Orange Courtside

The orange hoodie was my armor. First day at the resort club, and I was already regretting letting Mom sign me up for summer padel camp. "It's how you'll make friends!" she'd said, like friendship was just another extracurricular you could register for.

"You playing or what?" The guy in cutoffs pointed at my racquet.

"Yeah. Just... stretching." I lied. My palms were sweating. I wiped them on my shorts, then remembered I was wearing the orange hoodie Mom had picked out. Because nothing says "cool and approachable" like looking like a traffic cone.

Court three. Three people who actually knew what they were doing, and me.

"I'm Sasha." A girl with impossibly shiny hair tossed me a ball. "That's Chase, and she's River."

River didn't look up from her phone. She was a sphinx — unreadable, untouchable, the kind of girl who'd been popular since preschool and knew it. Great.

We hit around. I shanked everything into the fence. Chase just laughed. "You'll get it. Worst first week ever, but you'll get it."

"Thanks, that's reassuring."

"I don't do reassurance. I do realism." He grinned. And okay, maybe he was cute. Whatever.

My phone buzzed in my pocket. 2%. I'd forgotten to charge it last night because I'd been too busy overanalyzing Sasha's Instagram stories, trying to figure out what kind of person she was. The cable was sitting on my nightstand at home, useless.

"River, pass me your charger?" I asked during water break. "My phone's about to die."

She finally looked up. "Why? You afraid you'll miss something?"

"Just... habits."

"Being tethered isn't a personality," she said, but she handed over a braided cable anyway.

By Thursday, I stopped shanking every ball. By Friday, Chase started giving me actual pointers instead of just watching me fail. By Saturday, River sat with me at lunch.

"You're not terrible," she said, like this was high praise.

"I'll take it."

"The hoodie's growing on me. It's... a lot. But it's a lot."

We played until sunset. My palms didn't sweat anymore. The sphinx had cracked jokes. The cute boy had held the door when we left the court. And somehow, impossibly, I had a group chat blowing up my phone.

Mom was right. Sometimes you just needed to show up.

I walked home in my orange armor, already looking forward to tomorrow.