Zombie Mode at Third Base

Jake dragged himself to third base, feeling like a straight-up zombie after staying up until 3 AM gaming. His eyelids kept trying to make friends with each other, and his brain felt like it had been replaced with cotton candy. The morning sun beat down on the baseball field, making his headache pulse in time with the coach's whistle.

"Hustle up, Ramirez!" Coach Miller yelled, because apparently his best wasn't good enough when he was operating on two hours of sleep and his mom's insistence that he start taking those gross gummy vitamins every morning. The orange ones tasted like radioactive despair.

He'd forgotten his lucky hat—the faded blue cap with the Montreal Expos logo he'd found at a thrift store last summer. Without it, he felt exposed, like everyone could see the awkward underneath his varsity jacket. The replacement hat from the equipment bin sat too low on his forehead, making him look like a tryout version of himself.

"You good, man?" Marcus called from second base, grinning like he knew something Jake didn't. "You look straight-up dead."

Jake flipped him off, but his heart wasn't in it. Marcus was everything Jake wasn't: effortlessly cool, always dating someone new, probably never got tired enough to feel like the walking dead.

Then Tyler, the shortstop, jogged over to adjust his positioning. Jake's stomach did that embarrassing flutter thing, like it had forgotten what personal dignity was. Tyler's sandy hair caught the light, and Jake wanted to die a little bit.

"Nice throw yesterday," Tyler said, and Jake's brain short-circuited. Had he actually spoken to Tyler before? Or had he just imagined conversations while lying awake at night overthinking everything?

"Thanks," Jake managed, his voice cracking. Smooth. Real smooth.

The vitamin gummies churned in his stomach. Why did his mom insist on them? She claimed he needed more energy, but honestly, he just needed more sleep and less overthinking.

In the bottom of the seventh, the other team's best hitter sent a line drive screaming toward third base. Time stretched like weird molasses. Jake's body moved on autopilot—zombie mode activated—lunging left, glove extended. The ball slapped into leather with the most satisfying sound in the universe.

Out.

Tyler whooped. Marcus gave him a nod that actually looked impressed. And Jake's hat sat straight on his head for the first time all day.

Maybe the zombie thing wasn't so bad. Sometimes you had to feel dead to realize you were actually, finally, alive.