Orange Court Summer

The orange padel ball hit the chain-link fence with a satisfying thwunk. I missed again.

"You're thinking too hard, Maya," Leo said, tossing me another ball. His hair was that perfect messy-bun style that probably took twenty minutes to arrange. "Just hit it."

Easier said than done when Leo freaking Chen was my padel partner and I'd barely picked up a racquet three weeks ago. Country club life was still weird to me—like, who wears pastel polos to sweat in 90-degree heat?

My mom had signed me up for "summer enrichment" which really meant "networking with the right families." I'd already memorized the vitamin rotation Mom insisted on—D for bones, B12 for energy, C for "not getting sick and embarrassing us."

The fox appeared on the third day of padel camp.

We were all hanging by the pool after a match—well, everyone else was hanging out. I was pretending to check nonexistent texts while simultaneously mentally reviewing every awkward thing I'd said that day.

Then I saw it: a red fox, padding along the edge of the property like it owned the place. It stopped near the pool, watching us with amber eyes that looked way too intelligent for a wild animal.

"Yo, is that a fox?" asked Brianna, queen of the country club social hierarchy. She was the kind of pretty that made you question everything about your existence.

The fox stared right at me. Then it turned and walked away, tail flicking like it had somewhere better to be.

"That's so random," someone said.

But something about that fox stuck with me. The way it didn't care about Brianna's status or Leo's perfect hair or my obvious outsider energy. It just *was*.

Later that afternoon, Leo found me sitting by the pool alone, feet dangling in the water. Everyone else had left to get smoothies at the club house.

"You coming?" he asked.

"Nah, I'm good."

He sat beside me, not saying anything. The pool water rippled around our legs.

"You know," he said finally, "my older sister was obsessed with vitamin supplements when she was trying to get recruited for rowing. Took, like, fifty pills a day. Drove our parents crazy."

I laughed. "Is that supposed to make me feel better about my apparent awkwardness?"

"Nah, I'm just saying nobody's got it figured out. Even the people who look like they do."

We watched another fox—the same one?—emerge from the bushes. It stopped at the water's edge, took a long drink, then looked at us before disappearing again.

"Foxes usually avoid people," Leo said. "Think it likes it here?"

"Maybe," I said. "Or maybe it just found the one place where nobody's expecting anything from it."

Leo bumped my shoulder with his. "Yeah. Maybe that."

The next day, I finally hit the ball past him. He grinned and said, "About time." And for the first time all summer, I didn't feel like I was performing. I was just playing.

The fox never came back. But that was okay. I was starting to feel like I belonged anyway—orange court and all.