Electric Papaya Summer

Maya stood by the snack table, feeling like a total zombie. Three hours of sleep + infinite anxiety = the walking dead, basically. Everyone at Leo's party seemed to know exactly what to do with their hands, their laughs, their entire existences. Meanwhile, Maya was just vibrating with that special kind of terror that makes you forget how to human properly.

"Dude, you look like you've seen a ghost," said Jordan, appearing way too suddenly at her side. He was holding something pink and mysterious.

"Just tired," Maya managed, which was the biggest lie she'd told all week, and that was saying something considering she'd told her mom she was "studying" instead of "having an existential crisis about whether Jordan thinks I'm cool."

"Try this." Jordan shoved a forkful of something at her face. "My mom's obsessed with papaya now. It's supposed to be a superfood or whatever."

Maya took the bite because saying no would've required actual words. Sweet. Weirdly sweet. Not terrible, but also not something she'd voluntarily choose.

"It's... interesting?"

Jordan laughed. That laugh. The one that made her chest do that embarrassing flippy thing. "That's code for 'this tastes like fancy nothing,' isn't it?"

Maybe she died and went to heaven. Or maybe she was hallucinating from sleep deprivation.

"Pretty much," she said, and then they were both laughing, and suddenly she wasn't a zombie anymore, she was just a person standing too close to someone she really liked, eating papaya at a party she'd almost bailed on three times.

Outside, lightning cracked the sky open – that serious kind, the kind that makes everyone go quiet and look up like they're all part of something bigger. Rain started hammering the roof like it had something to prove.

"We should probably go inside," Jordan said, but he didn't move.

"Yeah," Maya agreed, also not moving.

The storm had knocked out the music somehow, or maybe someone just turned it off. Either way, they stood there in the half-light, shoulders touching, eating fancy fruit from a plastic plate, while lightning kept making everything bright and weird and perfect.

"I'm glad you came," Jordan said, so quiet she almost missed it.

"Me too," she said, and for once, it wasn't a lie at all.