The Padel Protocol

My mom handed me the bottle of orange gummies. 'Your vitamin regimen, honey. Those boys won't know what hit them.' She said it like she'd just armed me with nuclear codes instead of generic brand multivitamins.

I pocketed them anyway. Because today was The Day – the day I'd finally infiltrate The Group at the community pool.

The Group played padel together every Tuesday. Not baseball like normal people, but padel – this hybrid tennis-squash thing that screamed 'my parents have money.' I'd been watching from the snack bar for three weeks, nursing the same slushie until it turned into watery soup, trying to calculate my entry angle.

Now, thanks to my aunt's old iPhone 8 (which she swore was 'practically new' despite the cracked screen), I had their group chat. Courtesy of Maya, who sat behind me in pre-calc and apparently found my tragic attempts at friendship endearing.

'Just show up,' she'd texted. 'They're chill.' Her use of 'chill' was doing heavy lifting.

My brother Danny, who played actual baseball and thus qualified as basically jesus in our family's eyes, caught me practicing serves against the garage door.

'You're embarrassing yourself,' he called from his car. 'Padel? Really? What's next, pickleball?'

'I'm expanding my horizons,' I yelled back, missing the ball completely as it ricocheted off the handle into a neighbor's bushes.

At the pool, The Group was already there. Four of them, all with coordinated outfits and perfectly messy hair. I froze. Should I wave? Pretend I was there for laps? casually drop that I was 'just passing through'?

Then I spotted Leo – the one I'd been crushing on since orientation – gesturing to the empty court beside theirs.

'We need a fourth!' he called. 'You play?'

The vitamin gummies burned in my pocket. This was it. My moment.

'I've been playing for years,' I lied smoothly. 'Backhand is my whole personality.'

Ten minutes later, I'd hit three opponents, two fences, and somehow managed to trip over my own racquet while trying to look cool. But when Leo doubled over laughing – not mean-laughing, but the genuine kind – something clicked.

'Yeah,' he said, tossing me a Gatorade from his bag. 'You're gonna fit in just fine.'

My iPhone buzzed in my bag. New message: an invite to the group chat. Sometimes, I thought, the worst moments make the best stories. And Danny was wrong – padel was way cooler than baseball anyway.