If high school students ask ‘What is a particle?’, they get diverse answers, such as a) a point-like object with mass and various charges, b) a particle is what we see in the detector, c) a collapsed wave function, d) an excitation of a quantum field. I will briefly discuss the strengths and weaknesses of these definitions and argue in favor of options c) and d) as promising paths for satisfying the curiosity of motivated high school students. Introducing particles as excitations or waves in quantum fields at this level is certainly challenging, but I believe there is a way.