Bad Hair, Worse Serve

My hair was supposed to be 'brave.' That's what the stylist said when I showed her the TikTok tutorial. 'Brave' turned out to be code for 'I messed up your hair and you can't un-mess it.' Now I had what looked like a chia pet explosion on my head, two days before freshman orientation at Willow Creek High.

I spent the entire weekend in my room, only emerging for food or to stare at my reflection and cry. By Monday, I'd discovered salvation: a worn-looking beige baseball cap I found in the back of my closet. It became my permanent head accessory. Inside, outside, to dinner, everywhere. My mom started giving me these looks that said 'we need to talk about this' but she didn't say anything. Probably saving her energy for when I refused to take it off for school pictures.

Then came the first padel tournament of the season. Padel had been my thing since middle school – the one sport where my coordination actually worked with me instead of against me. Coach Miller had been hyping up our team's chances all summer, and suddenly there I was: starting varsity as a freshman, hiding under a hat like my hair was a state secret.

The locker room was weird. Tyler, our team captain who I'd been secretly crushing on since seventh grade, kept looking at me like I was about to rob a bank. 'New aesthetic?' he finally asked during warmups.

'Something like that,' I mumbled, adjusting the hat like my life depended on it. The brim kept sliding down over my eyes while I tried to serve.

First match came. My serve was trash. I couldn't see properly through the hat's shadow, and every time I adjusted it, my opponent from Riverside High gave me this tiny smirk. Like she knew something. Tyler kept calling timeouts to 're-strategize' but I caught him exchanging looks with the other players.

We were down 4-1 in the third set when the unthinkable happened. A smash return flew at my face, and in trying to duck, the hat flew off. My chia-pet hair exploded into full view for everyone – the Riverside team, my teammates, Tyler, the parents, everyone.

I scrambled to grab it, but before I could, someone started clapping. Slow, sarcastic clapping. I looked up, ready to die, and saw Tyler standing there with this grin.

'Finally,' he said. 'Now you can actually see the ball.'

He tossed my hat to the bench. 'Your serve's been off by like three feet all morning. Fix your hair later – we're down a set.'

Something clicked. I didn't grab the hat. I smoothed down my ridiculous hair with both hands, walked to the service line, and served. Perfect.

We won the match. And yeah, my hair still looked like a Chia pet experiment gone wrong. But Tyler was right – nobody was looking at it anymore. They were watching me play. The hat stayed on the bench. And apparently, he thinks chia-pet hair is 'actually kind of sick' so... win?