Orange Skies Over Padel Courts

I quit baseball three weeks before sophomore year started. Big mistake. That's what everyone's thinking when they see me carrying a padel racquet instead of a bat.

"Dude, since when do you play padel?" Tyler asks, his voice dripping with that special kind of embarrassment only teenage boys can pull. We've been best friends since sixth grade, but suddenly I can tell I'm becoming that friend—the one you keep around out of habit, not because you actually want to.

"Since I realized I suck at baseball," I say, trying to make it sound like a joke.

The truth? I quit because baseball stopped feeling like mine. It became about my dad's glory days, about coaches yelling about scholarships, about Tyler and the team making inside jokes I wasn't part of anymore.

Now I spend my afternoons at the padel courts, which nobody from school goes to. It's weirdly peaceful, except for the part where I'm terrible at it.

That's where I meet Sofia. She's got this orange hair—like, actually orange, not just "I found a good dye job" orange. She's playing padel like she invented it, laughing every time she messes up a shot.

"You're gripping it wrong," she calls out, bouncing on her toes. "You look like you're trying to strangle someone."

"That's basically my emotional state."

She snorts. "Welcome to the club. We meet on Tuesdays. Optional attendance, mandatory sarcasm."

So it becomes a thing. Me and Sofia, playing padel and complaining about everything. Meanwhile, my mom's on this health kick, leaving orange juice and vitamin gummies on the counter with sticky notes that say things like "Vitamin D for your mood!" and "Remember: you are what you eat!" which, given my current diet of anxiety and sarcasm, is concerning.

The night of Tyler's birthday party, I'm scrolling through my phone, watching stories of everyone at the bowling alley. I'm not invited. Not officially, but also definitely not. Baseball team only, obviously.

Sofia texts me: "Wanna hit the courts? I'll crush you and you'll pay me in snacks."

I grab my racquet. The sunset is burning orange across the sky, painting everything in this wild, impossible color that makes everything feel temporary and okay at the same time. We play until our arms are tired and I'm laughing so hard my ribs hurt.

"You know," Sofia says, "you're way better at this than you think."

"That's the nicest thing anyone's said to me in months."

"That's pathetic."

"I know."

But it's not really. Because for the first time in forever, I'm not waiting for someone else to decide where I belong. I'm just here, hitting a ball back and forth under orange skies, figuring out that some friendships don't survive growing up, and that's okay. The real ones—the ones that matter—they find you anyway.