Papaya Summer

My palms were sweating. Like, actually dripping onto my backpack straps, which was gross but also unavoidable when you're the new kid and you've just agreed to try out for the travel baseball team when you haven't played since you were twelve and that was in the suburbs of Chicago, not Miami, where everyone seems to have been born with a glove in their hand.

"You coming or what?" Marcus called from his bike. He was one of those guys who was somehow effortlessly cool—rolled uniform cuffs, perfect hair, the kind of confidence I'd been faking since kindergarten.

"Yeah, just—"

"Rafa!" My mom's voice through the apartment window. "Do you want your papaya before you go?"

And there it was. The thing that had already marked me as "the exotic kid" at school. My mom, bless her heart, had decided that since we moved to Miami, we were going to "embrace our roots" by eating papaya every morning, which apparently was a thing here. Nobody else at school seemed to eat papaya. Nobody's abuela packed them papaya slices in Tupperware like it was the most normal thing in the world.

"No thanks!" I yelled back, but she was already leaning out the window, holding the container, and Marcus was watching, and honestly I should've just taken it and owned it, but instead I said, "My mom's weird about fruit," which made Marcus laugh, but not in a mean way, and then we were riding to the field and I was trying to remember how to hold a bat and also why I'd told everyone I used to play when clearly I didn't.

Coach Patel lined us up for batting practice. When my turn came, my palms were so sweaty I could barely grip the bat. First pitch: swing and miss. Second: same. Third: foul tip that barely made contact. I could feel everyone watching, could feel the sweat literally dripping down my wrists, could feel myself about to cry which would be absolutely humiliating—

"Try this," Marcus said, appearing behind the backstop with something in his hand.

It was the papaya. My mom had apparently run after us and given it to him.

"Your mom said you get nervous," Marcus said, like this was just normal information to share. "My abuela says papaya helps. Also, you're gripping the bat too tight. Relax your hands."

I ate a slice. It was sweet and weirdly comforting, and Marcus was right—I loosened my grip, and the next pitch I actually hit, not a home run or anything, but solid contact, and the ball sailed into the outfield and everyone was cheering and Marcus was grinning like he'd personally taught me how to play, and maybe he had, kind of.

"Not bad for a Chicago boy," he said.

"Not bad for someone who eats papaya," I said back.

He laughed. "Dude, half this team eats papaya. You think you're special?"

And just like that, the thing I'd been so embarrassed about became the thing that made me fit in. Sometimes life's weird like that. My palms were still sweaty, but I think that might've just been the Miami heat.