The Padel Court, The Pool, and The Me I Wanted to Be

The summer before freshman year, I spent three weeks' worth of babysitting money on a bottle of hair vitamins because Maya Chen posted an Instagram story captioned "hair growth journey" and I was, frankly, desperate.

The vitamins sat unopened on my dresser while I spent every afternoon at the community pool, chlorine turning my hair green anyway. Maya was there too, of course—the kind of girl who emerged from the water looking like a mermaid commercial, while I looked like a wet shih tzu.

"You coming to Maya's padel thing Friday?" Liam asked, tossing a volleyball at my head. He missed, but I still flinched.

"Padel? Isn't that, like, tennis for people who can't commit?"

"It's huge in Spain," he said, like that explained anything. "Everyone's going. Her dad built a court."

Friday arrived with me wearing my brother's old athletic shorts and a rash guard I'd outgrown in seventh grade. The padel court gleamed behind Maya's house like something from a magazine I couldn't afford. Someone had set up speakers. Someone else had brought sparkling water in glass bottles.

I positioned myself near the back, strategically next to the snack table, clutching a vitamin water like it was armor.

"Teams!" Maya called, racquet in hand. "Jordan, you're with me."

My stomach dropped. Me and Maya Chen. The girl whose hair vitamins I'd bought on a whim at 2 AM. The girl I'd been watching from across the pool all summer.

The first ball flew at me like a projectile missile. I swung, missed spectacularly, and somehow managed to hit myself in the shin with my own racquet.

Everyone stared. Then Maya laughed—not mean, not the laugh I'd rehearsed in my worst fears, but genuine, doubled-over, hair-messing laughter.

"Okay," she said, wiping her eyes. "Reset. Jordan, have you ever played before? Like, ever?"

"I once successfully returned a balloon to a toddler at a birthday party?"

She laughed again. "Perfect. Here's what you actually do."

An hour later, sweaty and somehow still terrible at padel, I sat poolside with Maya and a bag of chips she'd pilfered from her own pantry.

"Those hair vitamins," she said, apropos of nothing. "Did you buy them?"

"What?"

"From my story. The brand tagged me in the likes. Your profile popped up."

I wanted to dissolve into the concrete. "They're on my dresser. Unopened."

"Same," she said, grinning. "I just post that stuff because they pay me fifty bucks and my hair's fine anyway."

The sun was setting, gold on the water. The pool reflected everything distorted and beautiful.

"You're actually terrible at padel," Maya said. "But you're funny. We should hang out."

"Only if you promise never to make me play sports again."

"Deal."

The vitamins sat on my dresser until college. I never opened them. Sometimes the best growth isn't the kind you can buy.