Strike Out, Run In

The baseball field at midnight was my sanctuary. Not because I gave a crap about the sport — my dad's obsession with the Mets was cringe enough — but because the dirt path was perfect for running.

Coach said I had potential. Potential to sit the bench, maybe. I'd started these midnight runs three weeks ago, training in secret because telling the cross country team I wanted to join would've meant explaining why I hadn't joined freshman year like a normal person. Two years later, the awkwardness factor was basically lethal.

"You again."

I nearly face-planted. Whipping around, flashlight beam cutting through darkness — there was Maya, sitting in the dugout, legs pulled up to her chest. Maya Chen, who'd sat behind me in English since September and whose side-eye game was absolutely lethal.

"Since when do you lurk at baseball fields at midnight?" I asked, trying to sound casual and failing.

"Since my parents stopped getting along. You're running laps. At a baseball field. That's objectively weird behavior."

"I'm training. For cross country."

"You're literally running in circles around the dirt patch where people hit balls with sticks. That's not cross country. That's "avoiding your problems."

The truth hit like a physical thing. She wasn't wrong.

"What are you avoiding?" I asked, dropping to the dugout floor beside her. Our knees brushed. Something electric jumped between us that had nothing to do with the storm rolling in.

"Same thing you are. People expecting us to be something we're not." Her voice went quiet. "Everyone thinks I'm this perfect student. I haven't actually read a book for fun in two years. I'm terrified I'm not actually smart, just good at pretending."

Lightning cracked the sky open, sudden and blinding, illuminating everything — the empty field, the endless night, her face turned toward mine like she was waiting for something to happen. Something did.

"Stop running in circles," she said, and I couldn't tell if she meant the laps or everything else.

"Yeah," I said, my heart doing something complicated and unfamiliar. "Okay."

The rain came down like it had been waiting for us to figure this out. Neither of us moved.