The Lightning Moment

The baseball cap sat three rows down, abandoned like my dignity. Coach Miller had made me take it off during warm-ups—something about "team uniform policy"—but everyone knew it was because my hair was doing this weird frizz thing that looked like I'd stuck my finger in an electrical socket.

"You good, Marcus?" asked Tyrell, sliding into the seat beside me. He was the kind of guy who could pull off wearing a backwards hat during a formal assembly. The kind of guy who actually knew how to play baseball.

"Yeah," I lied, reaching into my pocket. My fingers brushed against the bottle of gummy vitamins I'd brought because my mom was convinced my growth spurt needed supplementation. Freshman year. I was still taking gummy vitamins.

I wanted to disappear.

Then the sky tore open.

Lightning forked across the horizon, brilliant and terrifying. The game halted. Players scattered. The scoreboard flickered and died. And in that weird, suspended moment when everyone was looking up instead of at me, something clicked.

Maybe it was the chaos. Maybe it was the way Tyrell was actually checking on me instead of laughing at my hair. Maybe it was that I'd been so worried about my hat and my vitamins and whether I looked cool that I'd forgotten to actually experience anything.

I stood up. "We should probably head to the concession stand. It's got that overhang thing."

"Solid thinking," Tyrell said, grabbing his backpack. "Hey, you got any of those vitamins left? Growth spurt's been killing my cramps."

I laughed—really laughed—for the first time all day. The hat could wait. The lightning had cleared the air. And apparently, even the cool kids needed their vitamins sometimes.