Papaya at the Pool Party

The first time I tried papaya was at Jessica Hernandez's pool party, right after my sophomore year, and honestly? It tasted like someone had spray-tanned a banana.

"Dude, you look like you're gonna barf," said Tyler, splashing water from his cannonball entry onto my flip-flops. Tyler Chen, who I'd been secretly lowkey obsessed with since seventh period Algebra, was standing there dripping wet, his orange swim trunks clinging to everything.

I wiped my mouth. "It's... acquired."

"Let me try." He leaned in and grabbed the fruit from my hand, his fingers brushing mine for approximately one second that I would later replay in my head approximately 500 times. He took a bite, made the exact same face I had, and started laughing. "Okay, you weren't lying. This is literally gross."

The pool water sparkled behind him, catching the late afternoon sun. Everyone was being so loud and confident and I was just standing there holding a half-eaten papaya like an absolute psychopath. This is what it meant to be fifteen: constantly feeling like you were missing some essential instruction manual that everyone else had received at birth.

"Hey," Jessica yelled from the diving board, "who wants to play chicken fight?"

Tyler looked at me. "You and me?"

I almost choked on my own spit. "What?"

"Chicken fight. Partners." He grinned. "Unless you're scared."

I'm not scared, I wanted to say. I'm just a deeply awkward human being who doesn't know how to exist. Instead I said, "I'm not scared."

We got in the water, and when he boosted me onto his shoulders, when his hands gripped my calves and I was suddenly higher than everyone else, looking down at the orange-streaked sky and the glinting water and all the people I'd spent three years trying to impress, I understood something about growing up: sometimes you just have to say yes, even when you have no idea what you're doing.

We lost. Jessica and her partner totally destroyed us. But when I fell into the water, resurfacing with chlorine in my nose and Tyler laughing beside me, I realized the papaya hadn't been the point at all.

"Want to try the watermelon?" he asked. "Actually good, I promise."

"Bet," I said.

And for the first time all day, I didn't feel like I was faking it.