Chances for Serendipity

by Natalie Chung

  A wave of embarrassment washed over me as I turned to her. “I don’t know.” I’d never tried teaching kids tennis before.

  “Come on, it’ll be fun,” Liz insisted, pulling on my arm. “Hey, Aiden. You’ll join, right?”

  Aiden’s eyes flitted to the other end of the courts, where his dad was, then back to us. “Wait a sec.” He dashed off to his dad, and I watched as he said something and pointed in our direction. After their short exchange, his dad went back to talking on the phone and Aiden returned.

  “I guess I don’t mind joining in.” He shrugged. “But only if Serena joins in too.”

  “Me?” I felt my cheeks flush as I regarded his expectant smile. “Okay,” I agreed before I thought too much about it.

  “Yay!” Liz practically leaped on top of me and choked me in a tight embrace. “They should be here soon.” She glanced at her watch and, as though her words had been a cue, the door of the room burst open.

  A bunch of children rushed inside like a tidal wave. Like a literal natural disaster—pushing and shoving each other, screaming excitedly.

  Oh boy. What had I gotten myself into?

  Chapter 3

  A middle-aged lady walked ahead of the children. I recognised her as one of the coaches who often held practice sessions in the club. “Follow me, please!” she yelled out over the boisterous kids. She led them to the court Liz and I had played on. The centre must’ve reserved it for Fun Day. “One line here!” She gestured with her arm in a wide arc.

  The children assembled into a crooked line of sorts. Some of the kids looked as young as five, while others could have passed as ten or eleven.

  Liz leaped up from the bench and went straight to the coach. The lady’s thin lips curved into a smile as she saw my friend, and they started chatting.

  “Get that for me, will you, Sere?” Liz’s loud voice echoed as she turned to point at the plastic box she’d set down earlier near my feet.

  I hefted it up, and my arms strained as I pulled. It was a lot heavier than it looked.

  Seeing me struggle, Aiden hopped off the bench and grabbed it.

  “Thanks.” I sighed and rubbed my sore arms.

  “No problem.” He lifted the box with relative ease, the muscles in his arms bunching up. We walked to Liz and the coach, and he set the box down. “What’s in here?”

  “Kids’ rackets,” Liz said. “The centre obviously isn’t loaning out real ones to the kids.”

  “Fair enough.” He pried open the lid, took out a little racket, and waved it at the line of children. “Who wants to play tennis?”

  The room filled with the screams of eager children. The coach glowered at Aiden in disapproval.

  “Okay, everyone. I’ll need you to split off into four teams.” She directed each child in the line to Liz, Aiden, me and then her. By the time she finished, we each had four children. “You know what to do.” The coach ruffled Liz’s hair, making her messy curls even more dishevelled than before. “I'm leaving you in charge, Liz.”

  “Yes, Coach Ava.” Liz saluted her. “Sere, let’s do it. Practice racket handling, then one at a time with the ball.”

  She rattled off some more detailed instructions to Aiden while I huddled my group together. Okay, I could do this. Kids couldn’t be that hard to teach, right? I’d seen Liz do it plenty of times.

  “Hi, everyone. I’m Serena, and I’ll be teaching you some tennis today.”

  The four kids cheered—one girl and three boys. The girl looked the youngest, around five or six years old. She clung to an older boy who she called Kyle. Siblings? The remaining two boys appeared to be around the same age as Kyle.

  I gave each child a small racket. Grabbing one for myself, I instructed the kids on the basics of swinging the racket and how to hit a ball. We did this all without the tennis balls. A swarm of kids running everywhere, armed with tennis balls, was a huge no-no.

  “Like this?” The little girl’s racket whooshed over her head, and her double ponytails swished along with the movement.

  “That’s too high, Mia,” Kyle said. “Like this.” He perfectly copied the same stroke I’d demonstrated to them.

  Mia squinted, concentrating hard as she tried to mirror Kyle’s movements. After about five tries, her form improved.

  “Yep, like that,” I said. The other two boys watched us, then also correctly replicated the swings. Satisfied, I let them practice by themselves for a minute, ensuring they were all far enough apart to avoid whacking each other.

