The Pyramid Scheme

Marcus stood at home plate, gripping the bat like his life depended on it. The baseball game was tied, bottom of the ninth, and somehow the entire student body was in the bleachers. Not that they cared about the game. They cared about what was happening on their phones.

"Yo, did you see what Kayla posted?" someone yelled from the dugout.

Marcus gripped tighter. Yeah, he'd seen. The screenshot of his text to her—what he thought was a low-key confession of his massive crush—was now climbing the social pyramid of Northwood High like nobody's business. At the bottom: the freshmen. At the top: the seniors who somehow made everything look effortless.

Right now, Marcus was definitely at the bottom.

"Strike three!" the ump barked, and Marcus realized he'd missed the pitch entirely. The groan from the crowd was brutal, but nothing compared to the notification that buzzed in his back pocket.

His iphone. The device that had ruined everything in approximately thirty seconds.

After the game—which they lost, obviously—Marcus slumped against the back of the school, staring at the pyramid of discarded orange juice cans behind the cafeteria. Workers were stacking them for recycling, each can another reminder of how much his life sucked right now.

"Rough game?"

Marcus looked up. Kayla. Standing there like she wasn't the reason his entire existence had been memed into oblivion.

"Rough life," he corrected, then immediately wanted to die.

She laughed, and something about the sound was so normal, so not-what-he-expected. "About that screenshot..."

"Yeah, I know. I'm a loser."

"No, you dummy." She sat next to him on the grass, pulled something from her backpack. An orange. She started peeling it. "I posted it because I was gonna say yes, but then I got scared and made it into a joke because that's what I do when I panic."

Marcus stared at her. "Wait, what?"

"You're literally the only guy who's ever noticed when I'm stressed. You brought me that orange juice that time during finals week when I was crying behind the gym. You didn't even make it weird." She handed him a section of the orange. "So yeah. I'd love to get boba sometime."

The pyramid of social hierarchy suddenly seemed a lot less important than it had five minutes ago. Marcus took the orange section, their fingers brushing, and realized something:

Sometimes the things that feel like the end of the world are actually just the beginning.