Poolside Papara Incident

The orange vinyl of the pool chair burned against my legs, but I didn't move. Moving would mean drawing attention to myself, and that was exactly what I was trying to avoid.

"You gonna eat that, or just stare at it like it's gonna bite?" Marcos asked, nodding at the papaya wedge on my paper plate.

"I've never had it," I admitted, feeling my face heat up. Smooth, Leo. Real cool admitting you've never tried fruit before.

"Dude, it's papaya. Not poison." He splashed water at me, laughing when I flinched. "Try it. I dare you."

The party had been his idea—his way of "helping me make friends" after I transferred to Northwood three weeks ago. So far, I'd managed to say maybe twelve words total to people who weren't Marcos, and eight of them were "thanks" when someone passed me a drink.

I picked up the papaya. It looked weird—soft and orange-red with black seeds scattered like tiny eyes watching me judge it.

"What if I hate it?"

"Then you spit it out and grab some chips." Marcos shrugged. "It's not a personality test, man. It's just fruit."

That was the thing about Marcos—he made everything seem easy. He'd been my first friend here, the guy who sat next to me in homeroom and noticed my Cyberpunk 2077 shirt before I could even say hey.

I took a bite. The texture threw me off first—soft like butter but firmer, kind of mushy but not in a bad way. Then the flavor hit, bright and tropical and nothing like I expected.

"Well?" A girl in a pink bikini leaned over the pool edge, curious. "Is it good?"

"Actually... yeah?" I said, surprised. "It's like—" I searched for words "—like cantaloupe but more confident?"

She laughed. "More confident cantaloupe. I'm using that."

Marcos whooped and pushed me into the pool.

The water closed over my head, shocking and chlorine-blue, and when I came up sputtering, half the party was laughing—including the girl with the confident cantaloupe laugh.

"Papaya casualty!" someone yelled.

I wiped water from my eyes, grinning despite myself. Sometimes confidence was just jumping in the deep end without checking how cold it was first.