When Life Gives You Papayas

The thing about working at your uncle's food truck during the zombie 5K is that nobody actually warned you about the zombie 5K. One minute I'm perfectly content slicing mango for smoothies, the next minute I'm being chased down Main Street by a guy in business casual wear and approximately three pounds of fake blood.

"Keep running!" Marcus yelled, already three blocks ahead. My best friend since third grade, currently abandoning me to the undead masses.

I scrambled around the corner, my apron flapping, and nearly collided with a girl sitting on a fire hydrant. Not a zombie. Just a girl. With a cat. A very unimpressed orange cat that looked at me like I was the one being ridiculous.

"Nice makeup," she said. "You got a little..." She gestured at her own face, meaning everywhere.

"I work at the smoothie truck," I panted. "The zombie thing wasn't in the job description."

"Smoothie guy," she nodded. That was it. That was my identity now. Smoothie guy. Not Jordan, varsity tennis, secretly writes poetry. Just the dude who blends fruit for money.

The cat chose that moment to hop onto my shoulder and start purring like a chainsaw.

"That's Toast," said the girl, whose name turned out to be Maya. "She has terrible judgment in people."

"Same," I said, because my brain had stopped functioning somewhere around "business casual zombie."

Later, after the zombie run had ended and Marcus had returned (traitor), Maya came by the truck. She ordered a papaya smoothie, which nobody ever orders because papaya tastes like feet. But she drank it anyway, sitting on the curb with me while I cleaned the blender.

"You know," she said, "running from zombies is pretty much a perfect metaphor for high school."

"How?"

"Everyone's just pretending to be something they're not. But at least zombies know what they want."

I looked at her, really looked at her, and thought maybe high school wouldn't be so terrible if I found more people who ordered papaya smoothies unironically. And maybe if I stopped worrying so much about what everyone thought of the guy who blends fruit for money.

"Same time next week?" I asked.

Maya grinned. "Only if there are more zombies."