Summer of the Living Awkward

The pool party was supposed to be my summer comeback tour. Instead, I stood behind the concession stand wearing a baseball cap pulled low, feeling like a zombie extra in someone else's movie. My hair had finally grown out enough to cover the disaster of last year's DIY buzz cut, but I still kept tucking strands behind my ear like a nervous tic.

"Yo, Marcus! You gonna swim or just stand there looking haunted?" Tyler called from the deep end, water dripping from his perfect fade. Everyone laughed. Tyler always had that effect — the kind of guy who could wear bright orange trunks and still look cool.

My abuela had packed me papaya chunks in Tupperware that morning. "For energy, mijo," she'd said, kissing my forehead. Now the container sat on the folding table next to a spread of Doritos and pizza rolls, looking exotic and out of place. Kind of like me.

I reached for a piece, praying nobody would notice.

"What IS that?" Sarah asked, appearing beside me. Sarah with the mermaid hair that always smelled like coconut and confidence. "It looks like... alien flesh?"

"It's papaya," I said, then immediately wanted to disappear. "My grandma —"

"Can I try?" She popped a piece into her mouth, eyes widening. "Okay, that's actually fire. Like, weirdly good?"

Tyler swam over. "Pass me some of that alien fruit, bro."

Suddenly I wasn't the zombie anymore. I was the guy with the papaya hookup, the one who brought something different to the pool. Sarah sat next to me on the concrete, our feet dangling near the edge, and somewhere between the conversation about baseball statistics and her accidentally splashing water on my shirt, I realized something:

The zombie feeling hadn't come from my hair or my weird fruit or whatever made me different. It came from thinking I had to be like everyone else to be alive.

"Next week," Sarah said, licking papaya juice from her thumb, "you're bringing more. Deal?"

"Deal."

I adjusted my cap, let my hair fall free, and finally jumped into the deep end.