The Midnight Baseball Game at Hamilton Pool

My iphone buzzed on my nightstand at 1:47 AM.

u up?

Marcus. Of course he was up. Marcus was always up when normal people were sleeping.

baseball field. now. bring ur glove

I groaned but grabbed my gear and climbed out the window anyway. That's what you do when your best friend texts you at 2 AM with something like that — you show up, because half the time, it's worth it.

The baseball field behind the abandoned rec center was our spot. We'd been playing midnight baseball there all summer, just the two of us, pitching and hitting into the chain-link fence until the sky started turning gray. But tonight was different.

Marcus wasn't standing on the pitcher's mound. He was standing at the edge of Hamilton Pool, the fancy neighborhood pool complex with the tall iron fence and the NO TRESPASSING signs we'd been ignoring since seventh grade.

"We're breaking in," Marcus said, his eyes bright in the moonlight.

"Dude, no," I said, but I was already laughing.

"Come on. It's August. We're starting high school in, like, two weeks. We need something."

He didn't have to say what. We both felt it — that weird, zombie-like exhaustion that came from three months of absolutely nothing meaningful happening. The summer that was supposed to be unforgettable but was mostly just Netflix and waiting for something to change.

So we scaled the fence, our sneakers finding the footholds we'd memorized from years of being exactly where we weren't supposed to be. The pool was dead silent, the water reflecting the moon like a mirror, and the whole thing felt like we were the last two people on Earth.

Marcus pulled a baseball from his pocket like it was contraband.

"Pitch," he said.

So I did. I threw from the deep end, and he hit it toward the shallow end. The crack of the bat echoed off the water, and then Marcus — graceful, varsity-track Marcus — sprinted toward the diving board like he was running for state, launched himself into the air, and caught the ball mid-dive before plunging into the pool.

When he surfaced, grinning and dripping, he held up the baseball like a trophy.

"That," he said, "is how you start high school."

My iphone was in my pocket, but I didn't need it. Some moments you don't post. Some moments you just keep, like a secret you carry with you when everything else changes.

We stayed there until the sky turned purple, two boys at the edge of growing up, playing baseball at a pool we weren't allowed to be in, pretending summer would never end.