Trading the Diamond
The orange slice stuck to the roof of my mouth, staining my tongue the same color as the stupid jersey I'd been wearing since third grade. Baseball. The thing that was supposed to be my whole life.
"You nervous about tryouts?" Jordan asked, spinning a worn baseball between his fingers like he'd done a thousand times in my driveway.
I shrugged, unable to tell him that I'd secretly been spending every Saturday at the rec center, learning to play padel with a bunch of strangers who didn't know I was supposed to be the next shortstop prodigy. Padel was different—fast, unpredictable, nothing like the rigid choreography of baseball where every play had been rehearsed since the invention of the dirt infield.
My phone buzzed. Mom: "Your goldfish is floating sideways again."
Goldie. I'd won him at a carnival when I was twelve, and he'd survived three moves, a cat that tried to eat him, and my existential crisis about being transgender. He was basically family. Also, he was definitely a symbol.
"Bro, you okay?" Jordan waved a hand in my face.
"Yeah. Just—there's something I need to tell you."
The words tumbled out before I could overthink them: I wasn't trying out for baseball. I'd joined a padel league. I was queer and I was tired of playing characters written by everyone else.
Jordan stared at me for approximately ten years.
"So," he said finally, "that's why you've been ditching us? For some tennis knockoff?"
"It's not tennis—"
"I'm messing with you, dude." He grinned. "My sister plays padel. She says the people are way less toxic than baseball culture anyway. Also, she's been trying to get me to come."
"Wait, really?"
"Yeah. She's, like, trying to start an LGBTQ+ league or whatever. She'd flip if you joined."
The orange slice didn't taste so acidic anymore. Somewhere in my room, Goldie was probably doing fine, swimming in circles in his tiny bowl, completely unaware that his human had just learned something important: sometimes you have to swim sideways to figure out which way is actually forward.