Three Strikes at Home

Marcus adjusted his cap for the third time, sweat trickling down his neck even though it was barely sixty degrees. The **lightning** had been threatening all afternoon, that weird yellow-green sky that made everyone nervous and his mom text him twice about staying safe.

"Dude, you're overthinking it," Liam said, slapping him on the back. "Just hit the **baseball**. Don't make it weird."

Easy for Liam to say. Liam wasn't the one whose dad had left three tickets to the varsity game in the mailbox, three weeks late, like Marcus was still the ten-year-old who worshipped the ground he walked on. Liam wasn't the one whose entire identity crisis could be solved or destroyed by what happened in the next hour.

The first pitch came high and inside. Marcus swung anyway. Strike one.

"Your form's all messed up," Chloe called from the bleachers, where she sat with that indie band guy everyone was obsessed with now. "You're gripping the bat like it owes you money."

Marcus tried to laugh but it came out strangled. He'd had **spinach** stuck in his braces when he first talked to Chloe in seventh grade, which was basically the defining trauma of his middle school experience. Now she was dating someone who played guitar and probably knew what 'aesthetic' meant without looking it up.

Second pitch. Marcus watched it go by. Strike two.

The thunder was getting closer. Coach looked at the sky like he was calculating whether he could get through the batting order before the storm hit. Marcus's phone buzzed in his pocket — probably his dad asking if he'd made the team, like that was still something that mattered between them.

He remembered the night his dad left, how he'd stood by the door in his **baseball** uniform from the game he'd just missed, clutching his lucky **goldfish** pendant like it was some kind of shield. The pendant was gone now, lost somewhere in the moves between apartments, but the feeling hadn't ever really left.

Third pitch came fast, low outside. Something in Marcus just — let go.

He didn't think about his dad or Chloe or the way his hands were shaking. He just swung.

The crack echoed like **lightning** hitting a transformer. The ball kept going, over the fence, into the parking lot, someone's car alarm blaring like it was the best thing that ever happened.

For a second, nobody moved. Then the team was rushing him, Liam yelling something about how that was actually deranged, and Chloe was standing up, and Marcus's phone was buzzing again.

He didn't answer it. Some things, he realized, you had to let swing past. Some things, you had to chase.

The first raindrop hit his face as he reached home plate, and Marcus started to laugh, really laugh, for the first time in months.