The Papaya Incident

My **baseball** cap sat three sizes too big on my head, a desperate attempt to look like I belonged at the party. I adjusted the brim, already sweating through my tank top. The whole swim team was here, crowded around the in-ground **pool** behind Chelsea's massive house.

"Yo Marcus, you gonna jump or what?" Tyler called out, doing a cannonball that sprayed half the deck. Everyone laughed. I fake-grinned, clutching my towel like a lifeline.

See, there were two problems: one, I'd barely learned to swim last summer. Two, Chloe—the cute sophomore from my English class—was sunbathing three feet away, and I was pretty sure my attempt to impress her would end in actual drowning.

Then Chelsea's golden retriever, Buster, came tearing around the corner with something yellow and orange in his mouth.

"BUSTER, DROP IT!" Chelsea screamed.

Too late. The **dog** shook his head wildly, flinging what I now recognized as a **papaya**—who even eats papaya?—straight into the deep end. It splashed down like a confused orange meteor.

"My mom's exotic fruit platter!" Chelsea groaned. "Someone has to get it before it falls apart and clogs the filter. Again."

Everyone went suspiciously quiet. I looked around. All these varsity athletes, suddenly fascinated by their phones.

Chloe sat up, pushing her sunglasses up. "I'll do it."

"No way," I said, maybe a little too quickly. "I got it."

I pulled off my **hat**, set it on the chair, and walked to the edge. The papaya bobbed innocently in the middle. This was it—my chance to be heroic, or my chance to humiliate myself in front of literally everyone I went to school with.

I dove.

Water rushed into my ears as I kicked down, fingers grasping for the fruit. I found it, sandy and weirdly slimy, and pushed off the bottom, breaking the surface with a gasp.

Chloe was watching me. Actually watching me.

"Nice form," she said, as I climbed out, dripping everywhere, clutching the intact papaya like a prize.

"Thanks," I managed, pulse racing for reasons that had nothing to do with holding my breath.

Later, when my dad picked me up and asked how the party was, I thought about the papaya sitting on the kitchen counter, the chlorine still in my hair, the way Chloe had actually said my name when we said goodbye.

"It was okay," I said, pulling my hat back on.

But I was smiling.