TO NELSON, MY GOLDEN BOY
You can overcome anything, if and only if you love something enough.
—LIONEL MESSI
The Back-to-School Physical
When you saw him you would think: this kid can’t play ball.… He’s too fragile, too small. But immediately you’d realize that he was born different, that he was a phenomenon and that he was going to be impressive.
—ADRIÁN CORIA ON HIS FIRST IMPRESSION OF TWELVE-YEAR-OLD LIONEL MESSI, SOCCER PHENOM
Every time Lionel Messi scores a goal, there’s literally a small earthquake, an actual seismic shift. The crowd loves him so much that when he scores, they go completely nuts. They scream, stomp, and jump so hard that the earth actually moves under their feet. Some people call it a footquake, but I like Messiquake better.
When I dream, I become like my idol. The crowd loves me that much. Golden, Golden, Golden! Lucy passes me the ball, her blond hair flying. Benny sprints to the corner flag just in case I need him, giving me the assist. The ball is at my feet. I’m the dribbling maestro, faking out three defenders (it’s sick, man). Three seconds on the clock. Left foot plants, right leg swings. Like a rocket, my shot spirals forward, the ball soaring above the goalie’s fingertips. The crowd is on their feet, leaning forward, ready to shake the world. Time slows. Just before the ball hits the back of the net…
… a small chattering squirrel pounces on me.
I open my eyes to see the jaws of death—well, minus the two front teeth—a mere two inches from my face.
“Your breath smells like a dragon,” the squirrel says.
“Get off, Roma!”
“Golden!” Mom yells from downstairs. “Let’s go!”
My family has yet to recognize the greatness in their midst.
When my six-year-old sister doesn’t move, I push past her and stumble down the stairs, consoling myself that even Messi, greatest soccer player in the world, probably has to have a yearly physical.
* * *
My last year of middle school officially starts with the annual visit to Dr. Arun. Which is fine except for shots and the whole let’s-see-what’s-going-on-down-there part. And of course that Mom and my two little sisters—Whitney and Roma—aka the Squirrels, are with me.
“Oooh, I like your dress,” Roma says admiringly.
“It’s a gown,” I say before realizing that doesn’t sound much better.
I’m wearing a small hospital gown printed with trains, the same one I’ve been wearing for every physical since age three. It has one useless tie in back that doesn’t stop it from showcasing my bony spine and underwear.
Dr. Arun is a train fanatic. He’s built a suspended track that travels the perimeter of the room, while an actual train chugs around the ceiling on it. When I was little, I couldn’t wait to visit Dr. Arun because it was the coolest thing.
Actually, it’s still the coolest thing, but when the nurse comes in to take my temperature and blood pressure, I pretend I wasn’t looking at it and put a bored face on.
My older sister, Jaimes, says that everything for me is broken down into two categories: cool and uncool. For instance:
Cool: I’m starting eighth grade, so I’m finally gonna be THE MAN.
Uncool: Smallest boy in eighth grade. BY FAR.
Cool: I’m getting bigger stronger faster.
Uncool: Yesterday Jaimes called me a small furry rodent.
Cool: My comeback—“Your legs look like a small furry rodent!”
Oh, get wrecked, Jaimes!
“Mom,” I say. “I’m going to ask Dr. Arun a question today and I need you to not interrupt.”
“What is it?” Whitney asks.
“How intriguing,” Mom says, raising an eyebrow and turning a page of her book.
“Mom, for real.”
The door opens, the Squirrels exit to the waiting room for stickers and coloring, and in walks Dr. Arun. He’s followed by a woman wearing a white doctor’s jacket and a stethoscope around her neck like a boss.
“This is Hazel, a med student,” Dr. Arun says. “Mind if she shadows me today?”
Hazel is so pretty that I find myself turning red and starting to sweat. Super uncool. To cover, I cough and pound on my chest as if I swallowed wrong.
