The Baseball Spy

I never thought I'd be crouching behind the dumpster at the edge of the baseball field at 11 PM on a Friday, but here we are. My knees hurt. My phone's at 12%. And I'm pretty sure I just heard something that sounded suspiciously like a bull.

A literal bull. In the suburbs.

"Marcus, you good?" Tyler's voice crackled through my AirPods. I'd pressed him into service as my lookout/spy/getaway driver because he has a car and owes me $20 from last week.

"There's literally a bull here," I whispered back. "Like, mooing and everything."

"That's not a bull, dumbass. That's Mr. Henderson's prize-winning bulldog. It sounds like a bull because it's got breathing problems."

I squinted through the chain-link fence. Sure enough, a massive bulldog waddled past, snorting like it had smoked three packs a day since 2019.

The running track circled the baseball field like a moat around a castle, and I'd been running mental laps around myself for weeks now. Because the thing about spying on your ex-best friend's new best friend? It's not cute. It's not a movie. It's just you, behind a dumpster, at 11 PM, while a bulldog judges your life choices.

Then I saw her.

Chloe. Sitting on home plate, knees pulled to her chest. Alone.

I'd spent the last month running from the truth: that she wasn't replacing me. She was grieving. Her mom had died three weeks before she ghosted me, and I'd been too busy feeling replaced to ask why.

The bull—that's what my dad called teenage drama, "just a bunch of bull"—maybe he was half right. But the other half was that I'd been so wrapped up in my own hurt that I'd missed hers.

I stood up. My knees popped. The bulldog stared.

"Marcus?" Chloe saw me through the fence. "What are you doing here?"

My spy mission be damned. I'd come for answers, but I'd found something better: a chance to stop running.

"Baseball practice," I lied. "You?"

She smiled, and for the first time in months, I saw my best friend again.

"Just needed to think."

The bulldog snorted. Somewhere, a baseball got away. And for the first time in forever, I didn't feel like running anymore.