Fruit Flies Fastballs

Leo's palms were sweating — like, actual dripping sweating — and he gripped the **baseball** bat anyway because Sarah was watching from the bleachers. She was scrolling her phone (probably ignoring him, his brain supplied helpfully) but still. This was it.

"You good, man?" Marcus asked, cracking his knuckles. "You look like you're about to puke."

"I'm good," Leo lied, pulling the bright **orange** slice from his pocket. His weird health-gram mom had insisted he pack "real food" instead of the team's Gatorade and Doritos combo. He'd been sneak-eating them all practice like some kind of citrus-criminal.

"Dude, are you eating ANOTHER orange?" Marcus cackled. "My little sister doesn't eat that much fruit."

"Shut up, it's —" Leo started, then his brain supplied the wrong word. "It's full of... vitamins and stuff. I'm on this new thing."

"A vitamin thing?" Marcus raised an eyebrow. "For baseball?"

"Yeah, for — focus," Leo improvised poorly. "It's a training strategy. My trainer told me about it."

He didn't have a trainer. He had YouTube and anxiety.

Sarah laughed at something on her phone and Leo's stomach did that horrible swoopy thing. He wiped his sweating palms on his uniform (gross, he knew, but whatever) and stepped up to the plate.

The pitcher wound up. Fast. Too fast.

Leo swung anyway.

CRACK.

The ball sailed into left field, rolling past Sarah's feet. She looked up, actually looked up, and grinned.

"Nice hit, Vitamin Boy!" she called.

His soul left his body. Marcus lost it. The universe ended, probably.

"Vitamin Boy," Leo muttered, head in his hands. "This is it. This is how I die."

But Sarah was still smiling, walking over with his ball. "So, Vitamin Boy — you got any more oranges? I'm starving."

Leo's brain stopped working. "Uh, yeah?"

"Cool." She tossed him the ball. "Save me one."

She walked away and Marcus punched his shoulder. "Bro. You literally just got nicknamed by Sarah Miller over oranges and vitamin lies. That's literally the most you thing ever."

Leo looked at his dusty palms, then at Sarah's retreating figure. He smiled.

"Yeah," he said. "Yeah, it kind of is."