The Summer I Tried to Be Someone Else

I spent the first week of July locked in my bathroom with a box of strawberry blonde dye and a YouTube tutorial, determined to reinvent myself before sophomore year. The result? My hair turned the color of a bruised papaya. Not the vibrant pink-orange of the actual fruit, but the sad, mushy brownish one you find at the bottom of the fruit bowl.

"It's not that bad," Emma lied when FaceTiming me. She was at Taylor's party, the one I'd spent three weeks psyching myself up for. The party where My Crush would definitely be.

I threw on my dad's fishing hat — the neon orange one he uses for early morning lake trips — and told myself I was going for "ironic retro." Truth was, I was hiding my hair disaster.

When I got there, the house was already vibrating with bass. I spotted Taylor's goldfish bowl on the snack table, its lone inhabitant circling endlessly like it was plotting an escape. I stood next to it, nursing a lukewarm soda, until someone tapped my shoulder.

"Nice hat."

Cameron. My actual crush. He was wearing this fox shirt, the stupid meme kind with the animal holding a coffee cup. I felt my face burn hotter than the August sun.

"Thanks," I said, adjusting the brim. "It's vintage."

"Your hair looks cool though," he said, and I realized my hat had slipped enough to reveal the papaya disaster. "Like, intentional cool. Not everyone can pull off that color."

I paused. He was either being incredibly nice or genuinely didn't realize I'd failed at dyeing my hair.

"Yeah," I said, surprising myself. "I wanted something different this summer."

"Well," Cameron grinned, "mission accomplished. You stand out. In a good way."

We ended up talking on the back porch while a real fox darted through Taylor's backyard — rare for the suburbs, but the kind of perfect coincidence that makes you believe in movie magic. We watched it vanish into the woods, and for the first time all night, I forgot about my hair.

The goldfish kept circling its bowl. I kept circling this moment with Cameron, wondering if I should say something real, something that wasn't about hair colors or fishing hats or accidental fox sightings.

"Hey," he said as the party wound down. "You doing anything tomorrow? There's this spot by the creek where the fish are actually cool. Not like Taylor's goldfish."

I smiled, and for once, it wasn't hiding anything. "Yeah. I'd like that."

The papaya hair stayed papaya. But maybe, just maybe, that was okay.