Water Logged

Maya's first week at Oakhurst Academy felt like walking through a minefield wearing clown shoes. Everyone here either spoke fluent Padel or had money falling out of their vintage denim. Maya had neither.

"Hey, you coming to Jake's party?" Chloe asked, twisting her beach-wavy hair around one finger. "It's gonna be epic. His parents have this crazy indoor padel court."

Padel. The word alone made Maya's stomach do backflips. She'd been pretending to understand the sport all week—nodding along when people talked about smash shots and wall rebounds, secretly googling definitions in the bathroom between classes.

"Yeah! Totally." Maya forced what she hoped passed for a chill smile.

"Sick!" Chloe brightened. "Wear something cute. Jake's cousin from Spain is gonna be there and he's literally professional level."

Maya spent three hours that night trying on every combination of clothes she owned before settling on her lucky outfit: cropped hoodie, vintage high-waisted jeans, and her dad's old fitted **hat** pulled low. It was her armor. Her aesthetic. Her.

The party hit different than she expected. Thirty people crowded around the glass-walled court, watching Jake and some tall guy volley like they were born with racquets in their hands. Maya hovered near the back, nursing a lukewarm soda, feeling painfully out of place.

Then she spotted it: a round glass bowl on a pedestal near the refreshments table. Inside swam a solitary **goldfish**, its orange scales catching the LED lights. It looked just as lost as she felt.

"Bubbles," whispered a voice behind her. Maya spun around to find a guy in a backwards hoodie watching the fish too. "My sister won him at a carnival last month. She's obsessed. Says his aesthetic is cottagecore core."

Maya snorted before she could stop herself. "Cottagecore for a fish? That's not even real."

"Tell her that." He grinned, revealing slightly crooked teeth. "I'm Leo, by the way. Jake's cousin. The professional one."

Oh.

"Maya." She gestured toward the court. "So you're, like, actually good at this padel stuff?"

"I mean, I guess." Leo shrugged. "Honestly? I'd rather be doing literally anything else. My cousins are obsessed though. It's giving..." He waved his hand vaguely. "...trying too hard energy?"

Something in Maya's chest loosened. "I've been pretending to understand padel all week and I still couldn't tell you the difference between it and tennis if my life depended on it."

Leo's eyes widened. "Wait, seriously?" Then he started laughing—not mean laughter, but the kind that crinkled his eyes. "That's hilarious. You're brave. I've just been nodding along whenever anyone talks about rules or strategy like I'm not literally supposed to be the expert here."

"Fake it 'til you make it?" Maya suggested.

"More like fake it 'til you escape." Leo checked his phone. "Hey, wanna bail? There's a spot down by the creek where the **water** pools up. No ragers, no expectations, just... quiet. And my sister's **cat**, Mochi, usually hangs out there. She's antisocial like that."

Maya glanced at the padel court where Chloe was now awkwardly attempting a serve. Everyone was watching, performing, pretending.

Then she looked back at Leo, at Bubbles the goldfish swimming in lonely circles, at the back door leading outside.

"Yeah," Maya said, adjusting her hat so it sat just right. "Let's bounce."