Three Strikes at Midnight

Maya's palms were sweating — like, actually dripping onto her cracked **iPhone** screen. She swiped frantically for the third time, checking Instagram stories from Sarah's party that she wasn't at. Again.

"You're missing it," the text had said. "EVERYONE's here."

Whatever. Maya tossed her phone onto her bed and grabbed her glove from the corner. The old leather was still stained red from that time in seventh grade when she'd tried to catch a fastball without a mask. Stupid. So stupid.

Her bedroom window faced the abandoned **baseball** field behind the elementary school. Even at midnight, she could see the backstop's jagged silhouette against the sky. Some nights, when the insomnia was bad enough, she'd sneak out and throw a tennis ball against the chain-link fence until her arm burned. Tonight felt like one of those nights.

But when she cracked the window open, she heard something.

*Thwack.*

*Thwack.*

Someone was out there.

Maya grabbed her **iPhone** and shoved it into her sweatshirt pocket, then slipped downstairs before she could talk herself out of it. The night air hit her like cold water. Her **palm** pressed against the wooden fence as she peeked through.

A boy stood on the pitcher's mound, throwing a baseball into a battered bucket. Even in the darkness, she recognized that motion — the way he snapped his wrist, the slight lean forward. It was Ethan from her history class. The quiet one who sat in the back and drew dinosaurs in the margins of his notes.

He turned at the sound of the fence creaking.

"Oh." He shielded his eyes. "Maya?"

"What are you doing?" The words came out sharper than she meant. "It's midnight."

"Couldn't sleep." Ethan shrugged. "You?"

She almost lied. Almost said she'd heard something and came to investigate. But the truth was easier somehow.

"Same."

He held out the baseball. "Wanna play catch?"

Maya's **palm** tingled. She hadn't played catch with anyone since her dad moved out last year. Since before everything got weird and quiet and too big for her chest.

"I'm rusty," she said.

"Me too." Ethan's grin was barely visible, but it was there. "That's kinda the point."

They played until her arm ached and the **baseball** was too dark to see properly. Her **iPhone** buzzed twelve times in her pocket — Sarah's party blowing up, stories she was missing, FOMO she was supposed to feel.

She didn't check it once.

"Same time tomorrow?" Ethan asked as they parted ways at the fence.

"Yeah." Maya couldn't stop smiling. "Yeah, definitely."

Her **palm** still tingled when she crawled back through her window, but now it wasn't from sweating. It was from the dirt embedded in her skin, the bruise forming on her thumb, the feeling of being exactly where she was supposed to be.

The **iPhone** screen lit up with another notification. She turned it face down and fell asleep smiling.