A/N: Originally posted 8-9-06 under Misc Books. It is unchanged from that version (including author's notes), I merely deleted and resubmitted it in order to try to create a Robert Cormier category. If you've seen this before, that's why.
A/N 2: I apologize in advance for basing the entire story off a cliché. (And for any who may not be familiar with it, it's the one that describes the transition from high school to college as going from "being a big fish in a little pond to a little fish in a big pond".) Regardless, enjoy.
Fish
Some days they were tolerable. Those days were few, but admittedly existent.
Mostly, however, the adults never ceased to annoy him.
It had been this way for as long as Archie Costello could remember. They'd try to talk to him, to engage him in mindless small talk, to get him to care about whatever useless thing happened to be the topic of conversation.
Recently, this had been worsening.
They were months into the summer, and it had been just as long since graduation, since Archie had had Trinity to escape to.
Now, a week until he began classes at UMass Boston, he was forced to stay around and listen to his parents and their friends and relatives chattering on, their discourses interrupted far too frequently so one or another could ask him yet again if he was nervous.
"No," he'd say dismissively. And it was the truth.
I am Archie. Far from nervous.
And still someone would bring up the fish metaphor, as someone always did. Almost as though they wanted him to be nervous, and hoped that by telling him what a little fish he was going to be, they could achieve this.
But he would simply shrug.
He was not a little fish.
He was not a big fish, either.
He was the shark.
No, he realized a moment later. Not the shark, but the fisherman, in control of the lives and fates of all the fish in the little pond of Trinity.
Smiling, rolling his eyes at himself, Archie shook his head in response to no one in particular.
No, he wasn't nervous.
On the contrary – he was anxious for this week to be over.
Eager to go fishing in a bigger pond.
A/N: Thanks for reading. This will probably be the last you see of me for a while, as I too am going off to college in a week. See you when I get settled in there.