Dead Man Walking to Padel Practice

The first time I saw Marco, he looked straight-up dead. Not the cute-boy dead my friends talk about — like, tired-but-still-hot. I mean actual **zombie** mode. Eyes half-closed, shuffling through the hallway with his jacket half-on. If he groaned, I wouldn't have been surprised.

"That's Marco," Lily whispered, following my gaze. "Captain of the **padel** team."

"Padel?" I asked. "Like, paddleball?"

"No, like, the only sport that matters here," she said, and her voice had that edge — the one that said I should already know this. I'd been at Crestwood High for exactly three days, coming from a school where **baseball** was religion. Here, nobody knew what a curveball was.

That's when it hit me: I was the zombie. Going through motions, pretending to understand inside jokes about padel matches I'd never seen, faking enthusiasm for weekend parties I wasn't invited to. My life back home felt like someone else's memory — the smell of clay dust, the crack of a bat, my team's stupid rituals after wins. All of it gone.

The universe decided to punk me the next week at Maya's pool party. Someone pushed me into the **water**, fully clothed, phone in pocket. I came up sputtering, everything ruined, and there was Marco — the actual zombie — standing there laughing so hard he almost fell in too.

"You good?" he asked, extending a hand.

"Yeah," I said, dripping everywhere. "Just living my best life."

He helped me up. "I saw your profile," he said. "You played baseball?"

"Back home," I said, waiting for the punchline. But his eyes lit up.

"Teach me," he said. "I've always wanted to hit properly."

And just like that, I wasn't the zombie anymore. I was the baseball expert, the cool kid who knew something Marco didn't. Turns out, padel and baseball aren't so different — both need good hand-eye coordination, both mess with your head. Marco and I started hanging out, me teaching him batting stances by the pool, him dragging me to padel games I still barely understood.

Sometimes I still feel like I'm walking dead in these hallways, missing my old life. But then Marco texts me, wanna practice, and I remember: new worlds aren't about replacing old ones. They're about growing big enough for both.