Spinach Tooth & The Backhand Shot

Maya's palms were sweating through her grip on the padel racket. This was it—tryouts for the varsity team, and somehow she'd landed in a drills group with Chloe, whose Instagram basically screamed 'I peak in high school.'

"Your form's actually not trash," Chloe said, surprising her. Then she smirked. "But you've got a little something..."

Maya's stomach dropped. She'd had that spinach smoothie for breakfast because her mom was on a health kick AGAIN. There was probably green stuff in her teeth. GREAT. Just what she needed—looking like a walking salad in front of the girl who'd been giving her main character energy since seventh grade.

Then chaos exploded onto the court.

"MAYA!"

Her brother's voice. Behind the fence, Buster—that idiot dog—had somehow wriggled free during their walk and was now BOLTING toward the padel courts with a chunk of something green dangling from his mouth.

"Is that... SPINACH?" Chloe cracked up, actually cracking up. "Why does your dog have spinach?"

"He's OBSESSED," Maya groaned, sprinting to grab Buster's collar. "Like, he stole it from my mom's grocery bag and now he won't eat anything else. We're basically those people with a weird dog."

Chloe was laughing so hard she had to lean on her racket. "That's actually iconic. My dog eats dirty socks and I thought THAT was bad."

Something shifted. Maybe it was watching Chloe lose her cool, or maybe it was just that Maya was too embarrassed to keep pretending, but she just blurted it: "Dude, I've been stressing all morning about tryouts and I'm pretty sure I had spinach in my teeth this whole time."

"Yeah, you definitely did," Chloe said, grinning. "But honestly? Your backhand is fire, and your dog has better taste in vegetables than my little brother. We should practice sometime."

Maya walked home with Buster (still chewing on spinach leaves like they were treats) grinning like an idiot. Sometimes the most embarrassing moments became the best ones. And honestly? Maybe weird was exactly who she was supposed to be.