Palm Trees and Curveballs

Leo's palms were sweating so bad they left actual marks on his clipboard. Which was humiliating. Everything about summer baseball camp was humiliating—especially Coach Miller, a total bull of a man who seemed to live for making kids feel small.

"You call that a swing, Garcia?" Miller bellowed, his face turning the color of taco meat. "My grandmother hits harder. And she's been dead fifteen years."

The whole team cracked up. Because that's how it worked. You laughed or you got singled out next.

"That's bull, though," someone whispered.

Leo whipped around. Maya. The girl with the dangerous smile and zero tolerance for nonsense.

"What?" he asked, genuinely confused.

"Coach saying you can't hit." She leaned back against the palm tree that marked the outfield boundary, looking entirely too comfortable for someone wearing cleats in ninety-degree heat. "I saw you at the cages last week. You were hitting bombs."

His face burned. That was supposed to be secret. His midnight sessions at the batting cages were his alone time—no pressure, no audience, just the satisfying CRACK of ball against wood and the hum of neon lights.

"I don't play baseball," he muttered. "My dad made me come."

"So you're just gonna let Coach steamroll you?" She raised an eyebrow, and something about her expression made him feel seen in a way that was both terrifying and weirdly good. "That's not what I saw at the cages."

A dog—a golden retriever puppy, maybe twelve weeks old—came trotting out from behind the dugout. Nobody had seen it before. It had a jersey on, #99, handwritten in sharpie.

"Whose dog is that?" Leo asked.

"Our secret weapon," Maya grinned. "Team mascot. Found him behind the concession stand. Been hiding him for three days because Coach would have a coronary."

The puppy made a beeline for Leo, sat on his foot, and looked up with eyes that said, I trust you. You're good.

"He likes you," she said. "Dogs don't lie."

Leo thought about midnight batting cages and how nobody knew. About pretending to suck at something because at least sucking was safe. About how much easier it was to be thebull's target than to risk being good and still not being enough.

"Yo, Garcia!" Miller roared from home plate. "You're up. Try not to embarrass yourself."

Maya looked at the dog. The dog looked at Leo.

"You gonna show him what's actually bull?" she asked.

Leo stepped into the box. His palms were sweating. Everything was sweating. The dog barked, sharp and confident, like he knew something nobody else did.

First pitch. Fastball, right down the middle.

CRACK.

It cleared the palm tree. It cleared the fence. It cleared the parking lot. And as his teammates stared and Coach Miller's jaw hit the dirt, Leo Garcia finally understood what happens when you stop playing small.

Maya high-fived him. The dog jumped on him like he'd just won the World Series.

"Told you," she grinned. "No bull."