The Vitamin Padel Summer

Chloe's mom had started leaving those gummy **vitamin** packs on the counter like they were some kind of teen girl magic. Like swallowing a neon-orange bears would fix everything—that Chloe had spent freshman year hovering at the edge of every friend group, that her Instagram posts averaged three likes (two from her grandma), that she was just... existing.

"You're growing," her mom said, sliding open the glass door to the patio. "Your body needs fuel."

"I'm sixteen," Chloe muttered, chewing two bears at once anyway. "I think I'm done growing."

That's when she saw him—Jake from pre-calc, the one who sat three rows back and never talked to anyone, absolutely destroying his dad at **padel** in the neighbor's driveway. The ball cracked against the glass walls, a rhythm that made something in her chest hum. Jake moved like he was made of water, all easy confidence and focused energy, nothing like the slouched version in her math class.

"You ever play?" Jake called out, spotting her by the fence. His hair was plastered to his forehead, and he wasn't even breathing hard.

Chloe almost said no. Almost turned back to her room and her phone and the safe crushing weight of being nobody. But then her mom's voice echoed in her head: *your body needs fuel.*

"Teach me," she said.

The summer transformed into something she didn't recognize—**running** drills at dawn when the air still smelled like dew and possibility, Jake laughing when she accidentally served the ball into the rosebushes, her hands developing calluses that felt like armor. The vitamins became part of the ritual: gummy bears swallowed with electrolyte water before practice, until she started associating that fake orange taste with the best parts of herself.

"You're actually good," Jake said one afternoon, as they sat on the patio sharing a post-game smoothie. "Like, really good." He said it like it surprised him, but not in a mean way. Like he was seeing her for the first time.

Chloe's phone buzzed—a group chat she'd been ghosting for months. She didn't even look.

"Tournament next weekend," she said. "You and me?"

Jake grinned. "You and me."

That night, Chloe left the vitamin pack on her nightstand like a trophy. Tomorrow she'd actually take them—not because her mom said, but because her body was becoming something she wanted to fuel. Something that was finally, undeniably hers.