Lightning on the Padel Court

The orange uniform screamed against my skin. Bright. Unignorable. Exactly what I didn't want to be.

"You look like a traffic cone," Jenna had whispered that morning, laughing like it was funny. Like she wasn't abandoning me right before our first padel tournament. Like she hadn't been my best friend since seventh grade.

Now I stood alone on the court, racquet weighing a thousand pounds, while she sat in the bleachers with them. The cool crowd. The ones who'd somehow morphed from awkward middle schoolers into confident high schoolers with perfect hair and inside jokes I wasn't part of anymore.

I missed my old orange shirt. The faded one. The safe one.

"You ready?" my opponent asked. Some sophomore with dead eyes and a serve that could crack concrete.

I adjusted my grip, heart hammering against my ribs like it wanted to escape my body and walk home without me.

Then it happened – lightning split the sky above us, so close the air tasted like ozone. Everyone gasped. The scoreboard flickered.

"Game delay," someone shouted.

I slumped against the fence, fumbling for my phone. Needing to see something. Anything. A text from Jenna. Something from my mom. Proof I existed.

But my charging cable was frayed. Useless. 2% battery. Perfect.

"Hey."

I looked up. Quinn – Jenna's neighbor, the quiet one who always sat behind us in English – held out a portable charger.

"Yours looks about to die." He shrugged. "You're gonna need it after you crush this match."

Something shifted. The orange uniform felt less like a target, more like armor. Lightning flashed again, but this time I didn't flinch.

"Thanks," I said, plugging in.

Quinn didn't walk away. He sat beside me on the bench.

"Jenna's being weird," he said, like it was the most normal thing in the world. "You don't deserve that."

The scoreboard buzzer sounded. Match resuming.

I stood up, orange and electric and not alone anymore. "Watch me play."

He grinned. "Wouldn't miss it."

Sometimes lightning doesn't strike twice. It just strikes differently.