Green Smoothies and Frizzy Curls

Maya's mom stood in the kitchen doorway, holding out the blender like a peace offering. "It's got spinach. You need iron for track season."

"Hard pass," Maya said, already reaching for the doorknob. "I'm meeting Jalen at the park."

"Your hair looks gorgeous like that," her mom called after her. "You should wear it natural more often."

Maya rolled her eyes and grabbed a scrunchie. Her curls were already rebelling against the humidity, exploding into a frizzy halo that she'd spent years trying to tame with straighteners and gel. At school, she was the girl with the "interesting hair" — the compliment that felt like an insult.

Outside, the air was thick enough to chew. Jalen was already stretching by the track, his dreads pulled back in a neat band. "You ready for tryouts next week?"

"Should be asking you that," Maya countered, though her stomach did that nervous flip thing. "You've been running sub-5:40 all week."

"And you've been obsessing over your split times instead of actually eating anything." He pulled a wrapped sandwich from his bag. "My mom made extra."

Maya hesitated. She'd been living on anxiety and spite since Coach Peterson mentioned the state qualifying cutoff at practice. "Maybe later. Let's run."

They fell into their rhythm, sneakers crunching against the rubber track. The first lap was always garbage — her legs feeling heavy, her lungs protesting, that voice in her head asking why she bothered. But by the second lap, something shifted. The motion smoothed out. Her breathing synced with her footfalls. This was the part she loved: the moment when everything else fell away and there was just the next stride, the next breath, the relentless forward motion.

Then Jalen's stride stuttered.

Maya turned to see him stumbling, face going pale as he bent double. "Yo, you good?"

"Think I'm gonna—" he started, then bolted toward the water fountain near the bleachers.

Maya followed, confused, until she saw him retching nothing into the bushes. "Dude. What did you even eat today?"

He looked up, miserable. "Nothing. That's the problem."

"You haven't eaten?"

"I ate yesterday," he said weakly. "I'm trying to make weight for wrestling. Coach says if I drop five pounds, I can compete at 130 instead of 135."

Maya stared at him. "You're doing WHAT?"

"It's not that big of a deal—"

"You literally just passed out from running on empty, Jalen. That is the definition of a big deal."

He looked away, shame written all over his face. "I just — I don't know. I thought you were doing something too. You've been skipping lunch all week."

"I've been eating breakfast," she said, then paused. "Mostly."

"Why have you been wearing your hair in a bun every day?" he asked suddenly. "You used to wear it down."

Maya's hand went to her hair automatically. "It's just easier for practice."

"You think Coach Peterson cares about your hair?" Jalen raised an eyebrow. "He cares about your 400-meter split. Which, by the way, has been getting slower all week."

She didn't have a good answer for that.

The water fountain bubbled behind them, a steady, indifferent rhythm. Maya thought about her mom's smoothies, about how she'd been measuring her worth in inches and pounds and hundredths of a second. About Jalen, who was literally killing himself to fit into a weight class.

"My mom made this green smoothie thing," she said finally. "Spinach and banana and other questionable life choices."

"That sounds disgusting."

"It really, really does." She held out a hand. "Come on. We're going to my house."

"What? Why?"

"Because we're both being idiots," she said, "and I'm hungry, and you're obviously about to die, and my mom has been trying to force-feed us both for like a week."

Jalen hesitated, then grinned. "Only if you drink one too."

"Deal."

The smoothie was, in fact, terrible. But Jalen drank his without complaining, and Maya drank hers without fixing her hair into a tight, controlled bun, and when they headed back out to the track, neither of them was running from anything anymore.

"Hey," Jalen said, as they stretched under the fading sunlight. "You know you're probably gonna make state, right? Your hair, no hair, whatever."

Maya smiled. "You too. At whatever weight class."

He checked his phone. "Crap. I was supposed to be home twenty minutes ago."

"Running?"

"Running."