Fox in Center Field

Standing at the edge of the pool with my flamingo float deflated around my ankles like a dead pink bird, I watched Jordan—the reason I'd even come to this party—laugh at something Chloe said.

'Yo, Earth to Marcus,' Theo said, splashing water at me.

I wiped chlorinated water from my eyes. My life was a series of could'ves and didn'ts. I could've tried out for baseball freshman year. Didn't. Could've told Jordan how I felt last summer when we walked home from the convenience store every single day. Didn't.

Then something moved in the bushes behind the pool fence.

A fox—a real one, copper fur gleaming like something that didn't belong in suburbia—poked its head through the lattice. Its eyes locked on mine like it knew something about being somewhere you didn't quite fit.

'Guys,' I said, but nobody heard me over the music and splashing.

The fox crept closer, drawn by something. A half-eaten hot dog sat on a paper plate near the fence, abandoned when someone jumped in the pool. The fox snagged it in its jaws like a base thief stealing home.

Jordan saw it then. 'No freaking way.' She scrambled out of the pool, water dripping everywhere, and grabbed her phone. 'That's a literal fox.'

The fox paused, hot dog in mouth, and looked at all of us. Just for a second. Then it vanished back through the fence, gone like it had never been there at all.

'You saw that, right?' Jordan asked me, her hair slicked back, chlorine practically radiating off her like a glow.

'Yeah,' I said. 'I saw it.'

She nodded like this meant something. Like we shared a secret now, me and Jordan and the fox that stole a hot dog and didn't apologize for it.

'That fox,' she said, 'has more game than half the guys on the baseball team.' She grinned at me, and I realized she'd heard what Theo said earlier. About me not trying out.

'So,' she said. 'You gonna try out this year?'

The fox had taken what it wanted. Maybe it was time I started doing the same.

'Yeah,' I said, and it felt like the first real thing I'd said all night. 'Yeah, I think I will.'

Jordan's grin got wider. 'Good. You and me, Marcus. We're done being spectators.'