Summer's Strange Texture

The summer before freshman year, everything tasted different. Even the air.

"You gonna try out for the team or what?" Liam asked, tossing his baseball glove onto my porch swing. We'd been best friends since seventh grade, back when friendship was just about having someone to sit with at lunch.

I hesitated. "Maybe. I don't know if I'm good enough."

"Dude, you've got a cannon," Liam said, but his phone was already lighting up with notifications. New friends from summer camp. People who didn't remember when I got braces and couldn't eat solid food for a week.

That afternoon, my abuela insisted I try papaya. "It's good for growing boys," she said, slicing into the fruit like it held some secret to maturity.

I took a bite and nearly gagged. It tasted like soap and sunshine had a baby. "How do people eat this?"

"You acquire the taste," she said. "Like baseball. Like friendship. Like growing up."

Weirdly specific advice, but whatever.

The next day at the park, I watched Liam and his new crew playing pickup baseball. They moved different — more confident, like they'd already figured out who they were supposed to be. I stood there holding my own glove, feeling like I'd missed some memo about becoming a teenager.

Then Max, this stray dog that'd been hanging around the neighborhood, trotted over and dropped a gross tennis ball at my feet. His fur was matted and he smelled like he'd been rolling in something questionable, but his tail wagged like we'd been best friends forever.

"Nice dog," someone said. They meant it as a joke.

"His name is Max," I said, and threw the ball. He bounded after it, tongue lolling, completely unbothered by social hierarchy or who sat with whom at lunch.

Liam's crew started laughing, but not in a mean way. "Bro, that dog has better form than half our team," one kid said.

Pretty soon I was showing them how Max could catch a pop fly, and somehow I ended up playing third base in their game. No one cared that my papaya breath was still weird, or that I wasn't part of their camp friend group.

That night, I ate another slice of papaya. Still tasted like soap, but I swallowed it anyway. Some things you just have to get used to.

Max showed up at my window the next morning. I'm pretty sure dogs aren't supposed to climb trellises, but Max wasn't exactly concerned with rules.

Baseball tryouts are next week. I'm going. And yeah, Liam and I aren't as close as we used to be, but that's not bad — it's just different. Like the taste of papaya. Like this whole growing up thing.

You acquire the taste eventually.