The Papaya Incident

Jayla's first week at Northwood High was going exactly how she'd predicted: invisible. Until the papaya incident.

It started in third period biology when Marcus—the guy who sat behind her, the one with the ridiculous hair and contagious laugh—leaned forward. "Hey, you like that weird dragon fruit smoothie from the café?"

"It's papaya," she corrected, then immediately regretted it. Who corrects people on week one?

Marcus grinned. "My bad. You want to try something actually good? There's this boba spot downtown—"

"Jayla!" Mr. Henderson barked. "Since you're so knowledgeable about tropical fruit, maybe you can tell the class about its cellular structure?"

Her face burned. She had to **bear** the weight of twenty-seven pairs of eyes on her while stammering through something about vacuoles and cell walls. Marcus didn't laugh, but someone else did.

The next day, Jayla found herself at the cable company where her mom worked part-time. "Just help organize the server room," her mom had said. Easy, right?

Wrong. She tripped over a tangled mess of ethernet **cable**, sending a coffee mug flying. Not hers—thank god—but still.

"You good?" A familiar voice. Marcus stood there in a uniform polo.

"You work here?"

"After school." He gestured to the chaos. "My abuelo says I'm like a bear in a china shop, but I'm getting better."

Jayla snorted before she could stop herself.

They spent the next hour untangling cables together. Marcus told her about his collection of vintage gaming systems. Jayla admitted she'd never played anything newer than a Wii. He looked at her like she'd just said she'd never seen sunlight.

"Friday," he said. "My place. I'll show you Mario Kart like it's meant to be played. No papaya talk, I promise."

"Deal."

Friday arrived with knots in her stomach. What if it was weird? What if she said something awkward? What if—

But then Marcus opened the door, already mid-story about something that happened at work, and somehow Jayla wasn't invisible anymore. She was the girl who'd almost destroyed a server room, who didn't know Mario Kart, who'd gotten defensive about papaya in biology class.

And apparently, that was enough.

"Ready to get wrecked?" Marcus asked, handing her a controller.

Jayla smiled. "In your dreams."