Swing and a New Haircut

My mom swore the daily **vitamin** gummy would change everything. "It'll help you grow," she said, handing me the bear-shaped chewable like I was still eight instead of a freshman trying not to disappear into the linoleum floors of Northwood High.

I'd played **baseball** since kindergarten—shortstop, the position that mattered. But something shifted over summer. My teammates started talking about parties I wasn't invited to. They had girlfriends and defined jawlines. I had

a growth spurt that refused to happen and a curveball that suddenly couldn't find the strike zone.

Then I discovered **padel**.

No one at school played it. That was the point. The court at the rec center had these glass walls that made every hit echo like something cinematic. It felt cooler than baseball, more European, less like everyone's dad's weekend league.

I practiced alone after school until my shoulders burned. Mr. Hernandez, the old guy who managed the place, watched me one day through the glass. "You've got anger in that swing, mijo."

"It's not anger," I said, though it was. "I'm just—trying something different."

The real transformation happened the weekend before tryouts. I walked into Hair Exprezzioned with thirty dollars in my pocket and walked out with bleach-blonde tips that made me look like I spent weekends at the beach instead of hitting balls against glass walls.

My **hair** was the first thing anyone noticed Monday morning.

"Whoa, Danny, did you get hit by lightning?" Tyler Jensen called across the cafeteria. His table erupted. I felt my face match the neon Gatorade sign on the wall.

"Leave him alone," Maya said from her seat nearby. She didn't look up from her sketchbook, but something about her tone made everyone settle down.

After school, I went to the padel court like always. Maya was there.

"You play?" she asked, holding a racquet I didn't notice.

We played until sunset. She destroyed me, but she laughed when I whiffed an easy volley. "Your form's all over the place. You play baseball, right? It shows."

"Is that bad?"

"No," she said, tossing her ponytail. "It's just different. Why do you think you have to pick?"

The question stuck. Maybe that's what the vitamin gummies were actually for—not growth, but something to hold onto while everything else felt like it was spinning.

I didn't make the padel team. I also didn't quit baseball. My hair grew out and the blonde faded back to boring brown. But Maya and I still play on Tuesdays, and sometimes she lets me win, and sometimes I think that's better than making any team at all.