Poolside Papaya and Other Disasters

Maya stood at the edge of the pool, clutching her papaya like it was a lifeline. Which, honestly, it kinda was. Her mom had insisted she bring something to Jake's party, and apparently, a tropical fruit was contribution material.

"You gonna swim or just guard that papaya all night?"

Maya jumped. Jake's older brother, Carlos, leaned against the sliding glass door, holding what looked like a cable TV installer's toolkit. The cable company had been fighting with their dad for three weeks about service interruption, which meant no cable, which meant Jake's party was somehow supposed to be entertainment enough.

"I'm guarding it," Maya said, then immediately regretted how defensive she sounded. "It's... exotic."

"Exotic," Carlos repeated, grinning. "Right."

The pool was already chaos. Tyler and his crew were doing cannonballs off the diving board, while the popular girls clustered in the shallow end, their phone cases lined up on the concrete like tiny monuments. Someone had brought goldfish in plastic bags—actual carnival goldfish—and now they were just swimming around in the deep end like confused orange punctuation marks.

"They're gonna die," Maya said.

"What?"

"The goldfish. Chlorine, pH levels, they need actual tank conditions."

Carlos shrugged. "Maybe. Or maybe they're living their best fish lives."

Maya looked at him. "You're fixing the cable?"

"Trying. Dad's been arguing with customer service since Tuesday. I figured I'd just... fix it myself."

"You can fix cable?"

"I can YouTube anything." He held up a phone. "Currently watching a tutorial about coaxial cable splitters. I'm basically an engineer now."

A splash drenched Maya's sandaled feet. Tyler surfaced, grinning. "Maya! Finally! Put down the papaya and get in here!"

The papaya. Her shield, her excuse, her weird contribution. Maya looked at its yellow-green skin, then at Carlos, then at the goldfish darting through the chlorinated water like tiny orange rebels.

"You know what?" Maya set the papaya on a patio table. "Yeah."

She jumped.

The water shocked her skin, sudden and cold and perfect. When she surfaced, Maya wiped her eyes and saw Carlos actually laughing, really laughing, and Tyler was already gesturing for her to join the chicken fight tournament, and somewhere in the deep end, the goldfish were just swimming, unconcerned with pH levels or expectations or whether they belonged.

"Alright," Carlos called from the patio, "cable's fixed. We've got Netflix."

"Forget Netflix," Maya shouted back. "I'm swimming with goldfish."