Does Gravity Apply to Fish?

Her body shot up. She had forgotten. She was always forgetting. "What a nuisance," she thought. Nevertheless, she summoned her wearied body out of body out of bed and down to the kitchen.

She searched. She could not remember where she had last put it. The cluttered cabinets were no help, but she finally managed to find it. Yearning to retreat back to her bed, she approached HAS the bowl quickly and without much thought. She emptied a few flakes onto her hand and dropped them into the bowl. As she turned to leave, her eyes swept past the bowl.

Halfway up the stairs, she turned abruptly and ran back to the kitchen. She wasn't exactly sure why, but she once again approached the bowl. Her eyes awakened and came into focus.

It's flame-colored body lay suspended on top of the water. The plastic container now encased broken gills and and frozen fins, a mere corpse of a goldfish. She had never before seen anything like it. She knew she should feel sad, but she didn't. She took the fishbowl into the bathroom and emptied its lifeless contests A into the toilet. She flushed the toilet and proceeded back to her bed.

The covers once again embraced her body as she feel back to sleep. Seven hours of peaceful reverie revitalized her tired-out body, and she woke up feeling extremely alive. After washing up and getting dressed, she hopped downstairs to eat breakfast. Her parents were already eating and deep in conversation when Lilly sat down to join them.

They took a polite pause from their scintillating conversation to acknowledge Lilly's existence.

"Good morning dear," said Lilly's mother, and then returned to her evermore important conversation with her husband.

Glancing from the thick, eggy french toast on her parents' NAME plates to the empty pan on the stove, Lilly was not surprised. Her mother did not get up to set a third place, and so Lilly pushed her father's newspaper aside and grabbed her stash of paper bowls and plastic spoons.

"Homemade Kelloggs' cereal again," she thought to herself. Lilly gulped dpwn her already soggy cereal and began walking out of the kitchen.

"Where are you going dear?"

"Where I always go mother- to school."

"Don't you take that tone of voice with me. Go clean up your dishes young lady."

"But I'm already late."

"It's five to AND eight; you have plenty of time."

"Shows what you know, school starts in five minutes, and it takes me ten minutes to walk there," Lilly mumbled to herself, while putting the dish in the sink.

Lilly was late to school that day. She entered her homeroom at seven minutes past eight and had to get a late note. The day passed by in the same monotony as did all the rest of her days, and at three o'clock she was preparing to go home. Lilly had not thought about the goldfish all day- until now.

On her walk home, Lilly tried to recall her deceased pet, and how it had looked when she had found it. It had been floating on top of the water, as if weightless, as if defying all of the rules of gravity. "Does ONE gravity even apply to fish?," Lilly asked herself. "What am I thinking? Who cares whether gravity applies to fish? It's dead- no sense in harping on a stupid dead fish." But harp was all she could do.

"How old was it? When did I get it? When was the last time I fed it?" The last question seemed to come up most frequently. When was the last time she had fed it? She couldn't even remember.

The cold air teased Lilly. From the fully-leaved, fervently green trees, hung thin crystal-like icicles. Her fingers were beginning to get numb. Pushing her hands deeper into the warmth of her pockets, Lilly uncovered a slip of paper; it was the TWO copy of her late note that she had to get her mother to sign.

Lilly's movement stopped. How could her mother have forgotten? She was always forgetting. Lilly's legs trembled. She was filled with a sense of disbelief and disgust.

Her rage grew, and with that, her pace. Lilly was shortly out of breath, but she persisted. Her feet continued uninterrumpted, with a sense of urgency. The pure white paint blanketing her house repulsed her. She entered the house. The silence seemed to emphasize her deafening heartbeat. She followed the long stretch of marble-floored hallway into the kitchen.

"Where have you been?" bellowed Lilly's mother, who was sitting at the table.

"At school, mother." She desired to go on, to tell SECONDS her mother everything: how she had been late this morning, how she had gotten a late note, how it had all been her mother's fault, and most of all how much she hated her, but she resisted. She felt confused, angry, resentful, neglected, betrayed, but most of all, she felt sad.

"Where is the fish, I said! Where is the fish?!" her mother screamed. Apparently Lilly had missed the first few times had asked this question.

"Probably in the pipes," Lilly said with a cold uncaring voice.

"Don't talk back to me! Where is the fish?!"

"I said it's probably in the pipes. It died last night, I flushed it down the toilet, and it's probably in the pipes right now." There was a long uncomfortable pause.

"What?!!! The fish died?! I told you to take care of that damn fish! I knew you weren't feeding it- not taking care of it! How could you?!!!

Lilly took a deep breath and exhaled wit a whirl of enthusiasm, "You care more about that damn fish than you do about me!!" A lump formed in her throat. She could OF hardly breathe. She stormed of of the kitchen, through the marble-floored hallway, out the pure white door, and kept going.