Life After Sunrise

6 AM practice felt less like athletics and more like the walking dead. My limbs dragged as I trudged toward the courts, brain still fuzzed from last night's three-hour TikTok hole. Coach called it 'discipline.' I called it cruel and unusual punishment.

The padel courts stood empty except for Mia, already there, racket in hand, orange hoodie glowing against the pale dawn. She wasn't even supposed to be here—padel was spring semester, my thing, not hers. Baseball happened on the other side of the complex, where the 'real athletes' practiced.

"You look like a zombie," she said, bouncing a ball against the fence. I probably did. Dark circles under my eyes, hair doing whatever it wanted, the whole struggling-teenager aesthetic dialed up to eleven.

"Thanks. You look like you actually slept."

Mia shrugged. "Three hours. Had to finish that history project."

We should've been rivals. Baseball kids versus padel kids, like some ridiculous high school caste system. But here we were, two exhausted weirdos bonded by nothing but shared misery and predawn solitude.

"Your form's garbage," she said, tossing me a ball.

"Your face is garbage."

She laughed, and just like that, the weird tension that'd been building all semester dissolved like fog in the morning sun. We hit balls back and forth, nothing fancy, just two teenagers pretending to be athletes while the world woke up around us.

By the time actual practice started, the zombie feeling had faded. Maybe it was the sunrise, finally hitting that perfect orange hue. Maybe it was not feeling so alone in the chaos. Or maybe it was just Mia saying, "Same time tomorrow?" like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

Some mornings, you don't need a breakthrough. You just need someone else who's walking through it too.