Zombie Summer at the Plate

I felt like a **zombie** walking through the hallway—caffeine-deprived, running on three hours of sleep, and somehow still expected to make it through first period without face-planting onto my desk. Junior year was literally killing me, and we were only two weeks in.

"Yo, Marcus, you coming to **baseball** tryouts today?" Jake slung his arm around my shoulders like we were still best friends, like he hadn't ghosted me all summer after he started hanging out with the popular crowd.

"Maybe." I shrugged him off. "Got stuff to do."

"Like what? Staring at your **goldfish** again?" He laughed, and his new friends laughed with him.

Bash was gone anyway. My mom had flushed him while I was at school, left a note about how it was "for the best" and that fish only live like, three years anyway. But it wasn't about the fish. It was about how she'd tossed something I loved without asking, just like Jake had tossed our friendship without explanation.

Then there was Maya—sly as a **fox**, with her razor-sharp wit and that way she looked at me like she knew things I hadn't even figured out about myself yet. She caught my eye by the lockers and mouthed "tryouts" with a hopeful tilt of her head.

So I went.

Stepped up to the plate, heart hammering like I was the one facing down a fastball instead of the other way around. Coach Turner's whistle pierced the air. First pitch—a blur of motion I didn't even see.

Strike one.

"You're thinking too hard," someone whispered behind me. Maya. "Just hit the damn ball, Marcus."

Second pitch. I connected—solid contact, the crack echoing like something finally breaking open. The ball sailed into the outfield, and I ran like I wasn't a zombie anymore, like I was exactly who I was supposed to be.

Safe at first. Maya grinned from the bleachers, and even Jake looked impressed.

Sometimes you have to step up to the plate even when you're exhausted. Sometimes you swing and miss. But sometimes—just sometimes—you connect with something real, and that's enough to make you feel alive again.