“That’s fine.” My voice cracks. Uncool again. I start praying that Dr. Arun will not utter the words “Let’s see what’s going on down there” until Hazel is gone. Like, in a galaxy far, far away gone.
“What’s your favorite subject in school?” he asks, listening to my heart.
“Gym?”
He laughs. “Favorite sport?”
I can’t help but grin. “Soccer is why I’m living and breathing on planet Earth.”
Mom smiles as Dr. Arun continues.
“Favorite player?” he asks, checking my ears.
“Uh, Messi, of course.”
Which reminds me. I give Mom a warning look to not talk.
I clear my throat. “Could I get a… growth hormone prescription?”
Mom mouths WHAT?
“Messi took it as a kid,” I continue. “ ’Cause he was small too.”
Hazel smiles at me, showing straight white teeth, while Dr. Arun laughs again and tells me to stand.
I take that as a no.
Super uncool.
“Touch your toes.” Dr. Arun turns me around so he can trace my spine with his gloved finger.
“You don’t need growth hormone,” Dr. Arun says, motioning for me to stand up straight. He glances at my chart. “Your growth is following a normal—and upward—trajectory. Besides, even with growth hormone Messi was always small and underrated, but look what he did anyway!”
“True,” I say, brightening. “People used to call him a dwarf, said he was too fragile and small to play.”
“And then?” Dr. Arun prods, feeling my lymph nodes.
“And then you’d watch him and know he was born to be the greatest of all time!”
“There you go,” Dr. Arun says. “So don’t worry. You’ll grow. And your parents have some height. How tall is your dad?”
I glance at Mom.
“Five-ten,” she answers, sounding totally normal.
“What position do you play?” Dr. Arun asks, and pats the table for me to sit.
“Forward, mostly.”
“Ah, you must be fast.”
I shrug like it’s no big deal, like I haven’t been training like crazy to be Messi fast.
“You like your coach?”
“He adores her,” Mom says with a wave of her hand.
“You’re eating fruits and vegetables?” Dr. Arun asks, switching back to boring health stuff.
“Yep.” In addition to being a soccer fanatic, Mom’s also become a vegetable freak.
“How’s your dad doing? Everything all right?”
The silence that follows feels loud in my ears.
“He’s good!” I say too loudly to fill it.
“All right then!” Dr. Arun says, turning to make a note. I’m filled with relief, no mortifying finale. Megacool.
Hazel takes over, asking Mom questions.
Anyone smoke? No.
Screen time limited to less than two hours a day? Yes.
Does Golden wear a helmet? Yes.
I accidentally laugh out loud. The three adults look at me strangely.
If Dad was here, we would discuss the word “irony.” All these safety questions, all these things we do to prevent bad things from happening, when Dad always wore a helmet. He ate fruits and vegetables. He never smoked. He’s, like, the biggest, strongest, fastest, healthiest person I know. He can do 111 push-ups in less than three minutes—that’s in the extraordinary category. And, well…
“Any changes i
n the household this past year?” Hazel continues.
“You could say that,” Mom says. What she could have said: Changes? More like a massive upheaval, thanks for asking.
Dr. Arun nods, claps a hand on my shoulder, and shakes my hand for the first time.
I stand up straighter, puffing out my chest slightly.
“All set. Good luck, Golden.”
“Thank you,” I say, looking him right in the eye like Dad taught me.
Luck?
The odds might not look like they’re in my favor, but actually? Destiny is about to deliver the best year of my life. I’m sure of it.
Dr. Arun turns to go.
“Uh… Doctor?” Hazel asks, pointing to something on my chart.
“Oh, right,” he says. “Last thing. Can you drop your drawers?”
Drawers? For a second I look around the room for a dresser.
“Huh?”
“We’ll take a look down there.”
I feel my face grow hot.
Hazel doesn’t move to leave and geez, nothing about today is cool.
The Wicked Cool Armbands
The harder you work, the luckier you get.
—DAD
So, I’m back home with no growth hormone prescription.
