What Grows Under the Cap

The baseball cap was basically glued to my head freshman year. Bad hair day? Cap. Acne flare-up? Cap. Existential crisis about why I was even on the team? Cap, pulled low, brim forward.

"You gonna take that thing off ever?" Maya asked. We were sitting on the bleachers, watching the varsity squad get annihilated. She played padel — this tennis-squash hybrid that had taken over the old tennis courts. Nobody cared about padel. That was kinda the point.

"Maybe when my hair stops looking like I lost a fight with a lawnmower," I said.

Maya laughed. "Come to the padel courts tomorrow. Nobody cares what your hair looks like because they're too busy staring at the walls."

So I went. And yeah, padel was weird — the ball bouncing off glass walls at impossible angles, my swing from baseball totally betraying me. But Maya's hair was this perfect coil of dark curls that bounced when she laughed, which was constantly, usually at my expense.

"Baseball boy's got no lateral movement," she teased.

"Excuse me for being used to balls that don't ricochet like they've got personal vendettas."

Weeks passed. I stopped wearing the cap to practice. Started actually attempting shots instead of baseball-swinging everything. My hair grew out — still messy, but mine.

Then Jake, the varsity captain, caught me leaving the padel courts. "Since when do you play tennis for people who couldn't make tennis team?"

His friends laughed. I felt sixteen years of social hierarchy crushing down.

"Since it's actually fun," Maya said from behind me. "Since he doesn't have to pretend to be someone he's not."

Jake looked at my hair, then at Maya's hand on my arm. "Whatever."

They left.

"You know," Maya said, "baseball caps are supposed to shield your eyes from the sun. Not hide you."

I took it off. Felt the wind on my hair for the first time in forever.

"Yeah," I said. "I know."