  With a moment to myself, I snuck a glance at Aiden. He stood in front of his group of children, confidently showcasing a proper forehand with the kids’ racket. Kind of hilarious. The small thing looked like a toy in his hand, and was made even more ridiculous with the addition of a mini net. But the children watched, mesmerised, as he hit a tennis ball over the mini net.

  Kyle tugged my arm. “Coach, can I do that?”

  All the children in my group stared longingly at Aiden and his display. I contemplated ignoring him and going about my own routine, but the kids would probably still get distracted by him.

  Sighing, I approached Aiden and tapped him on the shoulder.

  “Hey.” His eyes glinted. “Want to be my guinea pig?”

  My mind conjured up the image of the small squeaking pet. “What kind of experiment are you thinking of?”

  “Help me demonstrate.” He smiled, unfiltered happiness visible on his face. It was such a contrast to the look he gave his dad. My eyes swept to the other side of the room where his dad still held a phone close to his ear, his mouth moving rapidly.

  Aiden elbowed me. “So will you help?”

  I turned my attention back to him. “Uh, yeah. Sure. My kids are getting bored anyway.” I called my group over. Mia reached us first, ponytails flying like little wings on her head, the boys following close behind.

  “Are we going to play for real now?” one of the boys asked, eyeing Aiden bouncing a ball in his hand.

  Aiden shook his head. “Demo first. Stand on the other end of the net,” he said to me, pointing with his racket.

  I power walked there. Please don’t tell me what I think he’s planning is true.

  “Okay, good.” He raised his hand with the tennis ball, signalling his intention to start. Oh, heck no. He really did plan to play a game with me. With kids’ rackets and a kid’s net.

  “Are you sure—” I started, but never got to finish, as he dropped the ball and hit it. It sailed over the net. Yep, sailed over like my not-so-brilliant serves from before, except purposely slow as opposed to accidentally slow.

  The ball made contact with my small racket’s strings, the weight light on my wrist. We were using those squishy, beginner, red-yellow tennis balls. I redirected the ball back over the net toward him. He returned it with a perfect forehand that glided it back to me.

  The children gasped, looking on in awe. As if they were watching a Federer vs. Nadal match instead of two teens playing with kids’ equipment. We continued for several more hits. Aiden ended it by dribbling my last slow return with his racket, flawlessly catching the ball in his other hand.

  “Show off,” I muttered, but smiled. It was hard not to be impressed when he did it like that. So effortlessly.

  The children clapped, and I joined in on the applause.

  Aiden stared at us in disbelief, as though he didn’t think his display warranted such a reaction. Then his lips stretched into a wide smile. “Okay, who wants to play?”

  “Me, me!” all the children screamed out.

  “Form a line, please. And no pushing! Everyone will get a turn.”

  Surprisingly, the children listened. Within ten seconds, we had nine children filed in a single, neat line that would have impressed kindergarten teachers.

  Then, one by one, they took turns with Aiden, learning how to drop the ball and hit it over the net. He was a natural with the children, guiding them step by step on the correct grip and stance, never getting irritated by their mistakes
. Praise came easily from him. “Good work,” “nice one,” “awesome shot” and so on. Was he secretly a tennis coach?

  He only had some difficulty when it was Mia’s turn. After the third ball she tried to hit to me thumped into the net, she stomped her feet. “I can’t do it!” she howled in frustration. “It’s too hard!” She threw her racket, making it clatter onto the floor.

  Aiden picked it up. “Try again.” Crouching to her eye level, he handed her back the racket. “And don’t throw your racket again. The racket is your friend. You don’t hurt your friends, do you?”

  “No,” Mia said sulkily.

  I stifled a laugh at his reuse of my “rackets are friends” reasoning.

  “That’s right. You have a good swing, but you need to change it so that your racket faces up more. Like this.” He tilted the racket in her hand to a forty-five degree angle. “Try this and you’ll get it right over the net.”

  “Really?”

  “Yep. Don’t move from that position. I’ll feed you the ball, okay?”

