Five Percent Battery

The **pool** glittered like someone had spilled an entire craft store's worth of glitter into the water. Maya clutched her **iPhone** like it was a lifeline, which it basically was—5% battery and no **cable** in sight.

"You coming in or what?" Tyler yelled from the deep end. His friends erupted in laughter.

"Yeah, just... gotta send this text," Maya lied. Her thumbs hovered over a blank screen.

She'd spent three hours getting ready this morning. Her mom had packed her a "healthy lunch" which apparently meant **spinach** wraps that tasted like sadness and garden clippings. She'd surreptitiously checked her teeth in her phone reflection five times already because last time she'd gone all day with green stuff stuck in her braces and nobody told her until seventh period.

"Try this!" Brianna held out a weird orange-yellow slice. "It's **papaya**. My dad got it at that fancy market on 5th."

Maya hesitated. She wasn't an exotic fruit person. She wasn't an 'try new things while cute boys are watching' person. But Brianna was looking at her with these expectant eyes, like this was some kind of friendship test, and somehow Maya found herself taking a bite.

It tasted like... nothing she'd expected. Sweet but subtle. Like melon's cooler cousin.

"Okay?" Brianna asked.

"Actually yeah?" Maya heard herself say. And then, because the universe had a personal vendetta against her dignity, her phone buzzed one last time—5% turns into 4% real quick—and died mid-laugh.

Screen black. Reflection gone. No way to check if she had papaya or spinach or something worse in her teeth.

"You good?" Tyler was actually looking at her now.

Maya took a breath. "Yeah." She kicked off her flip-flops. "Actually, I'm great."

She cannonballed into the deep end, phone safely on dry land, spinach long forgotten, suddenly not caring what anyone thought. The water was perfect. And the papaya? Actually kind of lit.