Finding My Swing

The **padel** court gleamed like something out of a glossier, better-funded dimension. I stood there holding a rental racket, feeling like I'd wandered onto the set of a show I'd never binge-watched.

"You coming, Maya?" called Chloe, who somehow made wearing a tennis skirt and full makeup look effortless. Her dad owned three car dealerships. This was her natural habitat. Mine was the baseball diamond behind the community center, where my cousins taught me to hit homers using a borrowed bat and dreams that didn't require a membership fee.

"Yeah," I lied, adjusting my visor. "Just... visualizing my strategy."

"Visualizing?" Chloe laughed. "It's **padel**, not chess. Just hit the ball."

My phone buzzed in my bag. Mom had sent a picture: slices of **papaya** arranged on my favorite plate, the one with the chipped edge shaped like a dolphin. *Have a great day at camp, mija. Don't forget to eat something real.*

Something real. That's what this whole summer program felt like it lacked. Everyone here had last names that meant something, or at least meant something different than mine. Diaz. Half my mother's family still lived in Puerto Rico. Half my dad's thought Puerto Rico was a country near Hawaii.

The game started. I missed the first three serves.

"You good?" asked this guy named Lucas, whose family owned something vague and lucrative. "You look... intense."

"Just thinking about something," I said.

"What?"

"The **sphinx**."

"The what?"

"You know. The riddle thing. What walks on four legs, then two, then three?"

"That's the answer though," Lucas said. "Man."

"Right, but like... what if you're not sure what you're walking on yet?" I said. "What if you're sixteen and you can't tell if you're becoming something or just stumbling around trying different feet?"

Lucas blinked. "Did you just make that about the sphinx?"

"I'm deep," I said. "Also, I'm hungry."

Later, I found the old **baseball** field behind the maintenance shed. Weeds grew through the backstop, but home plate was still there, faded and perfect. I pulled a ball from my bag—swiped from the equipment bin—and set it on the ground.

The first swing: foul ball into the fence.

Second swing: air. Elegant, graceful air.

Third swing: *crack.*

The ball soared over the weeds, toward the padel courts, toward the gleaming future that wasn't mine yet and maybe didn't have to be.

Lucas appeared at the fence. "That was... actually kind of sick."

"Want me to teach you?" I asked.

"For real?"

"Yeah. But you have to try papaya first. It's an acquired taste, like being real."

He considered this. "Deal."

Some swings you learn. Some you're born with. The important ones, you choose.