Dead Tired & Deep End

Monday morning hit like a freight train. I'd spent the entire weekend binging that new zombie show until 3 AM both nights, which basically meant I was walking through life as a member of the undead myself. My mom handed me this bright orange *vitamin* C gummy with her morning lecture about "immune health" and "responsible choices" — code for "please stop rotting your brain, Maya." I swallowed it without argument because my brain was already mush.

"You're going to that padel clinic today," she added, dropping the bomb casually.

"Mom, NO." I practically choked on my own tongue. "I hate sports. Everyone knows this about me."

"Chloe's going. Her mom said you'd regret it if you didn't sign up."

Chloe. The girl who'd somehow leveled up from socially awkward to socially unstoppable over spring break while I was busy watching fictional apocalypses. Now she was part of the padel crew — all athletic tops and inside jokes and weekend plans that formed in group chats I wasn't part of anymore.

So there I was, standing on a padel court at 10 AM looking like a human disaster in borrowed court shoes, gripping a racquet like it might bite me. The coachdemoed some forehand technique that required actual coordination, which I apparently did not possess. My first swing sent the ball flying backward into the fence. Someone snorted. I wanted to dissolve.

But then Chloe caught my eye from across the court and gave me this tiny nod, and somehow I didn't immediately walk out the gate. We got paired up for drills, and she was actually terrible too — like, impressively bad. We started laughing so hard we couldn't even serve properly.

"You look like a zombie trying to learn tennis," she wheezed.

"That's literally my aesthetic right now," I shot back.

After two hours of **running** around like idiots, high-fiving over accidental winners, and genuinely sweating through my shirt, something shifted. The social wall I'd built in my head wasn't as solid as I'd thought.

"Pool afterwards?" she asked as we packed up. "I need like five hours of **swimming** to recover from this athleticism."

"I thought you'd never ask."

Floating in the cold water an hour later, watching the light ripple across the ceiling, I realized something: I'd been so busy *running* from everything — from trying new things, from feeling awkward, from putting myself out there and risking failure — that I'd forgotten how good it felt to actually show up. The vitamin gummy hadn't fixed me. The zombie weekend hadn't either.

But this? Showing up, making a fool of myself, and laughing through it with a friend who didn't actually care if I was cool?

That was the real supplement.