The Static Between Us

Marcus should've been at baseball practice. Instead, he sat on Levi's couch, watching cable TV flicker through reruns of shows they'd both seen a hundred times. Outside, summer heat pressed against the windows like something trying to get in.

"You skipped again," Levi said, not looking up from his phone. "Coach is gonna bench you."

"Whatever." Marcus picked at a loose thread on the couch cushion. "Baseball's not even my thing. It's my dad's thing."

"Still sucks to sit the bench." Levi set down his phone. "Wanna go swimming? My parents won't be back till like, nine."

The pool in Levi's backyard was exactly what Marcus needed right now. Cool water, no expectations, no Coach Miller yelling about batting stances or whatever. They jumped in — clothes still on, because that's how they did things when they were thirteen and felt too much.

Underwater, everything muffled into blue silence. Marcus surfaced to see lightning split the sky above them, a crack running through the darkness like something broken that couldn't be fixed.

"DUDE," Levi yelled, paddling toward the edge. "We're literally swimming in a lightning storm. We're gonna die."

"Calm down," Marcus said, but he was already moving toward the pool ladder. "The lightning's miles away."

"You don't know that. You're not a meteorologist. You're just a guy who failed algebra."

They scrambled inside, soaking wet, tracking water across the kitchen floor. Levi's house felt different now — smaller, somehow. The cable TV had gone out, just static snow where there'd been some reality show about people who were terrible at dating.

"Great," Levi said. "Now we're bored AND we might die."

Marcus looked at his friend — really looked at him. They'd known each other since third grade, back when friendship was just about having someone to sit with at lunch. But things were different now. High school was coming. People were changing. Some guys were already talking about girls, about parties, about being someone different than who they were.

"Hey," Marcus said. "Can I tell you something?"

Levi stopped messing with the cable box. "What?"

"I quit the team today. Like, actually quit. I told Coach I wasn't coming back."

The silence that followed felt huge. Like pool-deep huge. Marcus waited for Levi to say something about his dad, about college, about throwing away his future. All the stuff adults said.

Instead, Levi grinned. "Finally. I've been waiting for you to figure that out since, like, March."

Another flash of lightning. This time, they didn't flinch.

"So what now?" Levi asked. "Without baseball, what are you gonna do?"

Marcus thought about it. About how maybe he could focus on art club, or actually learn guitar instead of just pretending he knew how to play. About how he could be the person he wanted to be, not the person everyone expected.

"I think," Marcus said, "I think I'm gonna figure out who I am when nobody's watching."

Outside, thunder finally rumbled through the sky. But inside, everything felt perfectly quiet.