Papaya Dreams and Store Six

My hair was giving me major issues — frizzy, uncooperative, basically screaming "I don't belong here." I stood in front of the bathroom mirror, straightening iron in hand, wondering why I thought taking a job at SuperMart would somehow fix my entire existence.

"You're doing it again," my little brother Leo called from the hallway. "The overthinking thing. You're gonna burn your hair off."

"Shut up, Leo." I put down the straightener. My hair could wait. The real problem was Jordan, who worked in the dairy aisle and had somehow become the center of my entire universe without even trying.

The grocery store had this weird organizational system I'd never noticed before: the papaya sat next to the spinach in the tropical display, like they were best friends or something. I'd been staring at that display for three weeks, wondering if Jordan would ever notice me.

Tonight was the employee potluck. Everyone had to bring something. My mom suggested I make her famous spinach salad, but I wanted to impress. I wanted to be the person who brought something exotic, something that said "I'm interesting and sophisticated and definitely not awkward." So I bought a papaya, even though I'd never tried one, and decided to make whatever people made with papayas.

The kitchen looked like a crime scene when I was done. Papaya juice everywhere. The recipe called for arranging the fruit in a pyramid shape, which seemed simple enough until I actually tried it. My pyramid kept collapsing. It was like trying to build with Jell-O.

"You need help with that?" Jordan stood in my doorway, holding a Tupperware container. They'd seen everything. My disaster papaya pyramid. My spinach disaster on the counter. Me, wearing an apron over my school clothes because I'd stained everything.

"I'm just," I swallowed, "testing some recipes."

"That papaya pyramid is legendary, honestly." Jordan set down their container. "Ten out of ten for effort. Zero out of ten for structural integrity."

We ended up sitting on the kitchen floor, eating my failed papaya creation with their store-bought cookies. Jordan told me about their dream of becoming a chef, even though their parents wanted them to pursue something "practical." I told them about my hair, and how I felt like I had to perform being cool all the time.

"You know," Jordan said, licking papaya juice off their thumb, "you're way more interesting when you stop trying to be perfect."

My hair was still frizzy. My papaya pyramid was still a disaster. But Jordan was sitting on my kitchen floor, and for the first time in forever, I didn't feel like I was bullshitting my way through my own life.