The Vitamin King of Right Field

The social pyramid at Northwood High had twenty-seven distinct layers, and I was comfortably lodged at layer twenty-six, right above the kids who ate lunch in the library and below the kids who were merely invisible.

Then came the baseball tryouts.

"Bro, you gotta take these," Marcus whispered, sliding a neon orange bottle across the cafeteria table. "My cousin's girlfriend's brother makes them. They're literally magic."

I stared at the label: THUNDER-VITE: Performance Enhancing Vitamin Complex for Champions.

"This looks like a pyramid scheme," I said.

"It's not a scheme if it works," Marcus insisted. "Jake took them and made varsity as a sophomore. Plus, if you sell them to three people, you get yours half-off."

I was desperate. For three years, I'd watched from the bleachers while baseball dominated everything—spring plans, social status, my crush Kayla's attention. Layer six. That's where the baseball players lived.

So I started taking the vitamins. Two horse pills every morning with Mountain Dew.

Three days later, something shifted.

I walked into tryouts feeling different. Lighter. Faster. When the coach hit a fly ball to right field, I didn't just run—I launched. My body moved like it was operating on cheat codes. I tracked that ball through the blinding sun, legs pumping, everything falling away except the white speck against blue sky.

I caught it. Barely. But I caught it.

"Nice!" someone yelled. I looked down. It was Jake, the varsity captain, giving me a nod.

Me. Layer twenty-six. Getting a nod from layer six.

"What's your secret?" he asked later, eyeing my cleats.

"Vitamins," I said, then immediately wanted to die.

But Jake nodded like this made perfect sense. "My cousin's girlfriend's brother sells those. Dude's building a straight-up pyramid, but whatever works, right?"

I looked around the dugout at all the players—three more guys taking Thunder-Vite. The whole varsity team was in on it. Layer six wasn't an athletic achievement. It was a multilevel marketing downline.

I made the team. Third string, but still.

That night, I stared at the vitamin bottle on my desk. My mom knocked on my door. "How was tryouts?"

"I made it," I said.

She smiled, proud and clueless. "See? Sometimes good things just find you."

I slid the Thunder-Vite into my trash can, buried under failed math tests. Let them all chase their pyramid. I'd earned my spot the old-fashioned way: dumb luck, Mountain Dew, and one impossible catch in right field.

Sometimes layer twenty-six isn't so bad once you stop trying to climb.