Papaya Sunset at the Masons'

Maya's stomach did that thing it always did when she was nervous—like a tiny trapped **cat** clawing at her insides. This was it. The first party of sophomore year. At Tyler Mason's house. Tyler, who sat two rows behind her in history and whose smile could literally stop traffic. And here she was, standing on his front porch with Jenna, who was already way too hyped on the social scale of the evening.

"You got this," Jenna said, adjusting her crop top for the eighteenth time. "Just act normal. Don't be weird."

Normal. Right. Because Maya was totally the definition of normal.

They walked into the backyard, and there it was—the **pool**, glowing with underwater lights like something out of a music video. People were already in, splashing around, laughter echoing against the fence. The social hierarchy was obvious, even in water. The popular kids formed this perfect human **pyramid** of laughter and confidence near the shallow end, while everyone else gravitated toward the edges.

Maya froze. This was a mistake. A giant, terrible mistake. She should've stayed home and finished that biology project instead.

"Hey!" A voice called out. It was Tyler, walking toward them with this effortless grin. "You made it!"

"Uh, yeah," Maya managed, her voice doing this weird crackly thing. "Here we are."

"We have snacks," Tyler said. "My mom went through this tropical phase. There's literally so much fruit. You want some **papaya**?"

Papaya. Who even served papaya at a high school party? But Tyler was looking at her like this was the most normal thing in the world, and suddenly Maya wasn't thinking about how she didn't belong here. She was just thinking about how Tyler Mason had offered her papaya, and life was officially ridiculous.

"Sure," she heard herself say. "Why not?"

She ended up spending the next hour sitting on the pool edge with Tyler and some of his friends, talking about everything from their terrible history teacher to how **running** cross country was basically a form of organized suffering. Jenna was somewhere in the deep end, living her best life. And Maya—Maya was actually having fun.

Later that night, lying in bed and staring at her ceiling, she couldn't stop smiling. Not because Tyler had flirted with her (he hadn't, really), but because she'd survived. She'd stepped into the scary party atmosphere and actually existed in it. That was something.

Her phone buzzed. A text from Tyler: fun having you there. papaya anytime.

Maya buried her face in her pillow to muffle her squeal. Being a teenager was simultaneously the worst and the best thing ever.