The Padel Pyramid Scheme

The social hierarchy at Northwood High operated like a pyramid scheme, and I was stuck at the bottom paying in popularity I didn't have. Until Chase Morrison invited me to padel.

"You ever played?" Chase asked, spinning a padel racquet like he'd been born holding one. His orange sweatband matched his Lexus.

"Paddle? Like kayaking?" I said, because my brain short-circuited around Chase Morrison.

"Pah-DEL. It's basically tennis but cooler." He flashed that grin that got him out of detention three times last month. "Saturday at the club. Bring water."

The club turned out to be the country club his parents owned, because of course it did. I showed up wearing my brother's old tennis shoes and carrying a lukewarm water bottle that had been rolling under my car seat for three weeks.

The padel court looked like a tennis court that shrunk in the wash. Glass walls, neon lights, the whole vibe screaming 'rich people sports.'

Chase served, and I swung like I was fighting off a swarm of bees. The ball ricocheted off the glass wall and nailed me in the shoulder.

"My bad," Chase said, not sounding sorry at all. "You'll get the hang of it. Hey, after this, some of us are hitting the pool. You should come."

The pool. The actual pool party of legends, the one that lived in Instagram stories and rumors. Where the popular kids hung out, where social mobility happened or died.

I spent the next hour getting destroyed at padel, but somewhere between my seventh serve into the net and Chase teaching me how to actually hit a vibora (which sounded fake but apparently wasn't), something shifted. We laughed. He made fun of my grip, I roasted his hair net.

Later, floating in the pool with an orange soda from the cooler, Chase's phone buzzed.

"PYRAMID PARTY AGAIN," someone yelled from across the pool. Chase groaned.

"What's that?" I asked.

"Stupid tradition. We build a human pyramid in the deep end every summer. Someone always gets hurt, someone always cries, and someone's swimsuit always malfunctions. It's a disaster."

"Sounds perfect."

"Yeah," Chase said, taking my orange soda and drinking half. "Yeah, it kinda is. You coming up for the next round?"

The pyramid waited, precarious and terrifying. But for the first time, someone had asked me to climb it from the inside.

"Yeah," I said. "Yeah, I'm coming."