The Summer I Didn't Suck

My iPhone screen was already cracked when I walked onto the padel court, which felt like a sign. A bad one. The other kids looked like they'd been born holding racquets. Me? I'd held exactly two things in my life: a remote and my phone.

"You're up, new kid." This was Marcus, all confident smile and backwards hat—like, actually backwards, white and pristine, not even trying.

I adjusted my own hat. It was my dad's old baseball cap, stained from that time I dropped an orange slice on it last summer. Because of course I did. Who drops an orange on their own hat?

"I'm Mia," I managed, my voice doing that annoying squeaky thing when you're nervous.

"Cool. You know how to play?"

"Totally," I lied.

I did not totally know how to play. Padel was like tennis but with walls and smaller racquets and my dignity was the first casualty. I missed every ball. The coach kept saying things like "bend your knees" and "follow through" and I kept nodding like I understood, but my knees were essentially decorative at this point.

Then my phone buzzed in my pocket, because the universe wasn't done embarrassing me yet. I reached for it instinctively, even though I was mid-rally, and—

CRACK.

I'd somehow hit the ball with my racquet while simultaneously checking my screen. A total accident. But the ball sailed perfectly over the net, bounced off the back wall, and dropped right in the corner. A winner.

Everyone stared.

"...Did you mean to do that?" Marcus asked.

"Obviously," I said, already committing to the bit. "It's my signature move. The distracted smash."

That was when my phone cracked screen caught the sunlight, shining like I'd planned the whole thing. Marcus's grin got real.

"Teach me," he said.

And that's how I became the padel court's accidental genius. By the end of summer, I still couldn't explain the rules, I'd never actually hit another ball on purpose, and I was definitely still wearing that orange-stained baseball hat. But Marcus and I were dating, and sometimes that's just how things work when you're sixteen—you accidentally hit a ball while checking Instagram, and suddenly you're not the new kid anymore. You're just the weird one who texts during rallies, and that's close enough to cool.