Undercover at the Dugout

I felt like a straight-up zombie. Fourth night in a row staying up until 3AM doom-scrolling, and now here I was, stuck working the concession stand at my brother's baseball game. My hair was doing this weird frizzy thing that no amount of scrunching could fix, and I was pretty sure I had ketchup on my chin.

Then I saw him. Tyler. The starting pitcher. The guy I'd been low-key spying on from across the cafeteria since September. He was walking toward the stand.

My brain went full panic mode. I grabbed the nearest thing to pretend to be busy—which happened to be a slice of papaya from the weird fruit cup nobody ever orders.

"Hey," Tyler said, leaning against the counter like he owned the place. "You're Marcus's sister, right?"

I nodded, trying to look cool and failing. The papaya slice slipped from my fingers and landed on his jersey.

Dead. I was dead.

But Tyler just laughed. "Nice throw. Better than my curveball today."

He wiped it off with his sleeve, not even mad. We ended up talking for twenty minutes about everything from baseball to why papaya is the most underrated fruit. He even complimented my hair, said the frizz looked "effortless."

Walking home later, zombie-tired but weirdly energized, I realized something: sometimes the stuff that feels like a disaster is actually just life setting you up for something unexpected. Even if it involves tropical fruit and public embarrassment.

Maybe tomorrow I'd actually talk to him at lunch. No spying required.