The Summer I Learned to Fake It

The summer after sophomore year, I decided to become someone else. Someone who played padel instead of baseball, someone who wouldn't get annihilated during dodgeball in gym class.

"Your form's all wrong," Chloe said, leaning against the chain-link fence with an orange slushy from the concession stand. "You're gripping it like a baseball bat. Padel's about finesse, not swinging for the fences."

I adjusted my hands on the racket, feeling ridiculous. Padel was basically tennis but smaller, played in a cage with walls you could bank shots off. The country club kids had been playing it forever. I'd picked up a baseball bat practically before I could walk.

"Again," Chloe said, tossing me another ball.

I missed completely. The ball ricocheted off the back wall and nailed me in the calf.

"You're thinking too hard," she said, stepping closer. "Here." Her hands guided mine into position, her citrusy perfume overwhelming my senses. "Loosen up. It's just a game."

Just a game. That's what rich kids said about things their parents paid thousands for them to learn.

Friday's pool party at Tyler's house was basically a social minefield. Tyler's backyard looked like a resort, with actual palm trees imported from somewhere tropical and a pool that probably cost more than my house. I hovered near the snack table, nursing a flat soda while everyone else splashed around or made out on lounge chairs.

"Earth to Caleb."

I jumped. Chloe stood there in this orange bikini that made my brain short-circuit, water droplets glistening on her shoulders like she'd just emerged from a mermaid transformation.

"You gonna stand there all night or actually get in?"

"I don't have-" I started.

"Swim trunks?" She rolled her eyes. "Tyler has extras. Come on." She grabbed my hand, her palm soft against mine, and pulled me toward the pool house.

"Your palm says you're going to embarrass yourself tonight," she announced dramatically, pretending to read my future like those fortune tellers at the boardwalk.

"Is that a guarantee or a prediction?"

"Depends." She smiled, and it wasn't her usual perfect smile. It was something realer. "You gonna keep trying to be someone you're not, or are you gonna cannonball into this pool with me?"

The old Caleb would've overthought it. The new one—the one learning padel, the one who almost kissed Chloe behind the concession stand—grabbed her hand and jumped.

We hit the water in this explosion of chlorine and orange slice floats and pure, stupid joy. Tyler's parents were gonna kill us. Chloe's perfect hair was ruined. And somewhere in the chaos, between surfacing for air and her laughing so hard she got water up her nose, I figured something out: nobody becomes someone else. They just become more themselves, mess and all.

"Still want that padel lesson?" she asked later, wrapped in a pool towel.

"Only if you let me teach you baseball," I said.

She considered this. "Deal. But you're definitely buying me another orange slushy."