The Dog Who Stole My Curveball

Marcus stood on the pitcher's mound, sweat dripping down his back like someone had turned a faucet on his spine. Third hour of baseball practice and Coach Davidson was still screaming about "mental toughness." Marcus felt like a zombie—like, actual Walking Dead extra, groaning and everything. His phone had buzzed twelve times during drills. The Group Chat was going absolutely feral about Tyler's party on Friday, the one Marcus wasn't invited to. Again.

"You gonna throw something or just stand there looking dead?" yelled Jordan, the shortstop with way too much hair gel and exactly zero chill.

Marcus wound up, released, and watched the ball curve beautifully—until a golden retriever came literally out of nowhere, sprinting across the field like it was the Olympics, and snatched the baseball mid-air like it was a tennis ball. The dog paused, tail thumping, looking ridiculous pleased with itself.

"Did that dog just—"

"Bro, what even—"

Then came the lightning. Not actual weather lightning (obviously, it was sunny), but that weird synesthetic flash behind Marcus's eyes that sometimes happened when everything got too much. His therapist called them anxiety spikes. Marcus called them his brain short-circuiting.

He started running. Not running away, exactly, but running toward something—town, freedom, literally anywhere but here. The golden retriever trotted beside him, baseball still in its mouth like it had just won the World Series.

"Nice form," a voice said.

Marcus skidded to a stop. Luna, the girl from his English class who wore combat boots and wrote poetry on her arms, was sitting on a bench reading, like this was totally normal. "You're Marcus, right? You look like you're escaping a crime scene."

"Crime scene's close," Marcus panted. The dog dropped the baseball at Luna's feet. She laughed, and Marcus felt something weird in his chest, not the anxiety lightning but something softer, like maybe belonging wasn't about Tyler's parties or baseball practice or pretending to be someone he wasn't.

"Wanna walk?" Luna asked. "You can tell me about your zombie apocalypse escape plan."

The dog picked up the baseball again, tail wagging like a metronome. Marcus grinned, and for the first time all week, he didn't feel dead at all.