Page 8 of Burden of Proof

Maybe I would get a fish.

It wasn’t a horrible idea, I convinced myself as I cleaned off a space on my dresser for a small fish tank. I had some extra cash from the month before, and Silas—who’d always made more money than me—had insisted I keep the whole security deposit on our old apartment. I checked my balance just to be certain, then headed to the big box pet store to peruse its wall of multi-colored betta fish.

I’d always felt bad for the betta fish, stuck in those tiny plastic tubs. How frustrating it must be for them to always be watched and poked at but never brought home. Ignoring the parallels, I picked out a fish that looked somewhere between alive and thriving and whatever the opposite of that would be.

Me, probably.

I bought him—or her—a much larger fish bowl, a treasure chest, some plastic coral, and some brightly colored gravel forthe bottom. The girl working helped me pick out the right kind of food, assuring me betta fish were extremely low maintenance.

“How do I know if it’s a boy or a girl?” I asked when she was finished ringing me up.

“Why does it matter?”

“So I can name it,” I said.

She gave me a silly look, scrunching her nose at me. “I don’t think names have anything to do with gender. Do you?”

I mean…

“Fair enough.”

“You might want to wait, though,” she said with a grimace, bagging the decorations and the food.

“Why?”

“Sometimes these betta fish…they don’t make it more than a day or two. They get shocked from the move or from the water temperature. Sometimes there’s something wrong with them, and we don’t know.”

I looked down at the fish I’d picked in its little plastic home. It definitely didn’t look robust, but I could tell there was some fight in it.

“I think we’ll be fine,” I said.

“There’s a seventy-two hour replacement policy.” She handed me my receipt. “If it does die, I mean.”

I hated the idea of my fish dying, but I thanked the girl for her help and explanation just the same.

I spent the whole drive home trying to think of a name for the fish, but I wasn’t any closer to a decision when I got home. I carried everything up to the second floor, trying my best to not jostle the fish any more than necessary. Groaning and closing the door to the apartment behind me, I kicked off my shoes and carried the fish and all its supplies to my dresser.

“Just a little bit longer,” I told the fish, taking off the lid to its takeout container of a home so it could get some air.

Did fish need air?

Fuck, I was going to be a horrible fish parent. Silas was out there falling in love, getting an awesome job, and starting his life, and I was in a shitty studio apartment, unsure of how to keep a four-dollar fish alive.

Twenty minutes later, I was confident the water in the bowl was the correct temperature as to not shock the betta, so I carefully scooped it into the tank and rocked backward to watch it acclimate to its new home. If a fish could look panicked, it did, but after about five minutes, the fans of its fins rippled in the water, and it began to swim in a wider circle around the bowl.

“Me too, buddy,” I said. “Me too.”

After cleaning up all the trash and finding a home for the fish food, I got a snack for myself, then propped myself onto the bed so I could watch it longer. I really hated thinking of the fish as an it, but I still had no idea what to name it.

I took a picture of the fish and sent a text to Smith.

What’s it look like to you?

Smith

A fish?

I mean name-wise.