Orange Papaya Summer

Maya stood by the pool, clutching her plastic cup like it was a lifeline. Her first real high school party. The Andersons' backyard blazed with string lights and bass thumping from somewhere inside the house. She'd spent forty-five minutes on her hair—straightening, then curling, then settling on something in between—and now humidity was already undoing it.

"You want some?" Justin materialized beside her, holding a suspicious-looking ladle. "It's, like, supposed to be punch, but I'm pretty sure someone just dumped everything into a bowl."

He was wearing that orange button-up she'd seen him wear to school three times already. It was kind of endearing, actually. Not that she'd ever admit that.

"Sure," she said, because saying no would make it weird. Justin poured something violently fuchsia into her cup. It smelled like betrayal and artificial fruit.

"My mom's obsessed with making me eat healthy," Justin continued, clearly nervous too. "Yesterday she bought this papaya from the farmer's market and acted like it was some kind of magical fruit. I took one bite and almost gagged. She was so offended."

Maya laughed. It wasn't even that funny, but everything felt funnier when you were sixteen and standing three feet away from someone you'd been lowkey obsessing over since October.

"The fruit situation sounds rough," she said.

"You have no idea. She keeps buying these weird exotic fruits like she's trying to expand my palate or whatever. I'm just trying to survive junior year without eating anything that looks like an alien egg."

"Hey!" someone yelled from the pool deck. "Who wants to play chicken?"

"I should go," Justin said, gesturing vaguely toward the water. "Kyle's been trying to get me in the pool all night. He's, like, aggressively energetic tonight."

"Right," Maya said. "Go. Have fun."

"You coming in?"

"Maybe later. I'm... good here."

Justin nodded and disappeared toward the pool. Maya watched him dive in, surfacing somewhere near the middle, splashing water everywhere like it was the most natural thing in the world. She stayed on the edge, sipping her terrible punch, feeling the night stretch out before her. Not quite in it, not quite out of it. That weird in-between space where everything could still happen, or nothing could, and either way, you'd just keep going.

Somewhere, a papaya sat uneaten in a kitchen fruit bowl. Somewhere, Justin was treading water in an orange shirt that had definitely seen better days. Somewhere, this summer was just beginning.

She took another sip. It tasted like artificial everything and exactly right.