Fox in the Outfield

The orange neon sign of the 7-Eleven buzzed behind me as I adjusted my baseball cap—pulled low, my version of armor against the world. Tryouts were tomorrow, and my stomach was doing backflips that had nothing to do with the two slices of pizza I'd just inhaled.

"You're totally gonna crush it," Maya said, crunching on ice. "You've been practicing since, like, the dawn of time."

Easy for her to say. Maya was the kind of girl who could accidentally fall into a swimming pool and emerge looking like a mermaid model. Meanwhile, I choked on air during presentations and my brain short-circuited whenever Alex—the actual human sunshine—walked by.

Coach Miller called it "finding your inner fox." Apparently, foxes are clever and adaptable. I called it "please don't embarrass yourself in front of the entire student body."

At tryouts, I stood in the outfield, grass staining my socks, heart pounding like a bass drop at a school dance. Then it happened—Alex's perfect arc fly ball coming straight at me, everyone watching, and in that second, I wasn't thinking about my hands sweating or my lungs forgetting how to lung. I just moved. Caught it clean.

"Nice, Fox," Alex grinned afterward, using the nickname Coach had given me. "You looked like you knew exactly what you were doing."

I laughed, and it actually sounded genuine. "Fake it 'til you make it, right?"

Walking home under orange streaks of sunset, I realized something. Maybe the hat wasn't armor anymore. Maybe it was just a hat. And maybe I didn't need to be a fox—clever and untouchable. Maybe I just needed to be me, someone who could catch a fly ball and still be terrified of talking to their crush.

Baby steps.