Papaya Summer Nights

The pool water rippled around my ankles as I stood there, clutching my iPhone like a lifeline. Mia's parties were legendary, but that didn't stop my hands from sweating against my phone case. Everyone else seemed to float effortlessly through the water, laughing like they'd been best friends since kindergarten.

"Hey! You coming in?" Jake waved from the deep end. His hair was wet and perfect, naturally. Jake, who I'd been crushing on since seventh grade when he accidentally knocked my books over in the hallway and actually helped pick them up instead of walking away like a total jerk.

"In a minute," I called back, my voice barely above a whisper. Smooth. Real smooth.

That's when I spotted the fox. A real, actual fox, padding along the edge of Mia's backyard like it owned the place. It paused near the snack table, eyeing the fruit platter with this ridiculously human expression of contemplation.

"Is that... is that a fox?" I whispered to no one, but then Maya appeared beside me. Not Mia—Maya, the quiet girl from my English class who sat in the back and always had the best annotations in our shared copy of The Outsiders.

"Yeah," she said, following my gaze. "She lives in the ravine behind the houses. Shows up at every party. We call her Fiona."

"Fiona the fox," I repeated, and we both cracked up. Just like that, my phone stayed in my pocket as Maya and I spent the next twenty minutes watching Fiona sneak closer to the food table, trying to snag a piece of papaya from the fruit platter. The fox kept getting scared away by someone splashing in the pool, then creeping back like nothing had happened.

"You think she'll get it?" I asked, actually relaxing for the first time all night.

"Ten bucks she does before Jake does another cannonball," Maya said, and we shook on it.

Fiona finally made her move just as Jake launched himself into the water with a massive splash. The fox snagged the papaya chunk and bolted, her tail flickering like a tiny orange flame into the darkness. Maya and I high-fived, both of us grinning like we'd just won the lottery.

"I'm Maya, by the way," she said, like we hadn't been in the same class for three years.

"Sophie," I replied, and just like that, I had something better than a plan to finally talk to Jake. I had a friend who got my weird sense of humor, who noticed the same things I did, who thought watching a fox steal papaya was the most exciting part of a party.

Some summer nights, you don't need to make a splash. Sometimes you just need to stand at the edge of the water and watch the fox do its thing.