The Social Pyramid Scheme

The bleachers behind home plate formed their own pyramid of popularity—varsity jackets at the top, band kids in the middle, everyone else scattered at the bottom like fallen debris. I sat somewhere near the base, my baseball cap pulled low, clutching my iPhone like it was a lifeline to a better social class.

"You're gonna stare at your screen all night or actually watch the game?"

I jumped. Maya had materialized beside me, mysterious as a sphinx with her cryptic smile and those eyes that always seemed to know something I didn't. She was the kind of girl who sat with different groups at lunch, floated between cliques like she'd cracked some secret code to high school's social algorithm.

"Just... checking something," I mumbled, which was code for "pretending to be busy so nobody notices I'm alone."

"Jake from Spanish class is looking at you," she said, nodding toward the dugout.

My heart did this weird flip thing that had nothing to do with the crack of the bat echoing through the stadium. Jake was solidly in the pyramid's upper tier—started varsity, actually smiled in hallways, possessed confidence I couldn't even fake.

"He's probably looking at the scoreboard," I said.

"Or maybe he's looking at the girl who's been texting him non-stop since September," Maya grinned. "Which would be you, by the way."

Lightning chose that moment to crack open the sky, illuminating everything in a flash that felt suspiciously like fate. The game paused. Everyone gasped. Jake actually turned around, and his eyes locked with mine across thirty feet of aluminum bleachers and sudden rain.

"He's coming over," Maya hissed, already sliding away to give me space. "Don't screw this up."

I shoved my iPhone in my pocket as Jake climbed the steps, dodging scattered popcorn and runaway baseball caps. The pyramid felt very far away suddenly.

"Hey," he said, rain droplets already gathering on his eyelashes. "Weird weather, right?"

"Yeah," I managed. "Pretty electric."

I groaned internally. But then Jake laughed, and his nose scrunched up exactly like it did when he couldn't conjugate verbs, and I thought maybe—just maybe—I wouldn't always be stuck at the bottom of someone else's hierarchy. Maybe I could build my own pyramid, sphinx riddles and all, where I decided who belonged where.

"Want to get food?" he asked. "Before the storm hits proper?"

The most popular boy in school was asking if I wanted to leave a baseball game with him. Maya winked from three rows up. And my iPhone buzzed in my pocket, but I ignored it.

Some things were better than likes. Some things were real.