Spy Game at the Padel Court

Maya pressed herself against the chain-link fence, feeling like a total creeper. She wasn't technically a spy, but watching the cool kids play padel from behind the bushes felt basically the same.

"You gonna stand there all day or actually join?"

Maya nearly jumped out of her skin. Leo stood there, padel racket resting on his shoulder, grinning like he'd caught her doing something criminal.

"I was just... observing."

"Spying, you mean." He tossed her a racket. "We need a fourth. Don't overthink it."

The problem was, Maya always overthought everything. Especially after last month, when she'd tried to sit at the popular table at lunch and proceeded to—she still cringed thinking about it—get a piece of spinach stuck in her braces while mid-sentence. Someone had actually pointed. THE WHOLE TABLE HAD NOTICED.

She'd barely spoken to anyone since.

"I'm not good," she warned.

"Neither is Jake, and he's been playing for three years." Leo nodded toward the court, where Jake waved enthusiastically before tripping over his own feet.

Maya's first serve went directly into the net. Her second almost hit Jake's head. Her third landed somewhere in the parking lot.

"Dude," Jake called out, "are you okay? You look like you're about to throw up."

Something about his tone—so genuinely concerned, not mocking—made Maya's throat tight. "I'm just... not really a sports person. Or a people person, honestly."

"Cool," Leo said. "We're not really sports people either. We're mostly just people who hang out and sometimes hit balls."

By the end of the hour, Maya had laughed so hard her stomach hurt. She'd missed every shot, somehow managed to spin around and whack herself in the knee with her own racket, and accidentally called the teacher "Mr. Padel" to his face.

"You're coming back tomorrow, right?" Leo asked as they walked off the court.

Maya thought about the spinach incident. About the months of eating lunch alone. About how she'd been spying on friendships from the sidelines for so long she'd forgotten how to be in one.

"Yeah," she said, and something in her chest loosened. "Yeah, I'm coming back."

Maybe being a spy was overrated anyway.