It took four minutes and thirty seconds for Alice to win the first game. Charlie had only one point to show for it, and that was because Alice double-faulted. Focus! she screamed to herself. This whole match will be over before you know it if you don’t get your damn act together! You want to flame out on Centre Court at Wimbledon without even trying? Only a loser would do that! Loser! Loser! Loser!

The mental screaming and cursing worked. Charlie went on to hold her own serve and break Alice’s. She was up 2–1 and could feel herself starting to settle. The queasy adrenaline that had troubled her before the match was morphing into that blissful state of flow where Charlie could no longer feel the irritation of her socks slipping or see the familiar faces in the Royal Box or hear the golf claps and quiet cheers of the infinitely well-mannered British audience. Nothing existed but her racket and the ball, and nothing mattered but how those two made contact, point after point, game after game, crisply, powerfully, and with intention.

Charlie won the first set, 6–3. She was tempted to congratulate herself, but she knew enough to recognize that the match was far from over. In the ninety seconds during the changeover, she calmly drank some water in small, measured sips. Even that took mental discipline – her whole body was screaming for huge, cold gulps – but she controlled herself. When she had rehydrated and taken three bites of a banana, she rooted through her racket bag and pulled out her backup pair of socks. They were identical to the ones she was wearing, and while there was no reason to believe they would perform any differently, Charlie decided to try. When she removed her old socks, her feet were a horror show: meaty, swollen, red. Both pinky toes were bloodied and the skin on her heels hung in loose, blistered rolls. The outsides of her ankles were covered in purple bruises from hitting the stiff tops and tongue of the leather. The whole of her feet ached as though they’d been run over by a bus.

The new socks felt like sandpaper, and it took every ounce of willpower to push her mutilated feet back into the shoes. Pain shot from her toes and heels, her ankles and arches, from the ball-of-the-foot bone that hadn’t even hurt until that very moment. Charlie had to will herself to cinch the laces tight and knot them, and the moment she did so, the chair umpire called time. Instead of running high-kneed back to the baseline to keep loose and responsive, she found herself walking with a slight limp. I should’ve taken some Advil when I had the chance, she thought as she accepted two balls from a teenage ball boy. Hell, I should have had the right shoes in the first place.

And bam! That was all it took to open the floodgates of anger and, worse, distraction. Why on earth couldn’t anyone have predicted that her shoes would be deemed inadmissible? Where were her sponsors at Nike? It’s not like they’d never outfitted Wimbledon players before. Charlie tossed first one and then a second ball into the air to serve. Double fault. Whose responsibility was it anyway? She switched sides, offered a weaker-than-usual serve, and stood dumbly still as Alice blazed a forehand winner right past her. Tennis players are superstitious. We wear the same underwear at every match. We eat the same foods, day in and day out. We carry good-luck charms and talismans and offer prayers and chant mantras and every other crazy thing to help convince whoever’s listening that if only, please, just this once, we could win this lone point/game/set/match/tournament, it would really be so great and soooo appreciated. Charlie’s first serve was powerful and well placed, but again she was flat-footed and unprepared for Alice’s return. She got to the ball but wasn’t able to steady her stance enough to clear the net. Love–40. Was she seriously expected to wear someone else’s shoes during her first match on Centre Court, the biggest, most intimidating stage on which she’d ever played? Really – shoes? She and her team spent hours selecting and fitting new sneakers when it was time for a change, but hey, here, just wear this random pair. They’ll be fine. What do you think this is, Wimbledon or something? Whack! The anger coursed through her body and went straight to the ball, which she hit at least two feet past the baseline, and just like that, she had lost the first game of the second set.

Charlie glanced toward her box and saw Marcy, her father, and her brother, Jake. When Mr Silver caught her looking, he broke into a reflexive smile, but Charlie could see his concern from where she was standing on the baseline. The next several games were over in a flash, with Charlie only managing to hold on to one. Suddenly Alice was up 5–2 and something inside Charlie’s head snapped to focus: Oh my god. This is it. She was about to lose her second set on Centre Court to a player ranked thirty spots lower. To play a third set right now would be hell. It was simply not an option. The infinitely polite British crowd was downright raucous by their standards, with light clapping and even the occasional cheer. Forget the blisters, forget the brick-like shoes, forget the raging anger at all the people on her team who should have prevented this from happening. None of that mattered now. Hit hard, hit smart, hit consistently, she thought, squeezing her racket tightly and releasing, something Charlie often did to relax herself. Squeeze, release. Squeeze, release. Forget the bullshit and win the next point.

Charlie won the next game and then the game after that. Once again she settled down, forced her mind to think of nothing but stroking the ball and winning the point. When she tied up the second set at 5–5, she knew she would win the match. She breathed deeply, evenly, summoning huge reserves of mental strength to tune out the pain that was now radiating from her feet up her legs. Cramping. She could deal with that, had a thousand times before. Focus. Hit. Recover. Hit. Recover. In an instant it was 6–5 in the second set and Charlie had to secure only one more game to win it. It was so close now she could feel it.

Alice’s first serve was high on spin but low on speed and Charlie jumped all over it. Winner! Her next one was much harder and flatter, and Charlie smashed that one straight down the line. They rallied back and forth a few shots on the next point before Alice dropped one just over the net. Charlie read it early and set her body in motion, running as fast as her legs would take her toward the net, her racket outstretched already and her entire upper half bent forward. She could get there, she knew she could. She was almost there, literally within inches of connecting the very top part of her racket head to the ball, only needing to give it a little tap to get it back over the net, when her right foot – feeling like it had a five-pound bag of flour attached to it – slid out from under her like a ski. Had she been wearing her own light, properly fitted sneakers, she may have been able to control the slide, but the heavy, blocky shoe flew across the grass court as though it were a sheet of ice, and it pulled Charlie with it. She flailed gracelessly, tossing her racket so she could use both hands to break her fall, and then … pop. She heard it before she felt it. Didn’t everyone? It was so damn loud the entire stadium must have heard that awful popping sound, but on the off chance they missed it, Charlie’s scream caught their attention.