I'm thinking and thinking and thinking. But, it's not as easy as getting a partner. Walking up to someone and telling them that I would like to collaborate. Instead, I hide in the back of the local bookstore, legs crossed until they go dead, reading about goldfish in Japan.
I'm better off with the goldfish. I'm better off up there in space. But, I'm also not because I want that twenty-five percent like I've never wanted anything else in my life.
A girl in my class stood by a shelf, reading, skimming, thumbing yellow pages with the curve of her eggshell purple nails, sparkling gold. She combs a hand through disheveled, indigo hair.
We've never spoken. But, the idea that we could be partners makes my chest warm.
It didn't matter so much that I was sitting down quietly and staring at words, at paper goldfish, but the feeling inside the confines of my chest. It felt entirely human.
"Are you just going to stare?" Billie Eilish asks, fitting her crazy indigo-blue hair behind her ear, a safety pin pierced through her earlobe. A little starry piercing glimmers against the olive of her skin. "Or are you going to ask me to be your partner?"
I shake my head, feeling light-headed. Faint.
Somewhere in my insides, in between the vital organs and intestinal mush, she lightened my soul. I warmed in the face with childish embarrassment.
"Will you be my partner?" I ask the goldfish, but they don't answer. They remaining swimming, motionless in a dark ocean.
"Okay." Billie says. Her face smiles. She sits beside me, camera held above my precious goldfish book, filming nothing.
She snaps a few pictures. "Visuals—for our vision board."
I imagine us buried to our waist in glimmering goldfish things, pasting together vision boards, piece by piece. I almost believed it. As if it was the electricity holding the two of us together. Burning in the marrow of our bones.