The Pyramid Scheme at Lunch

I stared at the plastic baggie on my lunch tray. Inside, three tiny pellets floated like secrets in a cloudy pond.

"You're really doing it?" Maya asked, crunching her apple dramatically loud. So the whole table could hear. So the whole cafeteria could judge me.

"It's not weird," I said, even though it was definitely weird. "He's lonely. His bowl is too big."

"He" was a goldfish I'd won at the carnival last Friday because some senior named Dylan bet me I couldn't toss a ping-pong ball into a tiny fishbowl. Now I was carrying food pellets in a Ziploc bag like some kind of fish mom.

Maya rolled her eyes. "You know this is exactly what happened with Sarah's turtle. You get all obsessed, then you get bored, then it dies. It's the circle of life, Chloe."

"First of all, rude. Second, I'm not going to get bored. He's my friend now." Okay, that sounded pathetic even to me.

The thing was, I'd been kind of lonely since Jenna stopped sitting with us three weeks ago. Not ghosted, exactly—just... upgraded. She'd been absorbed into the upper echelon of the social pyramid, the kids who sat at the circular tables near the windows and wore weekend clothes on Monday. Some kind of pyramid scheme, except instead of money, you traded your soul for an assigned seat at the good lunch table.

"Speaking of," Maya lowered her voice, "guess who's recruiting."

I followed her gaze. Jenna was walking toward our table, holding a clipboard like she was about to ask us to sign a petition. But her smile was all wrong—too tight, performing something she didn't feel.

"Hey guys!" Jenna's voice pitched up an octave. "So, we're doing this thing for—"

"Bull," Maya said.

Jenna blinked. "What?"

"That's bull. You're not here for a thing. You're here because Taylor needs more people for her project group and she sent you to recruit us like we're still your friends."

The table went silent. Jenna's face flushed that particular shade of pink that meant she was caught but would never admit it.

"That's not—"

"It is though." Maya stood up, grabbing her tray. "Chloe, come on."

I looked at Jenna, really looked at her, and realized I didn't actually miss her friendship anymore. Sometimes people show you who they are, and you have to believe them.

"Actually," I said, tapping my Ziploc bag of fish pellets, "I need to get home. My friend needs me."

Jenna stared at me like I was speaking a different language.

"Your... friend?"

"Yeah. He's small, he doesn't talk much, and he never pretends to be someone he's not." I picked up my tray. "See you, Jenna."

That night, I sprinkled exactly three pellets into the fishbowl. The goldfish swam to the surface, opening and closing its tiny mouth like it was whispering something important. Maybe he was saying thanks. Maybe he was just being a fish.

Either way, I got it.