Dad says that whenever we encounter a setback, we should “bounce,” or pivot to the next solution. “The impossible is always possible,” he says. “You just have to find a way.”
So without growth hormone I guess I just have to work even harder on my own: extra push-ups, crunches, and squats every single day. I carefully keep track on a wall calendar, next to my “ten thousand hours of soccer training” chart—which is the most important piece of paper in the house. Ten thousand hours is based on a theory Mom and Dad once told me about: you have to put in ten thousand hours before you become a master at anything. For every hour of practice, I make a tiny tally mark. Every time I get a thousand, I circle it with a red Sharpie.
So let’s say that since age one, I’ve touched the ball for one hour every day, six days a week, for twelve years. That’s 3,744 hours.
After this summer I figure I have 6,256 hours left to becoming Messi. If I can log about a thousand hours every year between now and age eighteen, well, I’ll basically be Master of the Universe. At least enough to be recruited to play in college. And after that? Going pro like Dad.
It’s in between sets of crunches that I see them in the soccer catalog Mom left in the bathroom: captain armbands. Messi wears a captain’s armband and it’s the coolest. Therefore I want them, need them, more than I’ve ever wanted or needed anything. Well, you know, besides the dad stuff.
I send a picture to my best friends, Benny Ho and Lucy Littlehouse, in our group chat before looking out my bedroom window to Lucy’s, just in case she’s magically home early. Because it’s Lucy, and knowing her, she might try to arrive in a hot-air balloon powered by the breath of her imaginary trolls in the forest.
But she isn’t.
Her white roller skates look lonely, parked on her porch, waiting for her return.
Like me.
We’ve never been apart this long—almost the entire summer.
Sure, I have sisters, but Lucy’s more like the twin sister I actually want. We’ve known each other since birth—no joke. We were born on the same day in the same hospital. There’s even a framed picture of us on her fridge. I was bald but very cute, naturally.
The house next door remains dark except for the glowing amber eyes of her fat cat, Curtis Meowfield, as he slinks around the property. But something else catches my eyes as it moves near our shared driveway: a sleek silver car stopped in front, idling in the road. Curtis sees it too and freezes like a statue, one paw in the air. I peer closer but the car windows are tinted black, so I can’t see inside.
My new-to-me, Jaimes’s-hand-me-down-phone-that-does-exactly-one-thing buzzes with a text. It’s Benny: GET THE ARMBANDS!
I’m on it.
“Mom,” I say, running downstairs. “We have to get these.”
“What?” she says absently, removing a plate from the dishwasher.
“Captain armbands!”
She doesn’t even bother to glance at the catalog before she shakes her head.
“Why not?” I demand.
“Tone, Golden.”
I morph into Polite Son.
“Please, Mother dear?”
“Why?”
“It’s a thing. Every professional soccer team has them.…”
I’m distracted from my killer sales pitch by the long silver car now driving up the driveway and turning toward Lucy’s house. A woman gets out. Her short silver hair matches her car, and she’s wearing dark sunglasses and a black suit like some sort of secret agent.
“Look at you, you adorable feline!” Her deep husky voice comes in through the open window. Obviously, this woman does not know Curtis very well. But Curtis trots over to her and curls around her legs.
“Who’s that?” I ask Mom.
She looks out the window and doesn’t answer.
No one should be subjected to the terror of that cat without supervision, so I step out onto the porch as the stranger picks Curtis up and holds him like a baby, rubbing his belly and talking baby talk. “Sweet Curtis Meowfield, I’ve been dying to meet you.”
“You can have him,” I call out.
I briefly hope she’ll kidnap Curtis, but since I’m the one who’s supposed to be watching and feeding him, Lucy would never forgive me.
The woman gives a deep throaty laugh, showing white teeth that remind me of a wolf’s.