  Mia’s face scrunched. “But I don’t want to eat the ball.”

  He laughed. “What I mean is, I’ll drop the ball and you hit it.”

  He did just that, and this time when Mia hit the ball, it soared over the net to me, straight for my chest. I caught it cleanly in my hand.

  “I did it! I did it!” Mia cheered. Aiden held his hand up and she high fived him.

  Coach Ava passed by, giving us both a nod of approval. “Good job.”

  He was doing such a good job, it wasn’t long before Liz dumped her group on us too. “Thanks!” she said and dashed off.

  I was mulling over Liz’s disappearance when Coach Ava told me to take a break, replacing me as “guinea pig” on the other side of the net. I rested on the bench, back leaning against the wall, and took large sips from my drink bottle.

  “Sere!” I heard Liz say before I saw her. “Look what the sports centre got.” A baby blue plastic camera sat in her outstretched hands.

  “Nice.” As long as she didn’t use it to take photos of me.

  Fortunately, she bounded off and snapped photos of the children instead. The parents had apparently given her permission on the basis that each kid would keep their respective photos.

  I resumed my post as “guinea pig”. Soon after, parents started filtering in to collect their children.

  Mia and Kyle’s mother was the last to arrive. She thanked Aiden profusely once Mia chattered about how much fun she’d had. Aiden brushed off her thanks, rubbing the back of his head awkwardly like he didn’t know what to do. At least, I hoped that was why he rubbed his head. I still wasn’t sure if he’d lied about it not hurting.

  “Bye, bye, Coach!” Mia said before she ran off after her brother and mum.

  “Bye!” Aiden waved at her until they disappeared behind the door, then blew out a breath. “That was actually a lot of fun. Good job.”

  “You too.”

  Liz ran up to us at that moment, lifting up the camera. “Obligatory Fun Day photo!”

  Oh, no, she didn’t dare! Heartbeat racing, I prepared to smile just as she snapped the photo.

  Once the photo finally finished printing, she handed it to me with a huge smile plastered on her face, oblivious to my personal torment. I groaned, flapping the film up and down. I was going to look dumb in this photo, wasn’t I? When the image cleared, I was proven to be correct. My face was in a strange, off-guard, half smile.

  Aiden leaned over my shoulder to peek. “Haha, you look so out of it,” he said, his breath tickling my neck. My face grew hot. Easy for him to say. He grinned easily in the photo like he’d been born ready for the shot.

  I dangled the photo in front of Liz, but she only laughed. I growled at her. “I want a better one, Liz!”

  “No can do,” she said. “One photo each. But Aiden can get a nice one with you.”

  “Wait, no—”

  “One, two”—I smiled, giving a peace sign—“three!”

  This time, I felt a bit more confident that I looked less awkward. But before I could peek, Aiden grabbed the still-blank film and fanned it in the air. He gave a satisfied smirk at the cleared image, then shoved it into his shorts pocket like a lollipop he wasn’t going to share.

  I gawked helplessly at him, my eyes darting between his face and his pocket. “Let me see!”

  “Nope,” he said, making a pop on the p for emphasis.

  “I’ll swap you for it.” I held out my own failed instant photo.

  “Why would I swap mine when it’s better than yours?” he asked, as though we were trading Tazos in chip packets. I would have laughed if the question didn’t irk me so much.

  No amount of pleading changed his mind. If anything, I think he had fun watching me get riled up.

  Just when I was thinking of resorting to tackling him, his dad marched toward us. During our play session with the kids, he’d disappeared somewhere. But now that he was back, I had the sensibility to not draw his attention. By the grim, serious expression on his face, he looked half a second away from chewing someone out.

  “Aiden! Time to go!” he called out.

  Aiden groaned, but stood up from the bench and shrugged at me. “Well, that’s my cue.” He pulled out the photo of us from his pocket. Pressed between his thumb and index finger, he waved it like a tantalising prize I’d never have a chance at winning. “See you later!”

  “See you,” I said. “You’re showing me that photo next time!”

  “Sure,” he agreed, laughing. I watched as he retreated with his dad out the door.

