Foxfires at Midnight

The papaya sat on the counter like a warning. Yellow-orange and slightly soft, the way Mom always said meant it was perfect. I'd barely touched it since she dropped it off three days ago. Too busy with everything else. Everyone else.

"You coming to the courts?" Riley leaned against my doorframe, phone in hand, already scrolling through someone's Instagram. "Jamie's bringing the new kid. The one from California."

"California," I repeated. "Because that's a personality trait."

"He's cute though." Riley raised their eyebrows. "And he plays padel like actually plays. Not whatever you do when you're staring at the fence instead of the ball."

I threw a pillow at them. They dodged, grinning, and left with a promise to save me a spot if I "stopped being weird about it."

The thing was, I wasn't being weird about padel. I was being weird about everything. Summer was supposed to be about late-night talks and first kisses and accidentally doing shots of vodka at parties where the parents were "totally cool with it" but actually checking the temperature of the beer every twenty minutes. Instead, I was overthinking everything.

Two hours later, I was sitting on the edge of the outdoor padel court, watching Jamie teach the California kid — Lucas — how to serve. The ball sailed over the fence every time, and every time, Lucas laughed like he was in on some joke the rest of us weren't.

Then the sky broke open.

One moment, it was humid and thick. The next, lightning cracked so close I felt it in my teeth. The court emptied in seconds. Everyone scattering to cars, to porches, to anywhere that wasn't exposed.

Except me and Lucas.

"Your shoe's untied," he said, nodding at my sneaker.

I looked down. When I looked up, he was watching something else entirely. A fox, bright against the dark grass, frozen near the fence line. Then it moved — sleek and strange — and vanished under the bleachers.

"Did you see that?" I whispered.

"Yeah." Lucas's voice dropped. "There's a whole family of them under there. They come out when it rains."

We sat there as the storm moved closer, lightning flashing every few seconds, the air electric with it. My cat Mango hated storms. I wondered if he was hiding under my bed right now, or if he'd found a better spot.

"Your house has a cat," Lucas said suddenly. "The orange one. I see it in the window sometimes."

"You live on Miller Street?"

"Yeah. Third house down."

We sat in silence. Rain started to fall, warm and sudden, soaking through my shirt. I didn't move. Neither did he.

"I hate papaya," he said out of nowhere.

I stared at him. Then I started laughing. I couldn't stop. He was laughing too, head tipped back, rain running down his face, and the fox peeked out from under the bleachers like it was checking on us.

"Why did you say that?" I asked between laughs. "Of all things."

"I don't know. It's just — everyone loves it, right? Like, it's supposed to be this fancy fruit, but it's just weird. And your mom always drops them off, and I see them on your counter through the window, and I just wonder if you actually like them."

"I don't," I said. "I keep forgetting to throw them out."

"Good." He stood up, held out a hand. "Come on. Let's go somewhere dry."

I took his hand. His palm was warm against my cold fingers. The fox watched us go. The lightning flashed again, and for the first time all summer, I didn't feel like I was waiting for something to happen.

It already had.