The Papaya Incident

The cable had been flickering in and out for twenty minutes, and I was about to lose my mind. Not because I cared about the baseball game—that was mostly background noise for Jordan's get-together. But because the way the screen kept freezing made it impossible to ignore how awkward things had gotten.

"Dude, your cable is literally possessed," Marcus said, stabbing at the remote like it owed him money.

"It's fine, it's fine," Jordan insisted, though he wouldn't meet anyone's eyes.

I shifted uncomfortably on the couch, acutely aware that I'd brought the wrong snack. While everyone else had contributed normal things—chips, salsa, those little smokies in barbecue sauce—I'd shown up with sliced papaya because my mom was on this exotic fruit kick and I'd panicked. Now the bowl sat on the coffee table like a neon sign announcing my weirdness. Maya, Jordan's sister, had already tried a piece and made a face like she'd bitten into a lemon.

"So," she said, popping a kernel of popcorn into her mouth, "who wants to see my goldfish? He's doing this new thing where he stares at people judgmentally."

"Please," I said, maybe too quickly. Anything to escape this room.

Her room was different—posters covered every inch of wall, fairy lights strung across the ceiling, and there in a bowl on her desk was Guppy, a fat orange goldfish who did indeed look judgmental.

"He's been weird since I accidentally overfed him that one time," Maya said, dropping a fish flake into the bowl. "Like he's judging my life choices."

"Same," I said, and she laughed, and something in my chest did this weird fluttery thing that had nothing to do with Jordan's broken cable or my papaya failure.

"You know," she said, leaning against her desk, "papaya is actually kind of brave. Like, you brought something different to a thing where everyone brought the same stuff. That's cool."

I stared at her. "You hated it."

"I did," she grinned. "But that's not the point."

When we went back downstairs, Jordan had somehow fixed the cable just as the baseball game went to extra innings. Marcus was complaining about something. I sat back down on the couch, but this time I reached for the papaya. And when Maya sat next to me and actually took a second piece, making a fake-gag face but eating it anyway, I thought maybe—just maybe—being the weird papaya person wasn't the worst thing in the world.

Sometimes the cable cuts out and you end up exactly where you need to be.