Summer of the Cable Guy

The papaya sat on the counter like an alien artifact. My parents had never bought anything so exotic in their lives, but there it was, a reminder that everything was changing this summer—including them.

"You sure about this?" Marcus asked, eyeing the orange extension cord coiled on the garage floor like a snake.

"Dude, it's one cable," I said, though my hands were sweating. "How hard can it be?"

We were seventeen. We were invincible. We were also completely unqualified to install my dad's new sound system while he was at work, but here we were.

The family dog, Buster, watched us with what I swear was judgment in his beady eyes. He'd been with me through every stupid mistake since third grade. He knew this one was coming.

"Just connect the red to red, blue to blue," Marcus said, with the confidence of someone who had never connected anything in his life.

"That's for speakers, genius. This is HDMI."

"Whatever. Just bear with me, okay?"

We'd been best friends since sixth grade, but things were shifting. Marcus had gotten his driver's license first. I'd grown three inches over spring break. The papaya on the counter wasn't the only thing that seemed foreign lately.

The TV flickered to life, then died. Smoke curled from the cable—not quite, but close enough.

"YO, did you just—"

"No. No I didn't."

But we were both grinning, because that's what you do when you narrowly avoid disaster: you laugh like your lives depend on it. The sun filtered through the garage windows, golden and thick. This was it—the summer before college, before jobs, before everything got real.

Buster trotted over and nudged my hand with his wet nose. Marcus grabbed an orange from the fruit bowl and tossed it in the air.

"Next time?" he asked.

"Next time."

We ordered pizza instead. The papaya sat untouched, weird and wonderful—just like us, just like this summer, just like whatever came next.