The Papaya Incident

Maya's first mistake was agreeing to come to this party. Her second mistake was eating that papaya.

The party was at Tyler's house—Tyler, the varsity baseball captain who'd smiled at her in algebra on Tuesday. Now she stood in his kitchen, holding a paper plate with what someone said was "exotic fruit salad." Maya had never even seen a papaya before, let alone eaten one. But Tyler was watching, and she was desperate to seem interesting, so she took a bite.

The taste wasn't bad, exactly. Just... unexpected. Like a cantaloupe that had been left out in the sun too long. She swallowed and forced a smile.

"So," Tyler said, leaning against the counter, "you like baseball?"

"Oh yeah," Maya lied smoothly. "Love it. The... hitting. And the running."

This was going well. This was actually going well.

And then she felt it in her teeth.

She excused herself to the bathroom, where she discovered with horror that a strand of bright green spinach—why was there even spinach in fruit salad?—was wedged between her front teeth. She spent three minutes trying to dislodge it with her fingernail before giving up.

When she finally emerged, she made a beeline for the backyard, needing air. Instead, she found herself in the middle of an intense game of something that involved people throwing tennis balls at empty cans.

"Maya!" Tyler shouted. "You're up!"

He tossed her a tennis ball.

"Just pretend it's a baseball," he said with this easy grin that made her chest feel weird.

She wound up and threw with everything she had—and immediately tripped over something orange and furry that yowled and bolted toward the snacks table.

"That's Papaya," someone said helpfully, as the cat—Tyler's actual cat, also named Papaya, which Maya would have found hilarious under any other circumstances—sent a bowl of nachos flying across the patio.

Maya lay on the ground, staring up at the sky. The spinach was still in her teeth. She'd just assaulted someone's pet. She'd never recover from this.

A hand appeared in her field of vision. Tyler's hand.

"You okay?" he asked. "That was actually a pretty solid throw before the... incident."

He pulled her up. Then he reached out and gently tapped his own teeth.

"You've got a little—"

"I know," Maya groaned. "Spinach. Since the fruit salad. Which contained spinach for some reason."

Tyler laughed, and it wasn't mean. It was real.

"The spinach was my fault," he said. "I made the salad. I thought it made it... gourmet?"

They stood there for a moment, Maya with spinach in her teeth, Tyler with nacho cheese on his shoe, the cat named Papaya watching them from beneath a lawn chair.

"Hey," Tyler said. "You want to get out of here? There's this place that has real food. Nothing gourmet. Nothing that ends up in your teeth."

Maya grinned, and for once, she didn't care about the spinach. "Only if you promise never to let me near your cat again."

"Deal."