Orange Crush

The orange padel ball whizzed past my ear, missing my head by maybe two inches. I flinched, racket dangling useless at my side.

"You're supposed to HIT it, not duck from it," Chloe called out, flipping her perfect blonde ponytail. She was already sweating, and not in the gross way like me—she glowed. I just sweltered in my stupid neon orange tank top that I'd thought was cute when I bought it online but now realized made me look like a traffic cone.

"I'm trying," I muttered, wiping my forehead with the back of my hand. Padel was supposed to be easier than tennis. That's what everyone said. That's why I'd let Chloe talk me into joining the summer league at the club. So far, all I'd learned was that I was uncoordinated and that Chloe's perfection extended to athletics too.

Game point. Their opponents—a varsity tennis player and his quiet friend—smirked at each other. I knew what they were thinking. Easy win.

Then I saw him.

Beyond the chain-link fence, past the immaculate courts, there was a hill that sloped down to the neighbor's pasture. Where the neighbor kept his prize bull. A massive black creature that usually stood still as a statue, chewing cud like it was meditating on the meaning of life.

But now? The bull was trotting. Purposefully.

"Uh, guys?" I said.

"Focus, Harper!" Chloe snapped. The ball sailed toward me.

I swung. The racket connected. The ball shot back over the net—a miracle return.

And then I saw why the bull was running. The gate was open. Someone had left it unlatched. The bull trotted toward the courts, toward the shiny new sports complex built way too close to farmland if you asked me, toward US.

"Bull!" I screamed. "There's a—BULL!"

Everyone turned. The varsity guy dropped his racket. The bull, now at full gallop (who knew bulls could gallop?), aimed straight for court three. Where we stood. Frozen. Staring at two thousand pounds of confused muscle charging toward us like we were the matadors in its personal bullring.

Then I did something without thinking. I grabbed the orange ball from the ground, cocked my arm back like I'd learned from watching my brother play baseball, and threw it as hard as I could toward the bull's path.

Not AT the bull. Just... across its path.

The ball bounced. The bull skidded to a halt, head cocking, more curious than angry now. It snorted, pawed the ground once, then lost interest and wandered off toward the parking lot.

"Did you just... distract a bull with a padel ball?" Chloe asked, wide-eyed. For once, she wasn't glowing. She was staring at me like I'd grown a second head.

I shrugged, heart hammering against my ribs. "I guess."

The varsity guy picked up his racket. "That was actually kind of badass."

"Kind of?" I raised an eyebrow.

He grinned. "Okay. Really badass."

I looked down at my traffic-cone orange shirt. Somehow, it didn't feel so stupid anymore.

"So," I said, swinging my racket experimentally. "You guys still want to finish this game, or you too scared to play with the bull-whisperer?"

Chloe laughed—a real laugh, not her fake perfect one. "Oh, you're ON."

I didn't win the match. But as we walked off the court afterward, high-fiving like we'd been friends for years instead of three awkward weeks, I caught the varsity guy watching me. He raised his racket in a little salute.

I smiled back.

Sometimes being the traffic cone wasn't so bad. Sometimes, you just had to throw the ball and see what happened.