Frizz and Forehands

My hair was having a literal existential crisis — frizzing out like it had personally offended the humidity gods. I'd spent forty-five minutes trying to tame it because Jason was finally going to notice me today, except the universe clearly had other plans.

"Dude, your hair is... doing something," Marcus said, gesturing vaguely at my head as we walked past the baseball field. Jason was at bat, looking perfect in his uniform, while I looked like a walking electrocution experiment.

"Shut up, Marcus." I yanked my hoodie up. "Let's just go."

We weren't heading to the baseball game. We were going to the padel courts behind the community center — this weird mix of tennis and squash that practically nobody at school played or cared about. My parents had signed me up for summer lessons because they were convinced I needed "structure" and "socialization," which was parent-code for "our son has no friends."

"Wait," Marcus stopped. "Isn't that Alex from chem?"

I followed his gaze. There she was, holding a padel racquet like she owned the place, her hair cropped into this buzzed-on-one-side, long-on-the-other situation that I'd been secretly obsessed with since she'd shown up with it on Monday.

She spotted us and waved. "Wanna play? My partner bailed."

My brain short-circuited. I didn't know the first thing about padel, but suddenly I was voluntold as Marcus mouthed "YOU'RE WELCOME" and literally sprinted away.

An hour later, I was sweating through my hoodie, my hair had achieved maximum chaos, and I was absolutely terrible at this sport.

But Alex was laughing at my terrible serves instead of at my hair. "You keep trying to hit it like a baseball swing," she said. "This isn't baseball, Aaron. The ball's coming at your face, not your ankles."

"Right. Face. Noted."

"You should come back tomorrow," she said. "Your hair's kinda cool when you stop trying to hide it."

I didn't make it to Jason's baseball game. Turns out, my hair wasn't the problem — I'd just been playing the wrong game.