Summer of the Fox

Maya's summer was officially peak cringe until the papaya incident. Working at her uncle's ranch-themed resort wasn't exactly how she'd planned to spend July, especially with her Instagram feed full of friends at the lake. She was stuck mucking stalls and pretending the pool area didn't exist.

Then she saw him — Ethan, the new lifeguard, checking his iphone by the pool. Maya had been watching him from behind the feed shed for three days, which was definitely not stalker behavior.

"You gonna stare all day or actually help me with this bull?" her cousin Karter called out. The bull in question was actually named Buttercup and weighed maybe 200 pounds soaking wet, but Karter insisted on calling it 'the bull' like it was some fearsome beast.

"Shut up," Maya muttered, but she grabbed the feed bucket anyway.

That's when the screaming started.

From the pool area. Ethan was screaming.

Maya dropped the bucket and sprinted toward the noise, heart hammering against her ribs. Someone was drowning. Someone was hurt. She burst through the gate, ready to perform CPR or whatever dramatic lifesaving move she'd learned from that one YouTube video.

Instead, she found Ethan standing on a lounge chair, his iphone clutched in one hand, staring at a small reddish creature sniffing around the abandoned papaya smoothie someone had left by the pool edge.

"Is that —" Maya started.

"A fox," Ethan breathed, like he'd just seen a celebrity. "It's literally just eating someone's papaya smoothie."

The fox looked up, papaya mustache and all, and regarded them with what looked like pure judgment. Then it grabbed the cup and trotted away toward the woods like it owned the place.

Ethan hopped off the lounge chair, finally noticing Maya. "Did you see that? That was the most iconic thing I've ever witnessed."

"Yeah," Maya said, trying to play it cool despite still being out of breath from her sprint. "Pretty wild."

"I'm Ethan, by the way."

"Maya."

"You work here?"

"Unfortunately."

He laughed. "Same. But I think today just got a lot less boring."

Maya's phone buzzed in her pocket — another notification from her friends' group chat, probably something fun she was missing. She glanced at it, then at Ethan, then toward the woods where the fox had disappeared.

"Yeah," she said, putting her phone away without checking. "I think you're right."

Sometimes the worst summers turn out to be the ones you actually remember. And sometimes, a papaya-stealing fox is exactly what you need.