Summer Skull Sessions

I felt like a total zombie. Twelve hours of summer baseball camp will do that to you—especially when Coach Miller decides today's the day for extra batting practice. My arms were jelly, my brain was fried, and I was pretty sure I'd forgotten my own middle name somewhere around hour three.

"You coming to Brianna's party?" Diego asked, tossing his gear bag into his trunk.

"Wouldn't miss it," I lied, because that's what you do when you're sixteen and trying to maintain your carefully curated social image. "Gotta hit the pool, bro. It's literally ninety degrees out."

The pool party was exactly what I expected: too many people, too much noise, and that weird social hierarchy that always somehow reasserted itself even when everyone was half-dressed and dripping wet. I posted up by the snacks, nursing a warm soda and feeling grossly out of place.

That's when I saw Jordan.

She was sitting on the pool edge, feet in the water, wearing this oversized black hoodie despite the heat. Jordan, who I'd had a crush on since seventh grade but had never actually spoken to because *reasons*. Jordan, who gave exactly zero cares about social hierarchies and basically everything else.

I mustered my courage—which was approximately negative three on a scale of one to ten—and drifted over.

"Hey," I said. Smooth. Truly Shakespearean in its elegance.

She looked up, and I noticed she was clutching this ratty old stuffed bear to her chest. The kind of thing you don't bring to a high school party unless you want your social life to die a painful death.

"Hey, baseball guy," she said, and I could've sworn she was smiling. "You look like you haven't slept in a week."

"Twelve hours of camp," I admitted. "I'm basically functioning on pure caffeine and spite at this point."

Jordan laughed, and it was this warm, genuine sound that made something in my chest do a weird flip thing. "I've been there. Want to sit?"

We spent the next hour talking about everything and nothing—her art, my terrible batting average, the crushing weight of parental expectations, and how sometimes you just feel like a zombie going through the motions of being a teenager when you have no idea what you're actually doing.

"This bear," she said suddenly, looking down at the ratty thing. "My dad gave it to me before he, like, moved across the country. Stupid, right?"

"No," I said, and meant it. "I still sleep with this beat-up old baseball glove from when I was seven. My grandpa gave it to me before he passed."

She looked at me, really looked at me, and something shifted. The distance between us, all the unasked questions and what-ifs, suddenly felt bridgeable.

"You know what?" Jordan said, standing up and offering me her hand. "Let's get in the pool. Both of us. Hoodie and all."

I looked at the water, then at her, then back at the water. It was terrifying. It was ridiculous. It was exactly the kind of spontaneous thing normal teenagers did.

"We'll look like complete idiots," I said.

"Yeah," Jordan grinned. "But we'll be idiots together."

I took her hand, and I jumped in. The water was cold, the moment was perfect, and for the first time all summer, I didn't feel like a zombie at all.