The Creek Crossing

Marcus's baseball cleats clicked against the wooden platform. Below, Miller Creek rushed over rocks, brown and deceptively deep. The rope cable—just a weathered line stretched between two ancient oaks—swayed in the wind like a dare.

"You going, bro?" Tyler asked, leaning against his bike. The entire baseball team was watching. Behind them, at the pool across the field, the swim team practiced. Marcus could see Chloe gliding through the water, effortless and graceful, nothing like the gritty performance he put in on the mound.

"Yeah," Marcus said, though his palms were sweating. "Yeah, I'm going."

He'd been the Wildcats' ace pitcher since freshman year. Everyone knew Marcus Landry could throw a fastball that painted corners. Nobody knew Marcus Landry was terrified of deep water.

The cable had been there forever, a rite of passage. Swing out, drop in, climb out the other side. Simple. Except when you watched the water rushing beneath you and remembered being six years old, getting pulled under by a riptide at Ocean City, your lungs burning, everything dark and cold and wrong.

Chloe had climbed out of the pool, wrapped in a towel, watching now. She'd asked him yesterday why he never came to swim practice. Why he always had somewhere else to be.

Marcus grabbed the cable. It bit into his gloves. He pushed off.

The swing carried him out over the creek. Water rushed beneath his cleats, close enough that spray dampened his uniform. For a second, he was suspended there—baseball player hanging over the thing he feared most, while the girl who made his stomach do flip-flops watched from poolside.

He let go.

The water was shockingly cold. It closed over his head, the current grabbing at him, just like that beach years ago. But this time Marcus kicked hard, surfaced spluttering, and clawed his way up the muddy bank.

The baseball team whooped. Tyler fist-pumped. But Marcus looked past them, across to the pool, where Chloe was smiling.

He shivered, dripping wet in his uniform, and realized he'd never felt more alive.

"Again," he said. "I'm doing it again."