Spinach Teeth Saturday

Maya had spent forty-five minutes perfecting her eyeliner wings and mentally preparing for what everyone was calling The Party of the Year. Now she stood in a crowded kitchen, clutching a red solo cup like it was her only lifeline to sanity, while Tyler—the gorgeous junior she'd been crushing on since October—stood three feet away, laughing at something someone said.

And she had spinach in her teeth.

She'd felt the tiny green betrayor with her tongue two seconds ago, probably from the spinach artichoke dip she'd nervously inhaled earlier. Maya squeezed her eyes shut for a second. This was it. This was how she died—social death, leaving behind only her cool-girl facade and a legacy of having greens stuck in her teeth while talking to her crush.

She needed to fix this immediately.

"Hey, has anyone seen Marshmallow?" Some sophomore yelled from the living room. "That cat keeps escaping."

The chaos of the search for the host's missing feline was Maya's chance. She ducked toward the bathroom, smoothing her perpetually frizzy hair and checking her teeth in the mirror. Gone. Okay, crisis averted. She could still salvage this night.

When she returned, Tyler was exactly where she'd left him. But now he was holding a piece of papaya on a toothpick, looking at it with mild confusion like it was some exotic artifact from another dimension.

"You never had papaya before?" Maya found herself saying before she could overthink it.

Tyler looked up, and their eyes locked. "No. My mom's more of a 'apple and banana' kind of shopper. You know, safe fruits."

Maya laughed, and it actually sounded natural. "Okay, but papaya is like... next level tropical. It's what you eat when you're living your best life in Bali or something."

"Then you have to try it." He held out the toothpick.

She leaned in, suddenly hyper-aware that everyone was watching them, and she was about to bite into a piece of fruit while simultaneously trying to look effortlessly cool. The social pyramid of high school parties had placed her at the bottom just an hour ago—freshman girl, invisible, background decoration. But Tyler was looking at her like she was actually interesting, and wasn't that what everyone wanted? To be seen?

The papaya was sweet and weirdly musky, nothing like she expected. Tyler was still watching her, waiting for her verdict.

"It's... interesting," she said, and he laughed, and suddenly the kitchen didn't feel so terrifying anymore.

"You know what else is interesting?" he said. "I feel like there's this whole pyramid of unspoken party rules I'm supposed to know, and nobody gave me the handbook."

"Same," Maya said. "I'm just winging it. Pretending I know what I'm doing."

"You're doing better than me," he said, and his smile was genuine, not performative. "I almost left early because I didn't know anyone."

"Wait, really?"

"Yeah. But I'm glad I stayed."

Marshmallow the cat chose that exact moment to leap from the top of the refrigerator, landing in the middle of the kitchen island with a dramatic thump that made everyone jump. Someone screamed. The papaya plate went flying. Maya's red cup splashed onto her new jeans from Urban Outfitters.

And then everyone was laughing, including Tyler, and Maya was laughing too, because what else could you do when the night had gone from potentially romantic to absolutely chaotic in three seconds?

"Well," Tyler said, handing her a handful of paper towels, "at least neither of us have spinach in our teeth anymore."

Maya froze. Had he—

"Kidding," he whispered. "I mean, unless you did, and then I'm sorry, that was mean."

She swatted his arm with the paper towels. "You're terrible."

"I know," he said, and his hand lingered near hers for just a second too long. "But I think I'm going to stay anyway."

Outside, the February wind was brutal, but inside, surrounded by chaos and potential disaster and a boy who might actually be worth the stress of this whole social hierarchy nonsense, Maya thought maybe high school wouldn't be so terrible after all.

Even with spinach teeth and runaway cats and weird papaya moments.

Even if she still had no idea what she was doing.