The Social Pyramid's Bottom Rung

My alarm went off at 5 AM, and I literally felt like a **zombie**. Not the cool, Netflix-series kind. More like the "I stayed up until 3 AM scrolling through TikTok and now I regret everything" kind. Which, coincidentally, was exactly what had happened.

I dragged myself to **baseball** practice—our coach had this twisted philosophy about how champs rise before the sun. Whatever. The field was basically a dew-covered mud pit at that hour, but Dylan, our star pitcher, was already there looking unfairly fresh. That guy could roll out of bed and look like a GQ model.

"You good, Marcus?" Dylan called out. "You look... dead."

"Living the dream," I muttered, which was literally the opposite of true.

But here's the thing about Dylan—he actually meant it. He wasn't being sarcastic. Meanwhile, I was stuck in this mental **pyramid** of overthinking: At the bottom, there was me, overthinking every interaction. Above that, the "maybe I should actually talk to him" layer. At the top: "what if I just transferred schools?"

Practice ended with Coach announcing we'd be doing extra conditioning. **Running** laps until I could practically taste my own regret. My legs were screaming, but honestly? It was better than standing there thinking about how awkward I was.

"Hey," Dylan said, jogging beside me. "You wanna come over later? We're doing that zombie apocalypse raid in Call of Duty."

I almost tripped over my own feet. "Seriously?"

"Yeah, dude. You're actually chill. Plus, my parents ordered way too much pizza."

And just like that, my entire social pyramid collapsed into something way simpler. Maybe high school wasn't about climbing to the top. Maybe it was just about finding your people—dead tired, covered in mud, and running toward better things.