Nobody hears it because they're all playing their cool games but—"

The store's fire alarm pierced the air. They stumbled outside into the parking lot where the sky had turned that bruised orange color of late October, and a real fox—actual wild fox—trotted past them both like it owned this suburban wasteland, pausing only to give them this incredibly judgmental look before disappearing behind the dumpster.

"Did that just happen?" Maya asked.

"Bro," Leo said. "I think we just got critiqued by wildlife."

They sat on the curb as fire trucks arrived—false alarm, someone burnt popcorn—and talked about nothing, everything: the way baseball practice felt like meditation, how she'd been writing a novel about a girl who became friends with a ghost, why high school felt like everyone was pretending to understand rules that didn't exist.

"The social pyramid," Maya said, gesturing vaguely. "It's made up. We could just... not climb it."

Leo nodded slowly. "Wait, so we've been stressing about nothing?"

"Basically." She smiled. "Welcome to the bottom, babe. It's way less lonely down here."