The Social Pyramid Scheme

Leo stood at the bottom of the sophomore bleachers, clutching his phone like it might somehow teleport him away from this absolute disaster-in-the-making. The Miller High social hierarchy operated like a pyramid scheme he'd never signed up for: varsity athletes at the apex, then the pretty much everyone else, then finally guys like him who'd accidentally agreed to sub for the JV baseball team when their first baseman got mono.

"You ready, Leo?" Marcus called from the dugout, grinning like this wasn't about to be humiliating on a spiritual level.

"No," Leo said, but Marcus was already trotting toward home plate.

The third baseman's girlfriend—Chloe, who had once smiled at him in algebra—sat behind the backstop, and somehow this made everything approximately seventeen times worse. Leo adjusted his cap, attempted to look like he understood even basic baseball mechanics, and stepped toward the plate. The pitcher wound up. The ball came at him with absolutely zero consideration for his feelings.

He swung. He missed. He swung again. Another miss. The dugout was dying. The bleachers were definitely laughing. This was it. This was his origin story.

On the third pitch, something incredible happened: he actually made contact. The ball soared toward left field—straight into the cable snaking across the bottom of the backstop fence. It wrapped around, dropped straight down, and rolled to a stop inches from home plate.

"What are the odds?" Chloe called out, and she was laughing, but not in the way that made him want to evaporate. In the way that meant he wasn't invisible.

Leo jogged to first base, ridiculous and alive and suddenly okay with being at the bottom of the pyramid, because sometimes—sometimes—you could hit the ball into the cable fence and still get the girl to smile at you.

"Nice," Marcus said, as Leo reached first. "Weird, but nice."

Leo couldn't help it. He smiled back.