The Vitamin C Court

Emma's social life operated like a pyramid scheme she hadn't signed up for. At the top sat the varsity baseball players—those gods of spring who ruled the school from their dugout throne. Then came the decent-to-good athletes, the band kids, the theater crowd, and somewhere near the bottom? The former varsity shortstops who'd quit mid-season because they couldn't hack the pressure anymore.

That was Emma now. Three weeks post-walkout, and she was still figuring out who she was when she wasn't the girl who could turn a double play.

"You coming to the courts?" Maya asked, spinning a padel racket between her fingers like a baton. Emma had never heard of padel until last week, but apparently it was tennis's cooler, less pretentious cousin. The courts had become the de facto hangout for the baseball diaspora—kids who'd quit, been cut, or just realized that maybe dedicating your entire identity to a sport with a 15% success rate wasn't the move.

"I guess," Emma said. "My mom's making me take this multivitamin now. Says I've been looking 'peaked.' Whatever that means."

"Peaked like pyramid-scheme peaked or peaked like you need sunlight?"

"Both?" Emma offered, and Maya laughed.

The padel courts were weirdly comforting. No coaches screaming from the dugout, no parents keeping stat books in the stands, no pyramid to climb. Just a bunch of teenagers hitting a ball against walls, missing shots, and making up new rules whenever someone got bored.

Emma's first serve went straight into the fence.

"That would've been a strike in baseball," she muttered.

"Yeah, well," Maya said, chasing down the ball, "this isn't baseball. And honestly? That's kind of the point."

And maybe that was it. Maybe the point wasn't finding something new to replace the old thing—to rebuild her pyramid from the bottom up. Maybe the point was finding something that didn't feel like climbing at all.

Emma took the vitamin her mom had left on the counter that morning. Chase it with water. Grab her racket. Head back to the courts where nobody kept score and the only competition was with yourself.

Funny how the things that are supposed to be good for you often taste the worst going down.