Chasing Thunder

The chewable **vitamin** C tablets sat on my desk like orange accusations. Mom swore they'd help me "bulk up" for football season, but we both knew the truth: no amount of Vitamin C was gonna turn me into the linebacker my dad wanted me to be.

I picked up my cat, Biscuit, who'd been watching me with judgment in her yellow eyes. "At least you don't care if I'm soft, right?" Biscuit purred, probably because I was about to feed her, not because she understood my existential crisis.

My phone buzzed. Group chat blowing up about Tyler's party tonight—the one I'd been dodging for two weeks. *"You coming bro?"* *"Don't be lame."*

I stared at myself in the mirror. Sixteen years old and still waiting for whatever magic transformation was supposed to happen between middle school and now. Instead, I was just... me. Average height. Average build. Average everything.

The problem wasn't that I wasn't athletic. The problem was that I *wasn't not* athletic enough, you know? Like, I could hold my own in gym class, but put me on an actual field and I'd crumble.

That's when I saw the flyer on the school bulletin board earlier: **BULL** RIDING CLINIC. Saturdays, 8 AM. No experience necessary.

The idea was insane. Stupid. Dangerous.

Perfect.

I grabbed Biscuit and held her up. "What if I did something completely not-me? Like, actually wild?" She yawned, unimpressed. "Exactly. Nobody would expect it."

The Saturday clinic was everything I'd imagined and more terrifying. Dust, hay, the smell of leather and something primal I couldn't name. The instructor, a guy with more scars than years, looked at my gangly frame and said, "You got the mindset to get thrown, kid. That's step one."

I got thrown. A lot. But something weird happened—I didn't hate it. Each time I climbed back on, I felt something real. Something that wasn't about being enough for anyone else.

Three weeks later, I showed up to Tyler's party with dirt still under my fingernails and a fresh bruise blooming on my arm. Someone asked about it.

"Bull riding," I said, waiting for the laughter.

Instead, Jake—the actual Jake, varsity quarterback—nodded. "That's sick, man. For real?"

"For real."

He held up his phone. "My cousin does rodeo. That's legit **bull**."

The conversation kept going. No one made fun of me. No one looked at me like I was pretending. They just... accepted it. Accepted me.

That night, I tossed the vitamins in the trash. Biscuit circled my feet, purring like she'd known all along this was coming.

Some transformations don't come in pill form. Sometimes you just gotta climb onto something that could kill you and ride until you either stick or fly.

Either way, you're not the same when you hit the ground.