  Next time. When would that be? Tomorrow? Next week? I should have asked for his number, but that felt a bit too much like I was asking him out.

  Oh well.

  If only I’d known how far off next time would be.

  Chapter 4

  Two years later (18 years old)

  A blast of hot air warmed my face as I opened the oven, releasing a great puff of steam. The smell of freshly baked buns permeated the air. My stomach gurgled as I inhaled the scent and withdrew the tray of pineapple buns to examine them. Crispy, golden-brown crust gleamed under the kitchen lights, each bun flawlessly round and plump.

  Mmm, perfection.

  I switched off the oven and used my arm to wipe away the beads of sweat forming on my forehead.

  While waiting for the buns to cool on a rack, I washed the remaining dishes from this morning’s baking. A lot had piled up, thanks to my experimentation on a perfect strawberry-chocolate custard tart. I grimaced at the stack of bowls and spoons coated with layers of chocolate and custard. So far, all my tries had resulted in a tart with too much chocolatey taste overwhelming the strawberry and custard flavours. I’d made a bet with my brother that I could get it right within a week. Good thing I had four more days to prove him wrong.

  I was drying the last of the washed utensils when the soft tinkle of bells from behind the kitchen door alerted me to a customer entering our shop. I glanced at the clock on the wall. 9:00 a.m. on the dot.

  Mum greeted the customer before it became a conversation in rapid-fire Cantonese. Something about how long it’s been and asking what each other’s children had been up to. Mum’s favourite topic. Normally, I had to ask her to repeat herself if she said anything when the kitchen door was closed, so they must’ve been talking pretty loudly for me to hear so well.

  After washing and drying my hands, I checked on the pineapple buns, raising a hand over them and meeting lukewarm air. Good. Pulling on some disposable gloves, I transferred the buns onto a plastic tray and treaded to the kitchen door connected to the storefront. I pushed it open with my shoulder and swept past Mum and the customer—one of our regulars, Mrs Wong—while they gossiped.

  “Max graduated this year, top of his class,” Mum said proudly. Mrs Wong oohed and ahhed as Mum flicked through photos on her phone.

  I snickered quietly to myself. My older brother, Max, had graduated top of his IT course, but he’d repeated a
year due to failing several classes. Mrs Wong obviously didn’t know that. The only gossip Mum ever left out was stuff that reflected badly on her. Otherwise her mouth’s boundaries knew no limits.

  I lifted open the door of a windowed case with the label “pineapple buns” and inserted the plastic tray inside, then straightened the buns into neat lines with a pair of tongs.

  “Sere, there you are,” Mum said. “Do you remember Aunty’s son, Ben? She tells me he’s looking for someone to help out at a tutoring school.”

  “Good morning, Aunty.” Mrs Wong wasn’t my real aunty, but that was what we called Mum’s close friends in Cantonese. “Tutoring school?”

  Mum’s statement sounded harmless enough—get a new job and befriend a guy—but what she really meant was something like, Hey Sere, you should take this job and befriend this fine young man and get together with him. “Too bad I already have a tutoring job.”

  The day Mum stopped plotting to hook me up with one of her friend’s sons would be the day I got married to one of them. And that was so not happening. What if I dated one of them and we broke up? The last thing I wanted was for Mum to blame me for one of her favourite customers dissing our shop because of a failed relationship with their son.

  I hurried back to the kitchen before Mum could tell me more about what a great guy Mrs Wong’s son was. Sighing, I placed the tongs on the kitchen bench and folded my arms.

  What else could I do to avoid the two gossiping mums? I surveyed the room for any other task to perform. Eyeing the one oven still turned on, I peered through the window. Egg tarts occupied every inch of the tray, their middles still glistening in liquid form. Other than these, everything else we’d started baking this morning was done. My cousin Lee would also be coming soon to do some more baking.

  I yawned, removed my gloves, and threw them in the bin. “I’m going out,” I announced to nobody in particular as I climbed up the stairs to the second level where we lived. Slipping off my thongs at the top of the stairwell, I walked barefoot toward my room.

  “Hey. Dippy,” my brother called as I passed by his bedroom.