Orange Comet at the Plate

Jordan's hands shook as they adjusted the neon orange helmet. Too bright. Too everything. The whole school was watching the junior varsity playoff game, and Coach Miller had decided to put in the backup catcher as a pinch hitter. Because apparently 0-3 with two strikeouts wasn't embarrassing enough on its own.

"You got this, Jordan!" Maya yelled from the bleachers, which was sweet because she was literally the only person not on their phone. Jordan's stomach did that thing where it felt like a bull was kicking it from the inside. A very angry, very caffeinated bull.

The pitcher — some sophomore with a curveball that made grown men cry — wound up and fired. Strike one. Jordan stepped out, took a breath, adjusted the orange jersey that made them look like a traffic cone. Great. Now they were a traffic cone with anxiety.

"Eye on the ball, Jordan!" someone's dad yelled. No cap, Sherlock.

Second pitch: ball one. Okay, progress. Third pitch: foul tip. Jordan's bat made contact, which felt like winning the lottery even if it didn't count.

Then the fourth pitch came — a fastball, right down the middle. Jordan didn't think. Just swung.

CRACK.

The ball sailed toward right field, kept going, kept going, and cleared the fence. For a second, nobody moved. Then the entire team rushed the plate, and Maya was jumping up and down like a maniac, and Jordan was jogging the bases with this weird floating feeling, like gravity had stopped working.

"NO CAP!" someone screamed from the dugout. "WALK-OFF!"

Jordan touched home plate and got absolutely dog-piled by the team. The orange helmet was somewhere in the dirt now, probably permanently stained with grass and victory. Jordan's hands still shook, but for a completely different reason.

"Told you," Maya said later, while Jordan tried to clean grass stains out of the orange jersey with the sink basically just ruining it further. "You're not invisible, Jordan. You're literally the opposite."

Jordan laughed, actually laughed, and realized maybe standing out wasn't the worst thing in the world. Sometimes being the orange comet in a room full of gray rocks wasn't a bug. It was the whole point.