The Art of the Fake Out

You ever feel like your entire life is one giant performance? That was me, sitting in the cafeteria, staring at a lunch tray that looked like a vegetable massacre attempt. My mom, in her infinite wellness wisdom, had decided I needed more iron in my diet. Hence, the spinach lasagna that was currently threatening to slide off my plastic fork in a sad green avalanche.

"You gonna eat that, or just stare at it until it withers?" Marcus asked, sliding into the seat across from me. He had this way of appearing exactly when I was doing something embarrassing.

"It's cuisine," I said, trying to salvage what was left of my dignity. "It's called being sophisticated."

"It looks like someone mowed a lawn and microwaved it," he said, then got serious. "You ready for tryouts tomorrow?"

That was the thing hanging over my head like a storm cloud. Baseball. The great American proving ground where teenage boys went to either become legends or publicly humiliate themselves. And my mom had decided this was the perfect week to start me on these massive horse-pill vitamins that were supposedly going to "unlock my athletic potential." Spoiler alert: they mostly just made me feel like I was going to puke during gym class.

"Yeah, I'm ready," I lied, because what else do you say to your best friend when he's looking at you like you're about to walk onto a battlefield? "Just gotta nail the curveball."

But here's the thing about perfection — it's exhausting. By the time I got home that afternoon, I was ready to rage-quit my own life. I flopped onto my bed, and Whiskers, my cat, immediately materialized like she'd been waiting in the wings for her cue. She jumped onto my chest and started purring like a tiny, furry motor.

I stared at the ceiling, thinking about how I was always trying to be someone I wasn't. The athlete. The healthy eater. The guy who didn't secretly want to binge-watch Netflix instead of running drills until my lungs burned.

Whiskers let out this tiny meow, like she was calling BS on my entire identity crisis.

"You're right," I told her. "This is stupid."

The next day at tryouts, I didn't get picked for varsity. But I did manage to hit a double that made the coach raise his eyebrows, and afterward, Marcus and I went to Taco Bell and I ordered exactly what I wanted. Sometimes the most radical thing you can do is just stop performing and start living.