Pyramid Schemes and Papaya

The first day of sophomore year, I discovered that high school is basically a pyramid scheme. There's the popular kids at the tiny pointy top—maybe like, twelve people total—then the jocks and cheerleaders in the upper-middle section, then the regular kids filling out the base, and finally the rest of us trying not to slide off the bottom.

I was definitely not at the top. I was the girl who brought papaya for lunch because my mom said it was "exotic" and would help me "make friends." Spoiler alert: it did not help me make friends. It just meant I sat alone at lunch while people three tables over whispered about how my lunch smelled like a tropical vacation gone wrong.

Enter Jordan, who basically looked like a bear in a letterman jacket—huge, lumbering, somehow everywhere at once. Jordan had accidentally joined a cult-like pyramid scheme over the summer selling "revolutionary" energy drinks, and now he was trying to recruit everyone.

"Yo, you want in on this?" Jordan asked, sliding into the seat across from me. His eyes scanned my papaya like it was an alien artifact. "What even is that?"

"Papaya," I said, trying to sound confident instead of mortified. "It's... supposed to be good for your skin."

Jordan stared at me, then at the papaya, then back at me. "You know what's good for your skin? NOT being broke. I'm telling you, this energy drink thing? It's gonna be huge. I already recruited like, three people. They recruit people, those people recruit people—it's basically free money."

Something about his desperate intensity made me actually laugh. "That's literally a pyramid scheme."

"It's NOT a pyramid scheme," he said, way too loudly. Half the cafeteria turned to look. "It's MULTI-LEVEL MARKETING. There's a difference."

"You literally just described a pyramid."

Jordan thought about this for a second. "Okay but what if I give you some papaya money to join?"

"Papaya money?"

"Money FOR papaya. To, like, buy more of it. Or whatever."

We ended up sitting there for the rest of lunch, Jordan trying to explain why his pyramid scheme was definitely not a pyramid scheme, me explaining why papaya was actually underrated once you got past the weird texture. The next day, he brought me a mango. The day after that, I let him give me his whole sales pitch about energy drinks just to make him feel better.

We never sold any energy drinks. We never became popular. But we did sit together at lunch every day, trading exotic fruits and stories about how everyone else at school was living in their own pyramid schemes, pretending to be someone they weren't.

The papaya didn't help me make friends. But accidentally offending a bear in a letterman jacket? That turned out to be exactly what I needed.