Cymru

The first week at this stuck-up country club, I quickly learned that social hierarchies are like pyramids—steep, unforgiving, and with way more people at the bottom crushing each other than the cool kids at the top. And the apex? The padel court.

I'd never even heard of padel before, apparently it's tennis's cooler, more exclusive cousin. Every day after lunch, the popular crowd would claim the courts while the rest of us pretended not to watch.

'You coming?' asked Marcus, the only person who'd actually spoken to me all week.

I shook my head, gesturing at my brown paper bag. My mom had packed me a papaya. A literal whole papaya. Like, thanks Mom, nothing screams 'I fit in here' quite like trying to figure out how to eat tropical fruit in front of strangers.

'Dude,' Marcus said, 'that's actually kinda sick.' He sat down next to me. 'I'd kill for something that's not soggy club sandwich.'

We ended up sharing the papaya with our hands, sticky juice dripping everywhere, laughing like idiots. The popular kids walked past—Tyler and his pyramid scheme of a friend group—barely even glanced at us.

The next day, they were short a player for padel. Tyler pointed at me. 'You. You're in.'

I panicked. I'd never played. I froze.

'Go,' Marcus whispered. 'It's fine.' He knelt down and whistled, and this golden retriever that belonged to one of the members came bounding over. 'See? Even Copper knows you got this.'

I played. I was terrible. But afterward, Tyler was like, 'Not bad for a first-timer.' Marcus rolled his eyes at me when Tyler turned away.

That night, my mom tried to make me feel better by serving spinach lasagna. 'Eat your greens, mijo.'

But I didn't care about the weird lunch. For the first time, I'd climbed a little higher up that pyramid. And I'd learned that sometimes, all it takes is someone sitting with you while you figure out how to eat a papaya like a normal human being.