Three AM Goldfish

The vitamin gummies sat on my nightstand like a judgmental orange mountain. Mom had left them with a sticky note: "For your immune system!!!" with three exclamation marks because that's how she communicated now—through enthusiastic punctuation and passive-aggressive wellness products.

I was supposed to be taking them every day. Instead, I was staring at my ceiling at three AM, watching the cable from my ceiling fan swing gently in the breeze from my open window. Same cable I'd been meaning to fix for three months. Same window I'd been leaving open since Jacob blocked me on everything in March.

My phone buzzed. Unknown number.

"Yo, you up?"

"It's literally 3 AM."

"Exactly. Emergency. Need you."

That's how I ended up at Maya's house in sweatpants and a hoodie, standing in her kitchen while she frantically googled "goldfish swimming upside down still alive."

"Why do you even have a goldfish?" I asked, staring at the fish in question, who was indeed doing vertical laps.

"My brother got it for his birthday and then went to college and now it's MY problem and I think it's dying and I don't know what to DO."

Maya, who I'd barely spoken to since that one time we partnered in bio freshman year, was practically hyperventilating over a feeder fish named Pancakes.

"It's probably just the water quality," I said, because my dad's really into aquariums and I'd absorbed information by osmosis. "Do you have conditioner? The drops thing?"

"I have VITAMINS?" she offered desperately.

"Not those kind of—okay, you know what?"

We ended up at the 24-hour pharmacy, sprinting down the aquarium aisle at 3:17 AM like two people who definitely had their lives together. The guy working the night shift gave us a look that said he'd seen weirder.

"You guys got a pet emergency?" he asked, ringing up the water conditioner like it was contraband.

"Pancakes is going to LIVE," Maya announced with the confidence of someone who'd never owned a fish before tonight.

We sat on her kitchen floor watching the tank until dawn, sharing the vitamin gummies from my pocket because we were starving and refused to eat actual fish food. Pancakes righted himself somewhere around 4:30. Maya high-fived me with conditioner-stained hands.

"You're like, weirdly good at this," she said.

"I have a lot of useless knowledge," I shrugged. "Also, those vitamins are expired."

"We might die," she said cheerfully.

"Worth it for Pancakes."

The cable on my ceiling fan is still loose. Jacob's still blocked me on everything. But now I have standing 3 AM plans with Maya and a fish I'm emotionally invested in, and honestly? That feels like enough for now.