When Lightning Stole Home

The baseball diamond was empty, the way it always was on Tuesday afternoons when everyone else had actual lives. But not me. I was stuck at batting practice,Coach Miller insisting I needed to "find my swing" like it was a lost car key rather than something I'd been doing since I was seven.

"You're thinking too much, Jace," he yelled from the dugout, his voice echoing across the deserted field. "Just feel it."

Feel it. Right. What I felt was sweaty, frustrated, and like I was wasting my sophomore summer when I could've been at Maya's pool party. The one where she'd definitely be wearing that bikini from her Instagram post.

The sky had been threatening all afternoon, that weird yellow-green color that makes everything look like an old photograph. I should've packed it in when the first drop of water hit the back of my neck — cold and shocking, like someone flicking me.

"One more pitch," I muttered, mostly to prove a point to absolutely no one.

That's when the world went white. Not like a camera flash — brighter, like someone had turned the sun on and off again in a millisecond. A crack of thunder shook the metal bleachers, and suddenly rain wasn't falling anymore; it was ATTACKING. Sheets of water, drenching everything in seconds.

I scrambled for my bag, fumbling with my phone, and that's when I saw her sprinting across the outfield grass. Maya, in her cutoff shorts and that same bikini top, looking like she'd just escaped something catastrophic. She dove into the dugout just as another lightning bolt split the sky, purple and terrifying and way too close.

"Is this where you disappear to every Tuesday?" she asked, shaking water from her hair like a wet dog.

I shrugged, trying to look cool while probably looking like a drowned rat. "Baseball practice. Coach is intense."

"Coach left like twenty minutes ago," she said, nodding toward the empty parking lot. "I saw his car pull out."

Oh.

The rain roared against the metal roof above us, creating this weird private bubble. Outside, the storm raged. Inside, it was just us and the smell of wet dirt and her coconut shampoo. For ten minutes, we talked about everything except the obvious stuff. We talked about how our parents didn't get it, how school felt pointless, how we both secretly loved old Taylor Swift but would never admit it publicly.

When the rain finally slowed, I realized something: I'd been so busy worrying about my baseball swing that I'd forgotten how to just talk to people. Especially her.

"So," Maya said, pulling a slightly crumpled roll of Smarties from her pocket. "Want one? They're probably gross now, but —"

"Yes," I said, and I didn't mean just the candy.

I missed every single ball I tried to hit that afternoon. But as Maya laughed at something stupid I said about her brother's band, I figured some things mattered more.