Better Together

I was minding my own business, which is to say I was standing in the fruit bowl on the counter, when the strawberry showed up.

Not in the bowl. In the fridge. Behind the door. She was one of those, the kind who lives in the cold and thinks that makes her special. I'd heard her rolling around in there for days, knocking against the yogurt cups, making a general racket. Never came out. Never said a word. Just lurked back there like she owned the place.

And I had plans. Big ones. Today was the day I'd finally do it, walk the whole length of the kitchen, check every corner, every shelf. I'd been putting it off for weeks. The kitchen is huge when you're a banana. The floor stretches out like a yellow desert, and the cabinets loom, and somewhere past the sink there's a whole other world I've never seen. But I was ready. I had my spots, my good side facing forward, my stem looking sharp. I'd been saving myself for something. A friend. Someone to split a plate with. Someone to sit next to in the bowl so we didn't have to be alone.

I hopped down from the counter. It's a long drop, but bananas are built for it. We're sturdy. We land soft. I dusted myself off and started walking.

"Today I'm going to find myself a friend," I said. To nobody. To the empty kitchen. The tiles were cold under my peel. The light from the window made a bright square on the floor, and I walked toward it because that's what you do when you don't know where you're going. You walk toward the light.

That's when I heard the fridge door open.

Not the big door. The little one on the side, the one that sticks sometimes. And out she came, rolling across the floor like she'd been thrown. She bounced once, twice, and landed right in my path.

"Hey!" she said. "Who are you?"

I stopped. She was red. Not just red. Red like a fire truck, red like a warning sign, red like she wanted you to notice her from across the room. She had little seeds all over her skin, tiny yellow dots, and a green cap on her head that looked like it had been combed into place. She was round and shiny and she smelled sweet. Too sweet. Like she was trying too hard.

"I'm Banana," I said. "And you must be the reddest berry in this whole kitchen."

She laughed. It was a short laugh, almost a snort. "Berry? I'm not a berry. I'm a strawberry. That's different."

"It's in the name."

"That's not how it works."

I shrugged. Or I tried to. Bananas don't have shoulders. "Whatever you say, red."

She rolled a little closer. Her cap tilted to one side. "You know what? I bet I'm sweeter than you."

"Excuse me?"

"I said what I said." She had this look on her face, like she'd already won something. "I'm sweeter. Everyone knows strawberries are the sweetest thing in the kitchen."

I felt something hot in my middle. Not ripe-hot. Angry-hot. "You've been in the fridge the whole time. How would you know?"

"I know things."

"You don't know anything."

"I know I'm sweeter than a banana."

Now, here's the thing about bananas. We don't get mad easy. We're patient. We ripen slow. But when someone comes at us like that, when someone rolls out of a fridge and starts talking trash before they've even said good morning, something in us snaps.

"Fine," I said. "Let's find out."

"Find out how?"

"A competition. Who's sweeter. Who's tastier. We get someone to judge."

She tilted her cap the other way. "And who's going to judge? The milk? The eggs? They don't have taste buds."

"They have opinions."

"Not good ones."

She had a point. The milk was sour half the time, and the eggs never left their carton. We needed someone neutral. Someone who hadn't been in the fridge for weeks, someone who hadn't been sitting in a bowl getting soft.

That's when something dropped from the ceiling.

I don't know where it came from. The counter, maybe. The top of the fridge. It landed between us with a soft thud and rolled to a stop. Brown and fuzzy. Small. Round. It looked like a potato that had been left out too long, except it had a green center when it turned, just a flash of it, bright and strange.

"I'll be the judge," it said.

The strawberry and I both stared.

"Who are you?" I asked.

"Kiwi."

"Kiwi?"

"Kiwi."

The strawberry rolled forward. "You're not from around here."

"No," said the kiwi. "I'm from the back of the drawer. Behind the napkins. Nobody ever looks there."

I felt a little bad for it. The back of the drawer is a lonely place. I've never been, but I've heard stories. You go in, you don't come out. Unless you're a kiwi, apparently.

"Fine," I said. "You can judge."

"Good," said the kiwi. "Because I'm hungry."

It moved fast for something so round. One second it was sitting there, the next it was right up in my face, and I felt a tiny bite, a little pinch on my side, and then it pulled back and chewed.

"Hm," it said.

Then it turned to the strawberry. Same thing. Quick bite. Chew. Swallow.

"Hm," it said again.

We waited. The kitchen was quiet. Even the fridge stopped humming for a second. I could hear my own heartbeat, which is weird because bananas don't have hearts. But I felt something in there, something thumping.

The kiwi sat down. It looked at me, then at her, then at me again.

"You're both good," it said.

"That's not an answer," said the strawberry.

"It's the only answer."

"Pick one."

"Why?"

"Because that's how competitions work."

The kiwi shook its head. Or it wobbled. Hard to tell with kiwis. "You're both sweet. You're both tasty. You're different, but different isn't better or worse. Why would I choose one when I can have both?"

The strawberry opened her mouth. Closed it. Opened it again.

I didn't say anything. I was thinking.

Both. I'd never thought about both. I'd been so focused on finding a friend, on finding someone to sit next to in the bowl, that I'd never considered what happens after. What if the friend isn't like you? What if they're red and round and annoying and they think they're better than you? What then?

"You know," I said, slow, "we could just... not compete."

The strawberry looked at me. "What do you mean?"

"I mean, we could do something together. Something that uses both of us."

"Like what?"

I looked at the kiwi. The kiwi looked at me. And then I got it. The idea came like a light turning on, sudden and bright.

"A smoothie," I said.

The strawberry blinked. "A smoothie?"

"Yeah. You, me, some ice, maybe a little yogurt. Blend it all up. You don't have to be sweeter than me. I don't have to be sweeter than you. We're both in there. Together."

She was quiet for a long time. The kiwi was quiet too. The fridge hummed. The light from the window moved an inch across the floor.

"That's stupid," she said.

"Maybe."

"That's really stupid."

"Maybe."

She rolled a little closer. Her cap was crooked now, and she didn't fix it. "But it might be good."

"It might be."

She looked at the kiwi. "What do you think?"

The kiwi shrugged. Or wobbled. "I think I want a smoothie."

And that was it. That was the moment. The strawberry and I, we looked at each other, and something shifted. Not like a big thing. Not like a movie moment. Just a small thing, a tiny thing, like a seed cracking open. We weren't enemies anymore. We weren't competitors. We were ingredients. And ingredients don't fight. They mix.

"Okay," she said. "Let's do it."

"Okay," I said.

We turned toward the blender. It was sitting on the counter, tall and silver, waiting. The kiwi hopped up first, then the strawberry, then me. We stood there, the three of us, looking at the buttons.

"You know how to work this thing?" the strawberry asked.

"No," I said. "Do you?"

"No."

The kiwi reached out and pressed the button. The blender roared to life.

And that's when I realized something. I'd been looking for a friend. I'd been walking across the kitchen, searching, hoping, planning. But I'd been looking in the wrong place. I'd been looking for someone like me. Someone yellow. Someone curved. Someone who knew what it felt like to sit in a bowl and wait.

But the friend I found was red and round and stubborn and sweet. She was nothing like me. And that was the point. That was the whole point.

The blender spun. The kitchen filled with noise. And somewhere in the middle of it, I heard her laugh. Not the snort. A real laugh. Warm and bright.

I laughed too.

We didn't know it yet, but we were already a smoothie. We just hadn't been blended.