The Baseball Sage Fencer

I'd become a professional **spy** without even realizing it. Every day after school, I'd position myself behind the **baseball** field bleachers, supposedly doing homework, but really watching Leo practice his pitching. I'd memorized his wind-up, the way his cap brim tilted just right, how his jaw tightened when he missed a strike zone.

My best friend Sarah called it my "full stalker." I preferred "observational enthusiast."

"You realize he literally looked at you yesterday?" Sarah said, crunching popcorn beside me. "You're not exactly undercover."

I shrugged. "If he noticed, he hasn't said anything. That's practically permission."

Then came the incident with the TV **cable**. My dad had disconnected our cable to "encourage academic focus," which was obviously directed at me and my surveillance habit. But I'd figured out how to use a paperclip to reconnect it, mostly because I'd discovered Leo did these local baseball interviews on the sports channel.

I was mid-paperclip maneuver when my mom walked in.

"Mia? What are you—"

"Science project!" I yelped, shoving the wire behind the TV. "Physics! Cable conductivity! It's for extra credit!"

She gave me that look. The one that says, "I wasn't born yesterday, but I'm too tired to argue."

The real crash came when Leo actually approached me after his game. I was doing my usual lurking-behind-the-fence routine when he walked over, baseball cap in hand, sweating and smiling.

"Hey," he said. "You're Mia, right? From English?"

My brain short-circuited. "Uh. Yes. That's me. I exist."

He laughed. "I've seen you watching practice. You're not exactly subtle."

"I was... appreciating your technique? From an artistic perspective?"

"Right." He stepped closer. "You want to hang out sometime? Maybe talk about something other than baseball?"

All those hours of covert observation, and he'd known the whole time. Maybe I wasn't a spy after all. Maybe I was just a girl with a really obvious crush who needed to learn that real life isn't something you watch from the bleachers.

"Yeah," I said, finally stepping onto the field with him. "I'd like that."