The Vitamin C Fix

Jayla stood on the mound, her heart hammering like a bass drop at a homecoming dance. She didn't belong here – everyone knew that. The **baseball** team was for the cool kids, the ones whose older siblings had carved their legends into the bleachers back when flip phones were still acceptable.

Her parents had signed her up for "confidence building," which was adult-speak for "your anxiety is getting concerning." She'd been chipping away at her **vitamin** regimen for weeks, convinced that if she could just optimize everything – Vitamin D for mood, B-complex for energy, magnesium for sleep – she'd wake up one morning as a different person. Someone who didn't overthink texts. Someone who could just *exist* without feeling like she was performing existence for an invisible audience.

"Hey, new girl," someone called from the dugout. It was Marcus, the sophomore whose hair defied gravity and whose Instagram was basically a shrine to his own aesthetic. "You got something in your teeth."

Jayla's stomach dropped. She ran her tongue over her front teeth and felt the mortifying texture of **spinach** – definitely from the salad she'd nervously picked at during lunch because she thought "eating healthy" was part of her reinvention protocol. The whole team had seen it. They'd probably been whispering about it since warm-ups.

She considered faking an injury. Saying she forgot her inhaler. Anything to escape the slow-motion disaster that was her life.

But then Marcus jogged over and wordlessly held out a clementine segment – the kind that burst with sweetness, tiny pockets of juice that felt like summer.

"For the breath," he said, casual as if this was normal. "Also, you threw a solid curveball earlier. You're not terrible."

Jayla blinked. This wasn't how it worked in the movies. The cool kid wasn't supposed to help her escape humiliation; he was supposed to TikTok it.

She took the **orange** segment, popped it in. The citrus hit her tongue, sharp and bright, and for a second she wasn't worrying about her vitamin schedule or whether her palms were sweating.

"Thanks," she said.

"Don't mention it." Marcus grinned. "Oh, and Jayla?"

She looked up, bracing herself.

"Nice arm."

He jogged back to the dugout, leaving her standing there with sticky fingers and a chest that felt, for the first time all day, like it had room to breathe.

Maybe she didn't need to be a different person. Maybe she just needed to be the one who could throw a curveball and accept an orange segment without overanalyzing it.

Maybe that was enough.