Green Smoothie Disaster

Maya stared at the lunch table, trying to look busy. The cross-country team sat two tables away, laughing about something Coach said. She'd been **running** with them for three weeks now—unofficially, on the far edge of the pack—but still felt like an imposter.

"Hey, smoothie girl," called Derek, the sophomore captain. "You trying out for real tomorrow?"

"Yeah," she managed, though her stomach was doing gymnastics. "If I don't choke first."

The joke landed flat. Her face burned. This is why she didn't talk to athletes. They existed in a different stratosphere, while Maya existed in the library with her art projects and weird lunch choices.

She'd started drinking those gross green smoothies for energy, packed with **spinach** because some TikTok said it helped endurance. Which was ridiculous. She was barely running two miles without wanting to die, and here she was, pretending she could compete with kids who'd been at this since middle school.

"What's in that thing anyway?" Derek slid into the seat across from her, genuinely curious.

"You don't want to know."

"Try me."

She sighed. "**Spinach**, banana, and this **papaya** my mom bought because it was on sale, which I'm pretty sure means she's trying to poison me."

Derek laughed, and it was weirdly normal. "Dude, my mom made me drink beet juice last season. I looked like a zombie for a week."

Maya cracked a smile. "No way."

"Way. I still have the photos. It's my blackmail insurance."

The conversation kept going. They talked about the hill on the north course that made everyone want to puke, about how Coach threatened to make them carry water jugs if they skipped practice, about nothing and everything. For the first time, Maya wasn't the quiet girl in art club or the wannabe runner barely keeping up. She was just Maya, someone who made terrible smoothies and sometimes forgot to drink enough **water** and really, really wanted to be part of something.

"So tomorrow," Derek said, standing up. "Don't be nervous. We've all been there."

"Easy for you to say," she called after him. "You probably don't drink spinach for breakfast."

"Touché," he grinned.

That night, Maya blended another smoothie, staring at the green monstrosity. It still looked disgusting. But she drank it anyway, thinking about hills that made you want to puke and a team that might just let her be part of them.

Some things were worth the awkwardness.