Orange Court Confessions

My life was divided into two parts: before the goldfish incident, and after.

I was crushing hard on Maya—who happened to be the best padel player at school. Meanwhile, I was coordinated enough to trip over flat surfaces. When the tryouts poster went up, I signed up anyway, because sometimes you have to lean into the cringe.

"You're actually trying out?" Liam asked, spraying orange Gatorade all over his math homework. "Bro, you served a volleyball into your own face last year."

"That was one time," I muttered, wiping the spray off my notebook. "And I've been practicing."

Okay, practicing was a stretch. I'd been watching YouTube tutorials and swinging a racket in my garage while my pet goldfish, Bubbles, watched judgmentally from his bowl on the shelf. We had a system: I'd complain about Maya, he'd swim in circles, and somehow it felt therapeutic.

Then came the low point of my freshman year: the spying phase. I'd gotten it into my head that if I understood Maya's world, I could somehow enter it. So I'd started lurking near the padel courts during lunch, pretending to be deeply interested in the oak tree while actually memorizing her serving technique.

"You're being so creepy," my best friend Sarah told me. "Just talk to her like a normal person."

"I'm not creepy," I protested. "I'm conducting research."

The goldfish incident happened the day before tryouts. I was rushing to the kitchen when I knocked Bubbles' bowl off the counter. It shattered everywhere—water everywhere, glass everywhere, goldfish flopping on the linoleum like a dying metaphor for my social life.

I scooped him up, hands shaking, and practically dove into the nearest container—my sister's orange juice glass.

Bubbles survived. My dignity didn't.

Tryouts came. My hands were shaking, my stomach was in knots, and somehow—somehow—I made the team. Not because I was good, but because Maya watched me serve directly into the fence, sighed, and told the coach, "He's got potential."

Later, she found me behind the gym, hyperventilating.

"I saw you," she said, tossing an orange at me. "Hiding behind that tree. Every day."

"Oh." Heat flooded my face. "That."

"Also, nice save with the goldfish. My sister was at your house when it happened. Said it was legendary panic." She smirked. "Wanna get padel food sometime? I mean, regular food. But at the padel place."

Maybe Bubbles was my life coach all along.