Bottom of the Pyramid

My palms were sweating. Like, actually dripping onto my padel racket grip, which was gross but also exactly how much I cared about not making a fool of myself in front of everyone.

"You're overthinking it," Chloe said from across the court, flicking her perfect ponytail. "Just hit the ball, Maya."

Easy for her to say. Chloe sat at the top of the summer resort's social pyramid—descended from the resort-owning family, naturally gifted at everything, and somehow immune to awkwardness. I was somewhere near the bottom, alongside the kids whose parents had saved up for two weeks in paradise.

The ball came at me and I swung. Connected. Actually connected. It sailed over the net and dropped just inside the line.

"Finally!" Chloe laughed, but not meanly. "See? You're not hopeless."

Maybe the pyramid wasn't as fixed as I thought.

After the game—which we lost, but whatever—we headed to the pool. The swimming area was basically social central, lounge chairs arranged in this elaborate hierarchy that everyone implicitly understood. The kids with the best bodies and biggest families got the cabanas. Everyone else made do with scattered towels.

I found my usual spot near the palm tree at the edge, the one with the frond that kept dropping bits into my hair. Gross. But it was my spot.

Except Chloe was already there.

"You don't mind, right?" She was applying sunscreen with that casual confidence I'd been trying to fake all summer. "Everywhere else is so... performative."

"Yeah," I said, sitting down. "Totally."

And then she said something that made my sweaty palms from padel seem like nothing: "I wish I could hang out down here more often. Everyone expects me to be this perfect person at the top, but it's exhausting."

The pyramid shimmered and shifted.

"Being at the bottom's overrated too," I said. "But at least nobody's watching your every move."

"Fair point." She passed me a bag of chips. "Wanna play padel again tomorrow? I'll actually go easy on you this time."

"You promise?"

"Scout's honor." She grinned. "Or whatever. I was never a scout."

"Me neither."

We sat there under the stupid palm tree, eating chips and watching everyone perform their roles in the social pyramid. And for the first time all summer, my palms were dry.