The Bear in the Batter's Box

Marcus stood at the plate, the baseball bat feeling like a foreign object in his hands. The old chain-link backstop loomed behind him, a spiderweb of rust that had seen better days.

"You're thinking too much," Javier said from the pitcher's mound, tossing the ball in the air. "Just hit it."

Easy for him to say. Javier had been Marcus's best friend since third grade, back when Marcus's biggest problem was deciding which Pokémon card to trade. Now they were juniors, and everything felt like it had stakes.

The baseball streaked toward him. Marcus swung—a awkward, desperate motion that connected with nothing but air. The ball thudded into the chain-link behind him.

"Bro," Javier said, "you're fighting it."

Maybe Marcus was fighting everything these days. His dad had finally mentioned the cable bill again—how their family had cut the cord three years ago, how Marcus was missing out on culture, how he should really get into baseball like normal kids. Marcus didn't care about baseball. He cared about his secret Instagram account where he posted photography, about how his hands shook whenever Zoe from chemistry looked at him, about the creeping certainty that he didn't know who he was becoming.

"One more," Marcus said.

The pitch came. This time he didn't swing. He just watched the ball pass, a perfect strike he chose to ignore.

"What's your deal today?" Javier walked toward him, spinning another ball in his glove. "You've been weird since your dad brought up that cable stuff again."

Marcus sighed, leaning against the backstop. "He wants me to try out for the team. Says it'll 'build character.'"

"So?"

"So what if I'm not that guy? What if the guy who plays baseball and the guy I am—they're like, incompatible?" The word felt heavy in his mouth. "I feel like I'm bearing this weight I can't explain."

Javier looked at him for a long moment. Then he sat down in the dirt behind home plate. "You know what my abuela says? She says a heart can hold two things at once. You can be the guy your dad wants AND the guy you are. They're not enemies."

Marcus sat beside him. The setting sun painted the sky in impossible colors—purples and oranges that made his photographer's heart ache.

"You're my friend, Jav. But what if who I am isn't who anyone expects?"

"Then you be who you are," Javier said simply. "And the people who matter will deal. The others? Their loss."

Marcus looked at the baseball glove on his hand, then at his phone in his pocket—where he'd been drafting a caption for his latest photo all afternoon.

"Hey," Javier said, "hit one more. Then I'll let you show me your photography. Fair?"

Marcus stood up. The bat still felt wrong, but maybe that was okay. Maybe you didn't have to feel comfortable to be real.

"Deal," he said.

The next pitch came, and this time Marcus didn't think. He just swung.