Chlorine and Confessions

The baseball sat abandoned on the diving board, its leather already warping in the July heat. Marcus stood at the edge of the pool, chest heaving like he'd just stolen home plate.

"Dude, you're not actually gonna—" I started, but he was already mid-air.

The cannonball sent a tsunami of chlorinated water over my carefully arranged snack tower. Potato chips: casualties of war. Marcus surfaced, whooping like he'd just won the World Series, while I drip-drip-dripped with zero dignity.

"Baseball in the pool," I said, rescuing a surviving chip. "Because that's a thing normal people do."

"It's multisport training," Marcus grinned, shoving wet hair out of his face. "My dad says college coaches love athletes who can adapt."

His dad said lots of things. Most of them involved how this summer would determine his entire future. Which was why we were stuck at my house instead of the community pool — cable guy coming between noon and whenever, which meant I was on lockdown.

The front doorbell rang. My mom's voice drifted through the screen door: "Javy! Cable company's here!"

I dragged myself out of the pool, leaving Marcus to invent water baseball rules. The cable tech looked like he'd rather be anywhere but my driveway. His van smelled like stale coffee and regret.

"You're the fourth house today," he said, drilling into the wall. "Everyone thinks their internet is life or death."

It kind of was, though. How else were we supposed to avoid thinking about things? Like how Marcus was leaving for camp next week. Like how he'd barely talked to me all summer except when his baseball practices got cancelled. Like how the space between us felt wider than the diving pool at the rec center.

When I came back outside, Marcus was sitting on the pool edge, legs in the water, baseball spinning in his hands. Not throwing it. Just turning it over and over like he was trying to memorize its stitches.

"Cable fixed?" he asked without looking up.

"Yeah."

Silence. The kind that used to be comfortable, now just heavy.

"I'm nervous about camp," he said finally. The baseball stopped spinning. "What if everyone's better than me? What if I suck and they send me home and my dad's all disappointed—again?"

I slid into the water beside him. "Dude. You hit a home run off actual pitchers this season. You're gonna crush it."

"But what if—"

"No what-ifs. You're my best friend, and you're also secretly good at baseball despite being a huge dork about it."

Marcus laughed, and the knot in my chest loosened a little. He tossed the baseball to me — a perfect spiral that didn't get wet.

"Race you to the deep end," he said.

"You're on. Loser buys snacks."

Some things were changing, sure. But not everything had to.