Surviving Coach Miller's Practice

I dragged myself into third period feeling like a straight-up **zombie**. Three hours of TikTok doom-scrolling the night before will do that to you. My hair was doing that weird frizzy thing it does when I forget to brush it, and I was pretty sure I was wearing one sock with actual toes and another that was just a regular ankle sock.

"You okay, Leo?" asked Jordan from the desk next to mine. Jordan, with the perfect eyeliner and the effortless everything. The same Jordan who'd caught me staring at them during lunch yesterday when I was mid-chew on a chip.

"Totally fine," I lied. "Just... you know, living my best life."

"Cool," Jordan said, turning back to their phone. "Are you coming to the **baseball** game after school? Everyone's going."

"Yeah, probably," I said, trying to sound casual. Meanwhile my brain was screaming THIS IS YOUR CHANCE TO IMPRESS JORDAN.

The real disaster happened during lunch. I was trying to be all sophisticated with my new health routine—my mom was obsessed with me getting more nutrients, so she'd bought these gummy **vitamin** things that actually tasted good. I'd also decided to pack myself a "grown-up" salad with actual **spinach** leaves, because that's what healthy people eat, right?

I sat down across from Jordan, feeling confident. Then I took a bite of my salad and felt something weird in my teeth. I checked my phone camera and there it was—a massive piece of **spinach** wedged right in front. I spent the next twenty minutes trying to casually work it loose with my tongue while nodding along to Jordan's story about their weekend.

"My **goldfish** died," Jordan said suddenly. "His name was Colonel Fin. I had him for three years."

"That's... actually really sad," I said, and I meant it. "I'm sorry, Jordan."

"It's okay," they said, smiling a little. "He was old for a goldfish. But it just feels like everything's changing, you know? Like I'm supposed to have it all figured out, and I'm still crying over a fish."

I wanted to say something profound about how that was totally normal, how I still slept with a stuffed penguin sometimes, how I had no idea what I was doing either. But before I could, my phone buzzed with a reminder: **Vitamin** time!

I reached into my pocket, but the bottle slipped and went flying across the cafeteria. Gummy vitamins scattered everywhere like rainbow confetti.

"Those are vitamins?" Jordan asked, picking up a bright orange one.

"Yeah," I said, feeling my face burn. "I'm... trying to be healthy?"

Jordan popped it into their mouth. "These are actually pretty good. You going to the game?"

"Yeah," I said, maybe too quickly. "I'll save you a seat."

"Cool," Jordan said, and this time, they actually smiled. "Cool."

As I walked to the baseball field later that afternoon, spinach-free and zombie-caffeinated, I thought about how life wasn't supposed to be perfect. It was supposed to be this messy collection of weird moments—dead goldfish, flying vitamins, the way Jordan's smile made my stomach do this whole gymnastics routine.

Maybe I didn't have everything figured out. But sitting there in the bleachers, Jordan laughing next to me as we watched our school lose spectacularly, I thought maybe that was okay. Maybe we were all just faking it together, one small disaster at a time.