Poolside Papaya Confidential

The papaya sat on the pool party snack table like an alien artifact. Next to the Doritos and pizza rolls, it looked ridiculous—exotic, unfamiliar, painfully out of place.

Kind of like me.

"Yo Maya, you gonna swim or just stand there looking like you're auditing the party for the IRS?" Jay called from the pool, grinning that perfect grin that made everyone forget what a jerk he could be.

I clutched my phone tighter. "Maybe later."

The truth was, I'd forgotten my swimsuit. Again. Three weeks into summer and I was still zero-for-three on pool parties. It was becoming a thing. A weird, sad thing.

But that wasn't even the worst part.

The worst part was the papaya. Because my mom had packed it in my lunch, and when I'd taken it out earlier, Tonya—the actual queen of eleventh grade—had asked what it was. And I'd said, "It's a papaya," like a total dork, and she'd given me this look that said I had just admitted to collecting rocks in my free time.

Now the papaya sat on the table, mocking me. A beacon of my uncoolness.

"Hey, isn't that your weird fruit?" Tonya asked, appearing beside me in this orange bikini that made me want to dissolve into the concrete.

"It's a papaya," I said, trying to sound like I didn't care. "It's actually good. You want to try it?"

She looked at it, then at me, then back at the papaya like it might detonate.

"Sure. Why not."

She took a bite. Her face did this complicated thing—confusion, then surprise, then something that looked almost like respect.

"Okay, that's actually not terrible." She took another bite. "Where'd you even get this?"

"My mom buys them at the farmer's market. I can bring you one next time."

"Yeah, okay." She paused. "Hey, you know Marcus has that bear tattoo on his back? He says it's for his grandma. She died last year."

I blinked. "Seriously?"

"Yeah. He's like, surprisingly deep." She glanced at the pool where Marcus was doing a cannonball off the diving board. "Anyway, you should get in. The water's fine."

And just like that, I was in.

The papaya stayed on the table, but suddenly it wasn't an alien artifact anymore. It was just fruit. And I wasn't just the girl who forgot her swimsuit. I was the girl who introduced Tonya to papaya.

Small wins. But I'd take it.