Running Toward Real

The fluorescent lights of the padel court reflected in my sweaty glasses as I whiffed another serve. Again.

"My grandma moves faster, and she literally has a hip replacement," Jake called from across the court, high-fiving his identical clone friends.

My face burned. I'd joined the school's first-ever padel team becausemaya said Jake's squad was where things happened this year. Instead, I'd spent three months proving that coordination isn't something you can vitamin-deficiency your way out of — believe me, I'd tried.

That night, I dumped my gym bag on my bedroom floor and stared at the orange bottle on my desk. Vitamin D. The doctor had said I was deficient, that fourteen hours indoors daily wasn't doing me any favors. But the real deficiency wasn't something I could supplement.

I laced up my running shoes at 5 AM — something I'd started doing secretly, hoping cardio would somehow translate to not sucking at padel. The air was crisp, my lungs burned, and for the first time all day, I wasn't performing.

Then I saw him.

Jake. Running. Alone. No entourage, no swagger, just a kid in a ratty hoodie pushing himself up the hill, gasping like the rest of us mortals.

He caught my eye. Neither of us stopped. We just kept running, two people who sucked at being cool, finding something real in the motion.

At school Monday, he was back to performing. But across the crowded cafeteria, our eyes met, and I swear he almost smiled. Not the fake one. The real one.

I quit padel that afternoon. Kept running instead. Some mornings, Jake's there too. We don't talk much. We don't have to.

Turns out the best vitamins aren't the ones you swallow. They're the ones that make you finally feel alive.