Zombie Summer

I looked like a zombie. No, correction: I looked like a zombie who'd been dragged through the Florida swamp and left out to rot. Four days of summer baseball camp will do that to you. My eyes burned. My limbs felt like they'd been swapped out with wet noodles.

"You alive, man?" Carlos asked, cracking open a Red Bull.

"Barely." I adjusted my baseball cap, which was basically a sweat-sponge at this point. "Coach is killing us."

But then I saw her.

She was behind the concession stand, leaning against a palm tree like it was the most natural thing in the world. Sarah Jenkins, who I'd been secretly low-key obsessed with since seventh grade. She was wearing this oversized tie-dye shirt and somehow making it look cute, which should be illegal.

Then her eyes locked with mine.

My heart straight-up stopped. I panicked. I, Mateo Rodriguez, scared of nothing on the baseball field, absolutely panicked.

"You good?" Carlos nudged me.

"Yeah. Just... need air."

I booked it toward the pool area, because obviously the logical response to seeing your crush is to flee. What I didn't realize: I was still carrying my gear bag, my cleats were untied, and I was about to learn a very important life lesson about running near wet surfaces.

One second I was walking. The next, my feet went out from under me like I'd stepped on invisible marbles. I slid across the pool deck on my stomach, bat bag flying, water bottle launching into the air like a tragic torpedo.

And then—splash.

I emerged from the water, sputting, with my baseball cap floating sadly beside me. The entire team was losing it. Carlos was practically crying.

But Sarah? Sarah was laughing too, but in a different way. She'd followed me over.

"You okay, Bear?" she asked, using the nickname from when I'd played a bear in the third-grade play and hadn't lived it down since.

"Bear?" someone muttered. "Dude, that's savage."

"Yeah," I said, wiping water from my eyes. "I'm good. Just... you know. Testing the water temperature."

She smiled, and something clicked.

"Wanna go swimming? For real this time?"

And just like that, my zombie summer wasn't so dead anymore.