Water Across Home Plate

Mark sat in the upper deck, the plastic seat warm against his back, nursing a flat beer he'd forgotten to drink. Below him, the baseball game unfolded in slow motion — the crack of the bat, the roar of the crowd, all of it muffled, like he was hearing it through water. Which wasn't far from the truth. He hadn't felt real since the promotion, since the corner office, since his days had become an endless cycle of spreadsheets and strategic planning sessions that left him feeling like a corporate zombie, animated only by caffeine and dread.

His iPhone buzzed in his pocket. Sarah.

He stared at the screen, thumb hovering over the decline button. Three years since she'd walked out of his life after his mother's funeral. 'You're already gone,' she'd told him. 'I'm just the one leaving.'

He answered.

'They found your brother,' she said, skipping hello. 'Mark, are you there?'

Below, a player hit a home run. The crowd erupted.

'He's in Houston,' she continued. 'He's been asking for you.'

Mark stood up. His legs felt hollow. His brother had disappeared five years ago, lost to addiction and bad decisions, a ghost Mark had stopped searching for when the search became too expensive in too many ways. 'Why are you telling me this?'

'Because I'm your friend,' she said. 'And because some things matter more than whatever safe life you've built for yourself.'

The seventh-inning stretch began. The crowd sang 'Take Me Out to the Ball Game.' Mark watched them all, these thousands of people who came together to pretend that a game could mean something, that winning and losing could still make sense in a world where neither did anymore.

'Are you still there?' Sarah asked.

He thought about water. About baptism, about drowning, about how sometimes you have to go under to come up. About how his brother had once thrown him into a lake when they were kids, how Mark had surfaced gasping and laughing, how nothing had ever felt that clear again.

'I'll come,' he said.

He ended the call and made his way down through the crowd, down toward the field where water gleamed on the grass from the automated sprinklers, everything washed clean and starting over, again and again, whether you wanted it to or not.