Three Feet Under

My palms were sweating. Like, actually dripping onto the fiberglass handle of the **padel** racket, which was honestly disgusting considering this thing probably cost more than my entire wardrobe.

"You got this, Leo!" Maya shouted from the sidelines. She was wearing that sundress again—the yellow one with tiny **goldfish** patterned along the hem. I'd never thought about fish on clothing before, but now it was basically my entire personality.

The problem wasn't the game. Padel was easy enough—tennis meets squash, whatever. The problem was that every time I looked across the net at Jake, his stupid perfect hair and his stupid perfect backhand made my brain short-circuit. Also, he was Maya's ex. Also, I'd accidentally told everyone I was "basically pro" when I'd literally never played before today.

So now here I was, at the country club my cousin could get us into for free, lying through my teeth and about to humiliate myself in front of the one person who actually mattered.

The ball came at me. I swung.

Missed completely. Racket flew out of my hand, hit the fence, and—this is the part that still haunts me—bounced back and somehow knocked over someone's sparkling water. It exploded everywhere.

"Bro," said someone from the next court. "Bro, are you okay?"

I wished I could dissolve into the ground. Or transform into an actual **goldfish** and just float around in a bowl somewhere, thinking whatever thoughts goldfish have. Probably about flakes.

But then Maya was laughing. Not mean laughing—the real kind, where she threw her head back and had to wipe her eyes. Even Jake was cracking up.

"Okay," Maya said, walking over and handing me a fresh racket. "Let's try again. No pressure. Jake's backhand is actually mid anyway, I don't know what you're seeing."

"Heard that," Jake called.

We played for hours. I got better, then worse, then okay. At some point, we all ended up in the pool—not **swimming** competitively or anything, just floating around in that weird way teenagers do when they're tired but don't want to leave. The sun was setting behind the **palm** trees, turning everything gold and hazy.

Maya floated next to me. "So," she said. "You're not pro at padel."

"Not even close," I admitted. "I literally Googled it last night."

"Yeah, I figured. Your grip was all wrong." She smiled sideways. "It was kinda cute though."

I stopped floating. My heart did something complicated. "Yeah?"

"Yeah. Also, Jake has a girlfriend. So like, you don't have to do the whole competitive thing."

"I wasn't—"

"You so were." She splashed water at me. "Tomorrow? Same time? I can teach you proper form."

"Tomorrow," I said. "Definitely."

Later, walking home with chlorine in my hair and one of Maya's hair ties around my wrist—don't ask how that happened—I realized something: sometimes the stuff that makes you want to evaporate from embarrassment is the same stuff that opens doors you didn't even know were there.

Also, I needed to buy actual padel clothes. These mesh shorts were not it.