That report was pinned to the corkboard above her bed in a cramped Tulsa apartment. She’d looked at it every morning for three years.

The second pitch: a slider that started at her hip and dove off the outside corner. She watched it go. Ball one.

The third pitch came: another fastball, this time up and in. Amari didn’t flinch. She turned on it, her hips firing, her hands staying inside the ball. The crack of the bat wasn’t loud—it was clean, the sound of solid oak meeting leather at exactly the right angle.