Green at the Lips

The first mistake was the hat. Mom insisted it was vintage, but really it was just a bucket she'd found at a thrift store, the color of a highlighter that had seen better days. 'It'll protect you from the sun,' she'd said, handing me this neon monstrosity. Now I'm standing at the edge of Maya's pool party like a literal highlight, while everyone else looks like they stepped out of a TikTok fashion dump.

The second mistake was the spinach artichoke dip. I'd been hovering near the snack table for twenty minutes, working up the courage to actually say something to Maya, who I've been lowkey obsessed with since Bio lab started. But then her brother Marcus walks up with this tangled mess of a cable — something for the speakers, he'd said — and asks if I can help untangle it because he's 'not good with details.'

So there I am, neon hat on, spinach dip somehow now all over my face — and I don't even know it yet — helping this random guy untangle speaker cable like I'm some kind of tech support.

'So you're the new kid, right?' Marcus asks, and I freeze. Not because he's wrong, but because I've been here three months and somehow still qualify as new.

'Three months is basically still new,' he continues, like he can read my mind. 'Maya said you're in her Bio class. She said you're actually smart, not like smart-smart but like, actually knows stuff.'

And that's when it happens. Maya walks over, and she's smiling, and she says something about how she loves spinach dip, and I should definitely try it because it's her aunt's recipe or whatever, and I'm standing there with green stuff literally coating my teeth like I've been eating grass for lunch.

She doesn't say anything about it. She just keeps talking about how she's failing Bio and could really use a study buddy, and Marcus is giving me this look like he knows exactly what's happening but he's not going to be the one to say it, and the pool is glittering behind them like this whole moment is some kind of cosmic joke.

'So,' Maya says, 'what do you say? Study session? Maybe Friday?'

And I realize two things simultaneously: one, I have had spinach in my teeth this entire time, and two, Marcus never needed help with that cable. He was just buying me time.

'Yeah,' I say, and I actually smile, green teeth and all. 'Friday sounds perfect.'

Later, when I finally find a mirror, the hat doesn't look so stupid anymore. Sometimes the worst moments become the best stories. Sometimes a friend is someone who helps you untangle cables and doesn't say a word about your spinach teeth. And sometimes — just sometimes — being the new kid isn't so terrible after all.