The Padel Court Spy

The **lightning** flashed across the sky, illuminating everything in this stark, weird way, like someone had turned on the fluorescents in a classroom during a blackout. I was supposed to be at **baseball** practice, but instead I was crouched behind the bleachers near the **padel** courts, watching like the world's most obvious **spy**.

This was Mia's territory. She played padel with those girls who always sat together at lunch, the ones who somehow made everything look effortless. Meanwhile, I'd been playing baseball since I was seven, mostly because my dad did, and his dad before him. But lately? Lately I'd been feeling like I was wearing someone else's jersey.

Another lightning strike, closer this time. The storm was supposed to drive everyone inside, but Mia was still there, hitting against the wall, her movements sharp and practiced. I'd been watching her for weeks now, trying to figure out how to be the kind of person who just did things without overthinking them into paralysis.

She noticed me. Of course she noticed me.

"You know," she called out, "most people just, like, introduce themselves. They don't lurk." Her voice carried over the rumble of thunder.

I stood up, feeling my face heat up. "I wasn't lurking. I was... observing."

"Sure you were, Spy." Mia grinned, and something in my chest did this stupid little flip thing. "Wanna hit a few? Before the storm actually gets here?"

"I don't play padel," I said, even though I'd been watching YouTube tutorials for two weeks straight.

"That's kinda the point of learning, yeah?" She tossed me a racquet.

I caught it, my hands automatically finding the grip—different from a bat, but not totally foreign. The first few times I missed entirely, swinging at air while Mia laughed. But then I connected, the ball bouncing off the wall, coming back at an angle I barely tracked but somehow managed to return.

"Not terrible," Mia said, as another lightning fork split the sky.

"I'm normally better at sports," I muttered.

"You're too in your head," she said. "Baseball brain. Overthinking everything. Just swing."

The rain started then, big warm drops, and we both laughed as we scrambled to grab our stuff. My backpack was soaked, my phone was probably fried, but I didn't even care. We ended up under the shelter by the snack bar, dripping wet, eating these weird **papaya** chips she'd brought because everything else was closed.

"So," she said, crunching on a chip. "You gonna tell me why you've been stalking me from behind the bleachers for three weeks?"

"Not stalking," I said. "Observational research."

"Sure, Spy." She smiled, and it wasn't her normal smile—the one she used at lunch, the one that looked perfect and distant. This one was smaller, more real. "You know, you could've just said hi. I see you at lunch with your baseball friends. You always look like you'd rather be somewhere else."

I stared at her. "You notice me at lunch?"

"I notice lots of things." She popped another papaya chip. "Like how you're actually pretty good at padel for someone who's never played before. And how you're not as smooth as you think you are at sneaking around."

The storm was moving off, the lightning distant now, but something else had sparked—something I didn't have a name for yet, something that felt like possibility, like the first day of summer break, like the moment right before you jump off something high and you're terrified but you do it anyway.

"I'm Alex," I said.

"I know who you are, Alex." She held out her hand. "Mia."

We shook hands, both of us grinning like idiots, and I thought maybe some things—like lightning storms, and papaya chips, and girls who see you when you're trying to be invisible—were worth getting caught in the rain for.