The Mascot Manifesto

My palms were sweating through my rubber gloves, which was honestly impressive considering I was currently wearing a thirty-pound **bear** costume in the middle of July.

"You got this, Mason," Maya whispered from behind the bleachers. She was wearing this floral dress that made my stomach do backflips, which was exactly why I'd agreed to this humiliation in the first place. The school board had voted to replace our mascot because apparently "the Fighting Gophers" wasn't intimidating enough for competitive sports. My petition to keep it had failed spectacularly.

Now I had to run onto the field during the seventh-inning stretch of the biggest **baseball** game of the season, between our rivals and us, and perform the "routine" I'd thrown together in twenty minutes of panic-choreography in my bedroom.

The announcer's voice boomed: "PUT YOUR HANDS TOGETHER FOR OUR NEW MASCOT CANDIDATE!"

I lumbered out. The mascot head had zero peripheral vision, so I basically stumbled toward the pitcher's mound like I'd been hitting the medical **zombie** juice a little too hard. Someone's phone light blinded me. I tried to wave and instead knocked over the Gatorade cooler, which drenched the first base coach.

The crowd went silent. Then someone yelled: "HEY BEAR, YOU OKAY?"

I froze. This was it. My social life, officially over before junior year even started. I could just imagine the TikToks. The hashtags. My parents finding out and giving me that gentle "we're not disappointed, just confused" speech.

Then I heard Maya's voice above everyone else: "DO THE WORM!"

Something in me just... let go. I dropped to the ground and started worming, which in a bear costume looked more like a dying seal having an existential crisis. But people were laughing. Not at me—with me. The cheerleaders started chanting. The baseball players were losing it. Even the other team's mascot, some eagle guy, came over and started doing the Macarena.

I spent the next twenty minutes crowd-surfing, mostly because nobody could actually pick me up so they just sort of awkwardly shuffled me around like I was at a really weird concert.

Afterward, Maya helped me out of the costume. My hair was plastered to my forehead, I smelled like a gym locker room, and I'd probably pulled every muscle in my body.

"You looked ridiculous," she said, smiling in that way that made me forget how to English.

"Yeah, well."

"I mean it." She handed me her phone. "Check this."

I was trending. #dyingsealbear had like, ten thousand views. There was already a fan account.

"So," Maya said, "I was thinking maybe you could teach me that worm sometime?"

I looked at my sweaty palms and thought, yeah. Sometimes you just gotta embrace the chaos.