Three Feet of Glass

The plastic bag swung from my fingers, three feet of fragile silence between me and destiny. Inside, a goldfish—winner of seven attempts at the ring toss, $14 worth of quarters—swam in tiny, frantic circles. Its name was Fish. I was original like that.

"You're actually gonna keep it?" Maya leaned against the arcade wall, cable-knit sweater pulled around her shoulders despite the July heat. She was looking at me like I was something between adorable and pathetic.

"Yeah. Why not?" I adjusted my grip. My palms were sweating. Straight up nervous cascade, moisture multiplying like bacteria in a petri dish. "Maybe he needs a home. Maybe I'm that home."

Maya laughed, but it wasn't mean. "You can't even keep a spider plant alive, Jare."

Fair point. My room was a graveyard of abandoned hobbies and forgotten responsibilities—guitar I never learned, sketchbook I filled with three drawings, cacti I'd managed to dehydrate. But this was different. This fish was symbolic. This fish was a conversation starter. This fish was, in my delusional seventeen-year-old brain, absolutely going to make Maya see me as Deep and Caring instead of That Guy Who Talks Too Much About Minecraft.

"I'll be the best fish dad ever," I said, and immediately cringed. Fish dad. Who said fish dad?

We walked to her place. The bag kept swinging. Fish kept swimming. I kept running out of things to say that didn't make me sound like a complete idiot. Meanwhile, Maya was telling me about this art program she wanted to apply for, her eyes lighting up, hands moving when she talked, and I was nodding like I understood anything about gallery spaces or portfolio requirements but really I was just thinking about how her eyelashes caught the streetlamp light.

"You good?" she asked suddenly.

"Yeah. Just—thinking about fish tank logistics."

"Right. Fish tank logistics." She was smiling now. I think she knew.

Outside her house, we stopped. The moment stretched—should I hug her? Wave? Fist bump? My heart was running a marathon, my stomach doing gymnastics, my entire nervous system screaming cues I didn't know how to read.

"Thanks for walking me," she said, and there it was—that look, the one I'd been decoding in my head for three months. Was it friendship? Was it something more? Was I just projecting because I desperately wanted it to be something more?

"Anytime." Then: "You want him? The fish?"

Maya stared at the bag. Fish stared back.

"You'd give me your symbolic fish?"

"Yeah. I mean, you're better at responsibility stuff."

She took the bag. Our fingers touched—just for a second, just a brush of skin on skin, but my entire nervous system lit up like a Christmas tree.

"I'll name him Responsibility," she said.

"Perfect."

"Hey Jare?"

"Yeah?"

"You're good company. Even if you can't keep plants alive."

Then she was inside, and I was walking home, fish-less but lighter somehow, palms still sweaty but for a whole different reason. The night air tasted like possibility. Somewhere in my room, the cable from my PlayStation lay tangled on the floor, and somewhere in Maya's house, a fish swam in circles, and somewhere in the space between us, something was beginning.

I ran the last block home, not because I was late, but because I had energy to burn, because I was seventeen and everything felt like a beginning, because Maya had my fish and had called me good company and sometimes that was enough.

Sometimes that was everything.