Summer of Sidelines

The **baseball** coach said I'd be back by the playoffs. That was three months ago, before my shoulder decided it was done being a team player. Now I'm sixteen, sitting on the bench in a hoodie while my friends live their best lives without me, and my mom's got me on these horse-sized **vitamin** supplements that smell like someone's grazing in a meadow.

My social currency has plummeted. I went from starting pitcher to that guy who shows up and watches everyone else play. Jenna texted me a party invite last week—a pool party at Tyler's house—and I spent twenty minutes staring at my ceiling wondering if I could fake being fine.

The **pool** was already chaos when I got there. Tyler's parents were weirdly cool, and practically the whole grade was there, splashing around, music bumping, someone doing a keg stand with a two-liter of Mountain Dew. I stood by the fence holding my phone like a shield, calculating the precise moment I could bail without looking like I bailed.

"Hey!" Someone waved me over. It was Maya, from my history class. She was sitting on the pool edge with a Solo cup, and next to her was a **goldfish**—an actual, orange goldfish—swimming in a mason jar. "This is Bubbles," she said seriously. "Tyler's cousin brought him and then ghosted. Want to help me figure out what to do with him?"

So there I was, the injured kid, the benchwarmer, sitting on the concrete next to this girl I'd barely spoken to, figuring out how to save a fish we weren't supposed to have. We spent the next hour talking about everything except baseball—her art, my weird obsession with vintage video games, how adults think vitamins solve actual problems, how high school feels like a holding cell for people who haven't figured themselves out yet.

"You're pretty chill," Maya said when Tyler's mom finally yelled at everyone to get out of the pool.

"I'm literally the opposite of chill," I said, but I was smiling.

We ended up walking Bubbles to Maya's house, which was three blocks away. She said I could come over sometime if I wanted—maybe play video games, maybe help her figure out if goldfish get lonely.

I went home and sat on my bed, shoulder still throbbing, and realized something: I'd spent the whole summer thinking I was stuck on the sidelines, but maybe the sidelines were where I was supposed to be. Some moments only happen when you stop trying to be the MVP.

I texted Maya: "Bubbles settling in okay?"

She replied almost immediately: "He misses you already. Come over tomorrow?"

I stared at my phone, grinning like an idiot. The vitamins could wait. My recovery could wait. For the first time all summer, I didn't feel like I was missing out on anything at all.