The Zombie Center Fielder

Maya stood in center field, her curly hair frizzing in the July humidity like a halo gone wrong. She felt like a total zombie—four hours of sleep will do that to you. Especially when you'd spent them spying on Tyler's Instagram stories at 2 AM.

"Earth to Lopez!" Coach Miller yelled from the dugout. "You gonna catch that ball or stare at it?"

Heat rushed to her cheeks as a baseball landed ten feet away. Again.

This was supposed to be the summer everything changed. Freshman year, varsity baseball team (well, softball, but whatever), and finally getting Tyler to notice her existed beyond "that girl with the hair" he'd mentioned once in math class.

Instead, she was playing like a zombie. A zombie with really bad hand-eye coordination.

At lunch, her best friend Jules rolled her eyes as Maya dramatically face-planted onto her tray. "You're being dramatic. It's not like Tyler is some CIA spy you need to investigate. Just talk to him."

"I CAN'T just talk to him," Maya groaned. "What would I even say? 'Hey, nice swing yesterday at practice when I was definitely not spying on you from behind the bleachers'?"

Jules snorted. "First of all, creepy. Second, maybe he didn't notice you spying because he was too busy making eyes with someone else."

Maya sat up. "Wait. WHAT. Who?"

"I'm saying," Jules lowered her voice, "maybe you're not the only one playing spy."

That afternoon, Maya caught every ball that came her way. Turned out Tyler had been watching her too—from the dugout, between pitches. And when he finally came over to compliment her playing, she didn't even care about her frizzy hair.

Sometimes being a zombie meant something good could finally wake you up.