Spinach Stains & Second Serves

Maya smoothed her white skirt for the fiftieth time, stomach doing Olympic gymnastics. First day at Ridgewood Academy, and somehow she'd already agreed to play padel with the popular girls during lunch.

"You'll love it," Chloe had said with that terrifyingly perfect smile. "We play every Tuesday. It's, like, our thing."

Their thing. Maya felt like an imposter in her own life.

At the padel courts — which looked like tennis courts' cooler cousin — the group gathered. There was Chloe, queen bee with expensive highlights. Sasha, who always looked vaguely bored. And Harper, whose family apparently owned half the town.

"We need a fourth," Chloe announced. "Maya's with us."

The locker room had been chaotic that morning. In her rush, Maya had grabbed the first wrap from the fridge. A spinach wrap. Which was currently discovering new and creative ways to humiliate her.

"You got something..." Harper gestured to her own teeth.

Maya's reflection in her phone confirmed her worst nightmare. Spinach. A whole forest of it, wedged between her front teeth like tiny green flags announcing her social suicide.

"I'll be right back," she mumbled, sprinting toward the fountain. She scrubbed with her fingernail until her gums ached, checking repeatedly. Gone. Finally.

But her mouth felt gross, so she grabbed the sports bottle from her bag — her lucky orange Gatorade, the kind her mom always packed. She took a massive swig.

Which immediately went down the wrong pipe.

Maya spent the next sixty seconds coughing violently while Chloe and the others watched with mixed expressions of concern and secondhand embarrassment. Her eyes watered. Her nose ran. All dignity evaporated.

"You okay?" Chloe asked, actually sounding concerned.

"Never better," Maya wheezed. "Just practising my dying whale impression."

To her shock, Chloe laughed. Not the mean laugh Maya expected, but a real one.

"That was actually kind of impressive," Sasha said.

They played padel after that. Maya was terrible. Her serve went into the fence three times. But she made jokes about her "agricultural" approach to the game, and they laughed. Real laughs.

By the time they sat on the bench afterward, sharing Harper's expensive orange slices and passing around water bottles, Maya realized something.

Chloe had spinach in her teeth too.

Maya almost said something. Almost. But then she remembered how awful it felt to be that person with the public notification system stuck in her teeth.

"Good game," she said instead, handing Chloe a water bottle.

Chloe took it. "Yeah. You're... actually pretty funny. You should come back Tuesday."

"I'll be there," Maya said. "With floss. Just kidding."

"Yeah, okay," Chloe said, grinning. "See you Tuesday, Spinach Girl."

Maya didn't even mind. Some nicknames were worth earning.