Vitamin Cured My Bad Hair Day

My mom stared at me like I was a science experiment gone wrong.

"You need more **vitamin** D," she announced, sliding a glass of murky green liquid across the kitchen counter. "And eat your **spinach**. It'll help your skin."

I groaned. It was 7 AM on a Saturday, and I had bigger problems than leafy greens. The **hair** I'd spent forty-five minutes straightening had already frizzed into a puffy cloud thanks to Oregon humidity.

"Mom, I'm going to be late."

"For what?"

"**Padel** with Tyler."

Her eyes lit up. Padel was basically tennis but cooler — smaller court, walls you could hit off, shorter racquets. Tyler, the junior varsity captain, had somehow noticed me hitting against the wall during PE last week and invited me to play. Which meant two things: one, I needed to not embarrass myself, and two, I needed my hair to not look like I'd stuck my finger in an electrical socket.

"Tyler's nice?" Mom asked, way too casual.

"Mom, stop. It's not like that."

But it was totally like that. I'd been crushing on Tyler since he'd defended me when Jake Miller made fun of my acrylic landscape painting in art class. He'd said, "Actually, the colors are sick," and I'd about melted.

Now I was gulping down spinach smoothie while frantically trying to fix my hair. I ended up pulling it into a messy bun — the I'm-effortlessly-cute kind, not the I-gave-up kind, hopefully.

When I got to the courts, Tyler was already there, hitting serves against the backboard. He looked annoyingly good in his athletic shorts and sleeveless.

"Hey!" He waved. "You ready?"

"So ready," I lied.

We played for an hour. I was rusty, my coordination questionable, but Tyler didn't seem to care. He kept giving me tips, laughing when I totally whiffed on an easy return.

"You're actually pretty good," he said afterward as we sat on the bench, sharing a water bottle. "You should try out for the team next season."

I felt something inside me shift — like how the **spinach** smoothie had settled weirdly in my stomach, but in a good way.

"Maybe," I said. "If my hair cooperates."

Tyler laughed. "What's wrong with your hair? It looks great."

My face heated up. I took a swig of water to hide my smile.

"Whatever," I said. "Same time next week?"

"Definitely." He paused. "Maybe we could get food after?"

I felt like screaming, but I just shrugged and said, "Sure. Cool."

Walking home, I called my mom.

"Hey, can you make more of that spinach stuff tomorrow?"

"I knew it," she said. "Did something happen with Tyler?"

"Maybe," I said, touching my messy bun. "And Mom?"

"Yeah?"

"You were right about the vitamins. They help."

I could hear her smiling through the phone. Sometimes — just sometimes — parents actually knew what they were talking about.