Screenshots & Papaya Skies

Maya's iphone buzzed against the pool deck, third notification in two minutes. Someone was definitely Live posting from Jackson's party. Again.

She wasn't there. Obviously.

Instead, she was stuck at her grandmother's house, fully clothed and emotionally spiraling while her cousins went swimming in the oversaturated blue water of the community pool. The papaya sunset burned orange across the sky like a filtered photo—too perfect, too temporary.

"You coming in?" asked Chloe, her cousin's friend who was somehow pretty even with wet hair plastered to her forehead. She held a floating cat pool noodle like it was the most normal thing in the world.

"I'm good," Maya said, even though her phone showed 87°F and she was absolutely sweating through her favorite oversized tee. "Just... gotta respond to this."

A fox darted through the bushes behind the pool fence—a real one, rusty red and impossibly wild. Maya almost dropped her phone trying to get a picture, but the moment she raised the camera, it vanished. Proof that some things weren't meant to be captured, shared, or turned into content.

"Your phone's controlling you, not the other way around," Chloe said, doing a casual backflip into the water like she was in a TikTok that would get 500K views.

Maya stared at her screen. Someone had posted a photo of Jackson looking stupidly handsome next to a cooler. The caption read: "missing everyone who's NOT here lol"

Okay, ouch.

She slid her phone under her towel. Walked to the pool's edge. Did a highly ungraceful cannonball that somehow, weirdly, felt better than any like she'd ever gotten.

"Finally!" Chloe yelled, splashing water that definitely got in Maya's mouth.

That night, Maya posted one photo: not of the party she wasn't at, not of the papaya sunset she'd missed. Just a grainy flash photo of the cat pool noodle floating against the dark water.

Caption: "real life > Live life"

Her phone stayed facedown on the nightstand. Some moments were meant to just exist.