Summer Between Everything

The chlorine smell hit me before I even opened the gate—my new reality, eight hours a day, six days a week. While the baseball team gathered at the diamond for summer league, I was here, checking pH levels and yelling at kids not to run.

"You're actually gonna miss it," Marcus had said when I told him I wasn't playing summer ball. "Baseball is, like, your whole thing."

Was it, though? Sometimes I felt like I'd been on autopilot since tee-ball, just showing up because that's what you do when your dad's a coach and your brother's a pitcher.

Then the dog showed up.

First day of June, this mangy golden retriever mix appeared at the pool fence, watching me through the chain links like I was the most interesting thing he'd ever seen. I slipped him half my turkey sandwich. He came back the next day. And the next.

"You've got a stalker," Chloe said from the lifeguard chair, adjusting her sunglasses. She was going to be a senior, had this effortless confidence I couldn't figure out. "What's his name?"

"He's not my dog. He's just... around."

"Buster," she said. "He looks like a Buster."

So Buster became my poolside companion. He'd wait by the employee entrance, follow me to the storage shed, somehow know when my break was. The kids loved him. Even Mr. Henderson, the manager who hated everything, didn't make me shoo him away.

One afternoon, Marcus and the baseball team came by after practice. They smelled like sweat and sunflower seeds, like everything I used to be part of.

"Bro, what are you doing?" Marcus called from the concession stand. "You're, like, talking to that dog like he's a person."

Buster leaned against my leg, and something clicked. I didn't miss the pressure in the dugout, the way my stomach twisted before every at-bat, the feeling that I was playing someone else's game.

"He's a better listener than you guys," I said, and Chloe laughed from her chair.

That night, Buster followed me home. He wasn't a stray—he belonged to the elderly woman three streets over, Mrs. Rodriguez. She'd let him out every morning, and he'd decided I was worth visiting.

"He's a good judge of character," she said. "You're welcome anytime."

Baseball tryouts rolled around in August. I didn't go. Instead, I asked Chloe if she needed help with the swim lessons program. Buster waited by the fence, tail thumping like he knew something I was just figuring out.

Some seasons end, and some begin. And sometimes a dog at a pool fence helps you choose which ones matter.