The Art of Floating

Marcus stood in the outfield, baseball glove practically weighing down his entire arm. His dad screamed something from the bleachers that definitely wasn't appropriate for a fourteen-year-old's ears. The summer stretched before him like a sentence—Baseball Camp: four weeks of sweaty jerseys and pretending he didn't completely suck at sports.

"You good, man?" his teammate Jaylen asked, fist-bumping him way too enthusiastically.

"Yeah. Just gotta take my vitamin." Marcus fished in his backpack and pulled out the gummy supplement his mom swore would improve his focus. He'd been crushing them like candy all week, mostly because they tasted like artificial grape and responsibility.

His pocket buzzed. iPhone. Probably the group chat roasting someone for something.

He wasn't good at baseball. He wasn't good at much of anything that involved coordination, screaming adults, or performative masculinity. But he was good at disappearing.

That night, he snuck into the community pool. The whole town was asleep, but the pool lights flickered on, casting everything in this underwater glow that made him feel like he was floating in space. He'd been teaching himself to swim on YouTube, away from the judgment of actual humans who witnessed teenagers learning basic life skills.

The water hit him like cold silk.

Marcus wasn't thinking about batting averages or the way his dad's face fell when he struck out. He wasn't thinking about how his iPhone lit up with notifications he refused to check. He was thinking about how, for the first time in his life, he could just... exist.

He floated on his back, staring at the stars through the skylight, and realized something profound: maybe he wasn't supposed to be the baseball star. Maybe he was supposed to be the guy who learned to swim at midnight with nobody watching.

His phone vibrated on the pool deck. Probably more notifications. More expectations.

He let it buzz.

Marcus dipped his head underwater and listened to the silence of it all. Tomorrow, he'd tell his dad he wasn't going back to baseball camp. He'd join the swim team instead. He'd probably be terrible at that too, but at least it would be terrible on his own terms.

The vitamin gummies could wait. Right now, Marcus was learning something more important than any sport.

He was learning how to be himself.