Fruit Punch Apocalypse

Maya gripped the red Solo cup like it was a lifeline. The basement party was already giving her major ick — too much cheap body spray, not enough air conditioning — and she'd been here exactly seven minutes. Her best friend Riley had already disappeared into the crowd, leaving Maya to hover near the snack table like a total loser.

"Hey, want some?" Some guy in a basketball jersey gestured to a bowl of cut fruit. "It's, like, actually fresh. My mom went full Trader Joe's today."

"Oh, thanks." Maya reached for a piece, realized it was papaya of all things, and almost made a face. She wasn't trying to be rude, but who served papaya at a high school party? Still, she popped it in her mouth because she was lowkey starving after skipping dinner to overanalyze her outfit for two hours.

She swallowed. "This is actually kinda a vibe. Thanks."

"No problem. I'm Aiden." He held out a hand, then pulled it back awkwardly. "Wait, that's weird, right? Shaking hands at a party?"

"A little bit," Maya laughed, feeling some of the tension in her shoulders finally loosen. "I'm Maya. And yeah, a little weird. But you get points for the papaya. That's unexpected."

Aiden leaned against the wall, his crush on her already kind of obvious but in a cute way, not a creepy way. "So you go to North too? I feel like I would've noticed you before."

"Yeah, I'm a junior. I kinda fly under the radar though." She took a sip from her cup. "I'm in that weird middle zone where I'm not a total zombie from sleep deprivation anymore, but I haven't figured out who I'm actually supposed to be yet, you know?"

"Oh my god, SAME." Aiden's eyes went wide. "I feel like I'm just going through the motions sometimes. Like, my parents want me to do this whole medical track thing, but I honestly just want to work with my hands. Build stuff, you know?"

Maya nodded slowly. "That's actually kinda brave to say out loud."

"What about you? What's your bear to wrestle?"

"My bear?" Maya laughed. "Is that a saying people use?"

"It is now." Aiden grinned, and his whole face changed. Like, actually changed — this dimple appeared that she hadn't noticed before. "So? What's keeping you up at night?"

Maya looked down at her cup, swirling the remaining liquid. She thought about how she'd dropped out of art class because her friends said it was for "weird kids," how she missed painting more than she'd ever missed anything, how she'd been lying to herself for months about what actually made her happy.

"I think," she said slowly, "I think I'm ready to stop pretending."

"Yeah?" Aiden's voice was soft. "Pretending what?"

She looked up, met his eyes directly for the first time. "That I don't care about art. That I'm okay with fading into the background. That this" — she gestured vaguely at the party around them — "is enough for me."

"What if it's not?" he asked simply.

"What if it's not," she agreed. "Hey, do you want to get out of here? There's a boba place down the street. We could... I don't know, figure stuff out?"

Aiden smiled, and this time it reached his eyes. "I would literally love that. But first." He reached past her and dropped an ice cube into her cup. "Your water looked lonely."

Maya laughed, really laughed, for the first time all night. "You're ridiculous."

"Yeah," he said, holding the door open for her. "But I think we've got this."