Thunder Before the Rain

The humidity was choking the air, the kind that makes your hair frizz and your skin feel like it's wearing a sweater you can't take off. I stood at the edge of the padel court, racket dangling from my hand like I didn't know what to do with it. Which I didn't.

"You coming or what?" Maya called from the other side of the court. My best friend since seventh grade, now somehow popular, athletic, confusing. She'd been acting different since summer started — more confident, more distant, more everything.

"Yeah," I said, but my feet stayed planted.

The sky above the pool deck was turning that weird purple-green color that means something's about to break. Coach blew his whistle. "Last point before the storm hits, ladies!"

Maya served. The ball cracked against the glass wall, ricocheted toward me at what felt like mach 10. I swung, missed entirely, and somehow managed to trip over my own feet while trying to recover. My face burned hotter than the pavement.

Nobody laughed. That was almost worse.

Then it happened — a flash of lightning split the sky, so bright it left spots in my vision. A second later, thunder shook the ground beneath us.

"Everyone out, now!" Coach yelled.

We grabbed our stuff and started running toward the pool's covered area. Rain came in sheets, sudden and violent, like someone'd overturned the ocean above us. Maya and I ducked under the awning, dripping wet, breathing hard.

She looked at me, really looked at me, for the first time all summer. "I'm terrible at this too, you know. Padel. I only joined because Tyler's in this camp."

I blinked. Tyler? The guy she'd been obsessed with since May? "Wait, you've been acting weird because of —"

"Because I'm nervous," she admitted, which was so not Maya it made my brain hurt. "I thought if I seemed like I knew what I was doing, maybe he'd notice me. But I'm just faking it. All of it."

Something loosened in my chest. "You're literally the most real person I know, and you're faking it for some guy?"

She groaned. "I know, it's dumb. Can we just forget I said anything?"

"Nope," I said, grinning. "This is definitely going in my memoir."

Maya shoved my shoulder, but she was smiling too. The rain kept hammering the pool's surface, turning the water into something alive and chaotic. The air smelled like ozone and wet concrete and that specific summer smell of chlorine and impending change.

"Hey," she said. "You want to sneak out of here? There's that boba place down the street."

My sneakers squelched as I shifted my weight. "Absolutely."

We ran into the storm together, and for the first time all summer, I didn't feel like I was falling behind.