“And you must be Golden. Lucy told me you and Curtis have a… tenuous and tempestuous relationship.” I’m not confused by her big words. My dad’s an English teacher. I’m confused because I’ve never seen this woman before, yet she knows about my “tenuous” and “tempestuous” relationship with Lucy’s furball.
“Just checking on the house! I’ll be seeing a lot of you later,” she says. “Ta-ta!”
She’s back in the driver’s seat before I can even ask what that means, rumbling down the driveway, her fancy car kicking up dirt and dust. Curtis meows at me, and I run inside before he can follow me.
“That lady outside Lucy’s was weird,” I announce.
“Weird how?” Mom says.
“Well, for one, she adores Curtis Meowfield.”
Mom laughs and begins cutting vegetables.
“Also, why is she checking on the house? We check on the house!”
“Can you put silverware on the table?” Mom says, distracted already. Big surprise. I don’t complain about the silverware, even though it’s Roma’s job. Must Keep Mom in Good Mood.
“Mom,” I say, separating the forks from the spoons from the knives. “Captain armbands. Haven’t you noticed that all the captains in the World Cup wear one?”
“Haven’t been watching much World Cup, Goldie.”
“Watch more, read less.”
“You’re not really selling me.”
“Well, it’s like a rule and these are totally legit. Benny agrees.”
“Rayna?” Dad calls from upstairs.
Mom exhales a small breath. “Finish these?” She leaves the dishwasher open and the vegetables half cut. Dad probably needs help getting down the stairs or in the bathroom, which is kind of embarrassing but not as embarrassing as Dr. Arun looking down there. I shudder and try to block out the memory.
“Jaimes,” Mom calls as she heads up the stairs. “Help your brother, please.”
“You don’t need captain armbands,” Jaimes says, making zero movement away from her phone.
“Your captains wear them.”
“Exactly, honey, and I’m in high school.”
“Don’t call me honey. And so what?”
“So, soccer is more legit in high school.”
“You’re supposed to be helping me.” I squeeze the sink lip so I won’t throw a wet, smelly dishrag at her face. Must Keep Mom in Good Mood.
“Jaimes! Focus on what’s important here—soccer!” We used to play and talk soccer all the time, but now we never play and she hardly talks to me at all.
“I know soccer is important,” she says. “I’m a junior—it’s the most important season of my life.”
She finally puts her phone down to set the table—and even finds a few reasons why the Mudbury Middle School Magpies need captains who wear legit armbands.
Then Mom and Dad come downstairs, Mom carefully watching their footing.
I ready myself but don’t get a chance to bring it back up until we finally sit down to eat.
“It’s a responsibility thing,” I say, taking a bite of rice and something dark green and wilted. “Captain armbands build future leaders of Mudbury.”
Jaimes rolls her eyes, even though I am directly quoting her. But my parents’ eyes light up at the words “responsibility” and “leader.” I feel a surge of power. One point for me.
“Responsibility?” Whitney asks. “Have you seen Golden’s room lately?”
“Shut it, Squirrel—I mean, dear Whitney,” I say, patting her head.
Thankfully, Dad raises a forkful of rice with his hand, and it distracts everyone from my not-so-polite-tone slipup. The fork inches up, up, a small wobble, but then it’s on the move again, toward his open mouth—up, up, almost in—score! Well, it’s close, half of the rice makes it into his mouth. The rest spills onto the table. We’re going to have to work on that.
“It’s okay, Dad!” Roma says cheerfully. “You can’t help that you’re messy.”
“He’s not messy,” Whitney says. “He has ALS. His muscles didn’t get the memo, right, Dad?”
“Right,” he says matter-of-factly. Mom smooths his naturally wavy hair—the same hair I have—which is getting long and wild.
“The both of you need a haircut,” she says.
Dad smiles at Mom with dark chocolate-brown eyes that also match mine, except his are oddly misty.
“Responsibility,” I interrupt. “The captain is the leader. He—”
“He and she,” Jaimes corrects. “Remember, there’s always a male and female captain.”
Ten Thousand Tries Page 1