The Papaya Incident

The coaxial cable dangling from the telephone pole looked like a dead snake, and honestly? Same. I'd been begging my parents for months to upgrade our internet situation, but apparently, the family bodega's profit margins couldn't handle premium WiFi speeds.

"Mateo, stop staring at the cable and start stacking these oranges," my mom called from behind the counter.

I sighed and grabbed a crate. The oranges rolled everywhere, naturally, because that's just how my life worked. I was seventeen, still working at my parents' store every weekend while my friends posted stories from house parties I'd never been invited to. My social life was basically a perpetually buffering connection.

That's when Chloe walked in. Chloe, who sat behind me in AP Bio and had that effortless cool thing down to an art form. She was wearing this vintage orange oversized sweatshirt that shouldn't have worked but absolutely did.

"Hey," she said, and I froze with an orange in each hand like I was offering her some kind of weird citrus sacrifice.

"Hey," I managed back, smooth as gravel.

She walked to the back of the store, and I watched her palm against the glass door of the cooler. She was debating between papayas, which—who even ate papayas? Apparently Chloe.

"These look perfect," she said, and my brain short-circuited because since when were papayas a thing people bought for fun?

"My abuela makes this smoothie recipe," she explained, like she could read my mind. "It's actually a whole thing. Want me to text you the recipe?"

I nodded so hard I almost dropped my oranges. She laughed, and the sound was better than anything I'd ever heard through headphones.

As she paid for her papayas, she pointed at the sad cable situation outside. "You guys need better internet, don't you?"

"How did you—"

"I see you at the library every day using their WiFi," she said. "My cousin works for this company that does installations. I could ask about a discount."

She texted me the smoothie recipe that night. I never made it, but I did finally get that cable fixed. And somehow, between the orange crates and the terrible WiFi signal, I'd found something better than connection speed.

I'd found someone who actually noticed me.