serve volley

Maya's iPhone burned against her thigh, vibrating with another Instagram notification from the padel club's account. She'd been stalking their posts for weeks—basically acting like a total spy, gathering intel on when *he* would be there.

Liam. The new transfer student with the perfect smile and the way his eyes crinkled when he laughed in AP Bio, even though he sat three rows away and didn't know she existed.

"You're doing it again," Maya's best friend Priya said, popping up beside her at their lunch table. "The creepy spy thing."

"I'm not being creepy," Maya protested, though her face heated up. "I'm just... observing. From a distance. With intentionality."

"That's literally what a spy IS, Maya."

Maya's parents had finally agreed to let her join the padel club last month, something she'd been begging for since seventh grade. But now that she'd actually seen Liam play—graceful, powerful, his shirt sticking to his back—she was terrified. What if she sucked? What if he thought she was lame? What if she joined and he didn't even notice?

Her phone buzzed again. Priya grabbed it first.

"OH MY GOD," Priya practically shouted. "He commented on your story! The one from yesterday—you know, that sunset pic? He wrote 'nice shot' with the fire emoji. THE FIRE EMOJI, MAYA."

Maya's stomach did this weird flip thing, like when you drop your phone screen-down on concrete and that millisecond before you know it's okay. "He probably just—"

"NO. You're going to practice today. You're going to talk to him. And you're going to stop being a spy and actually be a person who exists in three-dimensional space."

So here she was, standing at the edge of the padel court, her racquet feeling like a foreign object in her sweating hands. Liam was there, laughing with his friends, his hair wet from practice.

He looked up.

Their eyes met.

"Hey!" he called, waving her over. "You're Maya, right? From bio? You finally joined!"

Maya's throat went dry. "Uh, yeah. Hi."

"Cool." He grinned, those crinkles appearing. "Wanna play?"

Later, sweaty and exhausted and somehow absolutely alive, Maya's iPhone pinged in her bag.

Liam: "had fun today. you're actually really good. same time tomorrow?"

She wasn't a spy anymore. She was a player.