The Green Between My Teeth

The backward **baseball** cap was supposed to be my armor. Freshman year, and I'd already mastered the art of looking like I didn't care, even though I cared way too much. My mom's **dog**—a chaotic golden retriever named Nacho—had already destroyed three pairs of sneakers this month, and now he was eyeing my backpack like it was a chew toy.

"Dude, you coming?" Marcus called from the driveway. We were trying out for the **padel** team today, because apparently tennis wasn't cool enough anymore. Padel was like tennis but with walls and somehow more pressure.

I grabbed a protein bar on my way out—spinach and feta, because I was trying to be healthy and impress Taylor, who sat behind me in bio and definitely didn't eat junk food. Big mistake.

Tryouts were a disaster. I missed every serve. My racket kept hitting the wall at weird angles. Coach Miller kept looking at me like I'd personally offended the sport. The whole time, I could feel my confidence shrinking smaller than the **hat** I'd strategically placed to cover my bad hair day.

At lunch, Taylor finally noticed me.

"Hey, how were tryouts?" she asked, smiling.

This was it. My moment. I leaned in, ready to sound cool and athletic.

"Not bad," I said. "Probably gonna make varsity."

She kept smiling. But there was something weird about it. Like she was trying not to laugh.

"That's... great," she said. "But you have—you have something—"

I ran to the bathroom. Green. Everywhere. The **spinach** from my protein bar had colonized the space between my front teeth and braces like it was paying rent.

Nacho chose that exact moment to escape the house and sprint toward the school, finding me at my lowest point. He jumped on me, knocking my backpack into a puddle, exposing the extra pair of socks I'd packed because I sweat when I'm nervous, which is always, apparently.

Taylor found me like that—covered in dog hair, socks everywhere, green teeth, dignity completely gone.

She laughed. But not mean laughing. Real laughing.

"You know," she said, "I didn't make the team either. I was too scared to even try out."

She held up her phone, showing me a video of herself failing spectacularly at badminton in her backyard.

"We should be terrible at sports together sometime," she said.

Nachoused my hand. I smiled—carefully, with my lips together. Some days, the backward cap doesn't work. Some days, you just have to let people see the spinach between your teeth and hope they laugh with you, not at you.