Summer Storm Break

The papaya sat on the snack table like a tropical alien among the chips and soda—bright orange, speckled black, totally out of place at Jason's pool party. Which was basically how I felt.

I'd spent the entire season recovering from a baseball injury to my shoulder, watching from the dugout while my teammates lived their best lives. Now here I was, finally cleared for fun, standing in the corner of the pool deck in cargo shorts and a t-shirt while everyone else splashed around like they were in a music video.

"You gonna get in or what?" Maya called from the water, droplets shimmering on her arms like diamonds. She'd dyed her hair blue since school ended, and it floated around her like a mermaid who didn't care about social hierarchies.

"Maybe," I mumbled, suddenly fascinated by the pattern on the paper plate.

Then came the lightning—a crack that split the sky so white it left spots in my vision. Thunder followed like the world was ripping in half.

"Everybody out! The pool is a lightning magnet!" Jason's mom herded us inside, wet and shivering, into the basement where someone had set up a TV with a sketchy cable connection that flickered if anyone breathed on it wrong.

We ended up crammed on the sectional, someone's arm pressing against mine, someone else's damp leg against my knee. The cable went out five minutes into the movie, leaving us in basement-dim light with nothing but each other and that weird papaya someone's mom had brought.

"I dare you," Maya whispered, holding up a slice. She was sitting cross-legged on the floor, blue hair dripping onto her shirt, eyes bright with mischief.

"What? Eat that?"

"Unless you're scared."

Something inside me shifted—that same something that had made me step into the batter's box after getting hit by a pitch last season. I took the papaya slice, tasted it—sweet and musky and completely unlike anything I'd expected.

Maya grinned. "See? Not so bad."

"Actually kind of awesome," I admitted, and for the first time all summer, I didn't feel like I was watching from the dugout. I was in the game.

The storm raged outside, cable forgotten, but the real lightning had already struck—the moment I decided to stop sitting on the sidelines and just live.