Strikeout in the Storm

The baseball bat felt heavy in my hands, like it was made of lead instead of aluminum. Sixth inning. Two outs. Bases loaded. And guess who's up to bat? That would be me, Maya Rodriguez, who'd never successfully hit anything in her entire life.

"You got this, Maya!" yelled Tyler from the dugout. Tyler, with his perfect hair and his perfect smile and his perfect everything. I'd been crushing on him since seventh grade, which was approximately forever.

I stepped into the batter's box. The pitcher wound up and threw—

CRACK.

I don't know what was more shocking: the fact that I actually made contact, or the jagged fork of **lightning** that split the sky at that exact same moment, like the universe was marking my victory with dramatic punctuation. The ball soared into left field and kept going. I stood there frozen until my coach screamed, "RUN!" So I ran.

I rounded first base, then second. The rain started coming down in sheets—cold, hard, relentless. I could barely see third base through the downpour. My cleats slipped in the mud as my heart hammered like trapped birds against my ribs. I was **running** for my life, sprinting through the sudden downpour, everything blurring together into rain and adrenaline and the distant sound of my teammates screaming my name.

My foot hit home plate just as the umpire shouted, "GAME CALLED!"

I'd done it. My first hit ever. A grand slam. In a thunderstorm.

As the team rushed toward me, someone knocked me over in the excitement. I fell backwards into the mud, laughing so hard I couldn't breathe. Then I felt it—something warm and fuzzy pressing against my back.

I rolled over to find myself nose-to-nose with a six-foot plastic **bear**. The school mascot, that goofy grizzly costume that someone had abandoned in the chaos of the storm. Its googly eyes stared at me like it was witnessing something extraordinary.

"Nice hustle, Ro-DRI-guez!" Tyler's voice came from somewhere above me. He reached down, pulling me up from the mud with both hands, his grip warm and solid and totally not letting go even after I was standing. "That was... actually really impressive."

The rain kept falling, plastering my hair to my face. The plastic bear sat on its butt beside home plate like a surreal witness to whatever was happening between me and Tyler in the storm. I thought about making a joke about how I'd nearly gotten taken out by a bear, but then I looked at Tyler really looked at him and realized he was already looking at me, and his perfect smile had gone a little crooked at the edges, like he was nervous too.

"Want to get out of here?" he asked. "I think our work here is done."

I laughed, wiping mud from my cheek. "Yeah. I think I'm done with baseball for a lifetime."