Papara Protocol

The plan was supposed to be bulletproof. Well, at least low-risk.

"You're literally bringing a **dog** to a stakeout?" Marcus whispered, eyeing Buster—my grandma's ancient Pomeranian—whose leash I'd clipped to my belt loop like it was a tactical choice.

"Buster's the cover," I said, adjusting my cutoffs. "We're just two teens walking a dog. Completely normal."

We were crouched behind the abandoned Fotomat in the strip mall parking lot, **spying** on the parking spot behind Julio's Market. The spot where Chloe—the junior who'd transferred from Seattle and somehow already owned the school's social hierarchy—met someone every Friday at 4 PM sharp. Someone in a silver Honda.

Marcus checked his phone. "Dude, this is creepy. Like, actual restraining-order creepy."

"It's journalism," I argued weakly. "For the school blog. No one even reads that thing."

Buster chose that moment to sneeze, loudly, and strain toward something in the bushes.

"Perfect," I groaned.

Then I saw it: Chloe emerging from the market, carrying a single plastic bag. But the silver Honda wasn't there. Instead, she climbed into a beat-up pickup truck with—wait.

I squinted. "Is that... is that Tyler **Bull**?"

"The Tyler Bull?" Marcus hissed. "The QB who literally said the freshmen girls' volleyball team was 'a waste of field space'? That Tyler Bull?"

The same Tyler Bull who made my life hell in seventh grade with the nickname 'Papaya Boy'—after I'd brought sliced papaya for lunch and he'd announced to the entire cafeteria that it looked like "something an alien would eat." The nickname had stuck for three miserable years.

But here was Chloe—Chloe, who sat at the center table at lunch and had somehow made participating in theater club socially acceptable—climbing into Tyler Bull's truck like it was completely normal.

"We need to get closer," I said.

"Absolutely not," Marcus said. "Buster isn't exactly stealth mode, bro."

But Buster had other plans. He lunged toward the pickup, dragging me with him, and suddenly we were exposed in the open parking lot as Tyler's truck started to pull away.

Chloe's face appeared in the passenger window. She saw me. She saw Buster. She saw the absolute humiliation radiating off my body in waves.

The truck stopped.

Oh no. Oh no no no.

Tyler rolled down his window. "Papara Boy?"

I wanted to die. I wanted to dissolve into the asphalt and never be heard from again.

But then Chloe leaned across him, and she was smiling—actually smiling, not in a mean way, and she held up the plastic bag. "You want some? It's perfectly ripe."

"What?"

"**Papaya**," she said. "Tyler drove me to the market because his grandma knows a guy who gets them from this farm in Fresno, and they're actually in season, and I've been obsessed with them since this summer, and he remembered—"

She stopped. Tyler was turning red.

"You've been..." I started, then couldn't finish the sentence.

"Helping her find papayas," Tyler muttered, looking everywhere but at me. "Every Friday. For, like, a month."

"Because you love them too," Chloe added. "You told me your abuela makes papaya salad with lime and chili—"

"Okay, chill," Tyler said, but he was smiling now, kind of. He looked at me. "Look, about that papaya thing in seventh grade—"

"You were a jerk," I said, and my voice didn't even shake. "Like, actually terrible."

"I know," Tyler said. "I was insecure about basically everything, and I made everyone else feel small so I wouldn't have to feel small. It's not an excuse. I'm sorry."

I stood there, holding Buster's leash, while the most popular guy in school apologized to me in a strip mall parking lot while the girl I'd been secretly crushing on held a bag of papayas.

"We're gonna get boba," Chloe said. "You guys want to come?"

Marcus looked at me. I looked at Buster, who was now wagging his tail like this was exactly where he'd planned to be all along.

"Only if," I said, "we never speak of the spy mission again."

"Deal," Chloe said. "But I'm still curious about what you thought was happening."

"Never," I said.

As we walked toward our bikes, Tyler called out, "Hey, Papara Boy—"

I turned.

"Save me a seat at lunch on Monday?"

I didn't answer. I just smiled, turned around, and kept walking.

Some operations, it turned out, were worth the risk.