Fox at the Plate

The **baseball** whizzed past my ear at approximately eighty-seven miles per hour. Coach Miller's face was already turning that particular shade of frustrated crimson that usually meant someone was about to get benched. Again.

"Bryce, swing the bat! Not stare at it like it's an alien artifact!"

My teammates snickered. I adjusted my helmet, fighting the urge to melt into the background. Being the new kid at Ridgeview High was bad enough. Being the new kid who couldn't hit a fastball to save his life? That was social suicide. My older brother Jesse had been the team's star pitcher. Everyone expected the same from me, because apparently genetics worked like that.

That evening, I cut through the wooded shortcut behind school, brooding over my athletic inadequacy. That's when I spotted it—a **fox**.

Not a metaphorical fox. An actual, pointy-eared, russet-furred fox, sitting calmly on a fallen log, watching me with amber eyes that seemed way too intelligent for a wild animal. It had something clamped in its jaws. Something round and orange-yellow.

"Nice fruit, bro," I said, because apparently I'd reached the level of awkward where I talked to wildlife now.

The fox tilted its head, dropped the object, and trotted off into the brush like it had something better to do.

I approached slowly. A **papaya**. A perfectly intact tropical fruit, sitting on a log in suburban Oregon. What.

"Talking to woodland creatures, Bryce? Really?"

I spun around. Maya, the junior varsity catcher, stood there with her gear bag slung over her shoulder, grinning. She'd somehow appeared without making a sound. I felt my face get hot.

"I—it's a long story."

"They always are." She walked over, peered at the papaya. "Weird place for tropical fruit."

"The fox left it."

"The fox left you a papaya." She said it with this particular emphasis, like it was the most logical sentence in the world. "That's... oddly considerate?"

Our eyes met, and something clicked. She wasn't laughing at me. She was laughing with me.

"Want it?" I asked.

"Gross, I don't know where that fox's mouth has been." But she was still grinning. "But nice arm today. You almost connected that one time."

"Almost doesn't count."

"Sure it does." She adjusted her bag. "Almost means you showed up. That's more than half the battle."

Something in my chest loosened.

"See you at practice tomorrow, Bryce. Don't let the foxes distract you."

As she walked away, I realized I was smiling. The papaya sat there, bizarre and perfect—a little bit of magic in the ordinary world. I picked it up. Who knew? Maybe being Jesse's brother didn't mean I had to be Jesse. Maybe I could just be Bryce—the guy who got gifted tropical fruit by foxes and almost hit fastballs.

Almost, I decided as I headed home, wasn't so bad after all.