“Win this ball!” Lucy shouts. “Mark up!”
But Merrimack boots it up the long turf field, way over my head to the defense.
We keep battling, and with six minutes on the clock, we’re finally tied 2–2, after Sunny makes a penalty shot. I look over at Dad, desperate. I look at my socks, see the name “Patrick Maroni.” I will do this for you, Dragon-Ball P!
“Pull up!” I yell to the defense. They push up until they’re all the way to the half line. It works, and Merrimack gets two offsides calls in two minutes.
We follow up offensively, battling back and forth on Merrimack’s side of the field for a full five minutes, meaning Merrimack’s getting no shots on goal—but neither are we. Brady takes a shot, but he’s way past the eighteen-yard line, and the goalie easily catches the ball, giving it back to the defense.
With one minute left, Chase passes the ball way over my head.
I take a run.
All the Merrimack midfielders and defenders have pulled up close to the midline, so when I get past the center mid I’m past all four defenders, too; they’ve gotten caught flat across the field.
Fast break!
Suddenly, no one is in front of me except the goalie.
Watch this, Dad!
The goalie crouches in anticipation.
Make this shot, I win the game. I win everything.
Archie is coming up behind me, huffing and puffing.
The crowd is going crazy! I can hear the Squirrels.
The cold air whips at my ears, through my hair.
I turn on the wheels, passing the eighteen-yard box, dribbling faster than I’ve ever dribbled in my life.
The goalie’s Adam’s apple moves up and down as he swallows hard.
The crowd screams louder.
My team bench is on their feet.
“Go… Golden!”
The goalie makes his move, coming at me fast.
“Shoot!” someone calls.
I shoot at the same time the goalie slides into me, taking me out. I land hard on my bad arm and scream out in pain.
But the ball bounces out of the goalie’s hands.
I manage to touch the ball back with my toe.
I see the fear in Archie’s face.
“NOW!” I say.
Archie shoots. Fires like a loaded gun.
I duck.
The ball rockets past me.
Into the net.
GOAL!
There is a small moment of silence.
Right before the crowd goes crazy.
Archie stands still, his mouth open. He falls to his knees. “Goal!” he whispers. “Goal!”
I look at the ball in the net, just to make sure it’s still there. My heart fills with too many feelings.
“Goldie! I got my first goal—the Golden Goal!”
The scoreboard lights up.
2–3.
The clocks ticks down to zero. The refs blow their whistles.
Against the odds, Mudbury Middle has just won the championship game against Merrimack Middle.
My team runs to Archie.
I sit up, holding my arm.
They pick Archie up.
He fist-pumps into the great big sky and yells, “Yeah! My life is complete! Greatest moment of my life! That’s it—I’m done!”
You think soccer is just a game? Well then, you’ve never played it.
I stand, bent at the middle, catching my breath. The refs shake Coach’s hand as she comes onto the field. One of them jogs over to me.
He approaches as I finally stand.
“The assist is so often the unsung hero,” he says, reaching out to give me a handshake. I wince as he squeezes my right hand and arm. “But tonight? That’s as good as it gets.”
I hear Archie yelling for me. “Golden Macaroni! Where the heck are you?”
Last I read, Messi had scored a total of 671 goals and assisted 275 goals in his career. On average, he scores a goal every ninety-nine minutes and twenty-three seconds. But for all the goals he scores, he’s also one of the top assist players in the world. Another reason the world loves that guy so much—he helps others feel the glory too. It’s an amazing feeling.
I search the crowd for Dad, almost afraid, I’m hoping so hard.
There. He sits unmoving amid the chaos, an orange puffy dot in the cheering crowd.
I wait for it—for him to sit up straight. To push himself to the edge of his wheelchair.
But he does not walk to me. And I finally have to concede, He’s not going to.
Every great athlete has at least one moment that will forever haunt them because of what might have been. After years of literal sweat and tears, a dream can be over in seconds.
This is my moment.
Coach reaches me, pulls me to her. “It was a great battle,” she whispers. “He couldn’t be more proud of you.”
We walk to Dad.
He pushes with his pointer finger. The wheelchair rolls forward to me.
His eyes take in my socks, his name written with black Sharpie on white athletic tape.
“Gold… en,” he says, his voice thick.
I don’t know if he’s emotional or just cold, but I find a tissue and wipe his eyes and nose.
He can’t lift his arms, will not lift the trophy.
But he stretches out the two fingers on his left hand.
It’s not exactly what I wanted. Not how I always pictured this moment.
But I know that just like I’ve given my all for him, he’s giving everything he has to give.
To me.
His Golden Boy.
And that makes it perfect.
Paper Plate Awards
We can’t let our team down if we are trying to do the right thing.
—COACH KARL
Every year for our end-of-season soccer banquet, Dad, Benny, Lucy, and I make paper plate awards. They’re just what they sound like—awards on paper plates. Easy on the nonexistent athletic budget.
Benny is bringing a picture of a professional soccer player to put on them this year for each of our teammates because he has a wicked good printer.
It’s been almost a week since the under-the-lights game. Dad’s about the same. My arm is back in a soft cast.
Mom is salty with me.
Still worth it.
Lucy and Benny walk in together. Lucy is carrying a bucket of markers, but I still haven’t found scissors or markers, and the only glue stick is nearly out of glue.
“Aha!” I say, holding up a pair of kiddie scissors.
Dad wheels over to the barstools.
“Your face is better,” Benny says. “No offense.”
Dad nods, smiling, barely a touch of greenish-yellow bruising under his eye.
I’m glad he can still smile, that the muscles that pull his mouth upward are still working, that the skin around his eyes still crinkles. You know why? Whitney said. Even toward the end, ALS patients can usually still move their eye muscles, still blink, AND smile. Isn’t that so great, Goldie? I think she got that last part from YouTube, but I grudgingly agreed with her.
“Who gets… Ronaldo?” Dad asks.
“Benny,” I say. “Both have mad skill.”
Benny grins.
“Brady?” Lucy asks, holding up his paper plate.
“Mbappé,” I say. “Great ball control, right?”
“C.J.?”
“De Gea.”
“Mario?”
“Silva,” I say. “Nobody gets past him.”
“Slick?”
“Suárez,” I say. “Because he bites other players. And me.”
“What about Lucy?” Coach asks, coming into the room after putting the Squirrels to bed.
“Rapinoe or Hamm,” Lucy says, and I grin. Of course she gets to choose her own.
Dad moves his nose up and down. “Can you scratch… nose?”
I reach over and scratch a small speck of his nose.
“Low. High. Over… right. There. Good
. Thanks.”
He wiggles his nose around until he’s good again.
“Archie?”
“Maradona.” Messi’s childhood hero.
“Golden?”
Dad makes a sound in his throat.
“Suction?” Coach asks. “You don’t have to watch this,” she says to Benny and Lucy. “Golden, want to take them to your room?”
“Come on,” Lucy says.
We walk out of the kitchen and up the stairs, past the newly installed wheelchair lift that goes all the way to the top.
“Want a ride?” I joke.
Benny touches it, slides his fingers all the way up.
Jaimes is playing her music loudly, the door shut. So we sit down at the top of the stairs, hearing the suction noises—spit being slurped and sucked from around and under Dad’s tongue, teeth, and gums and into a giant straw so he doesn’t choke to death.
“Is your dad going to be able to stay here until… always?” Lucy asks.
“In Chinese culture,” Benny says, “no one goes to a retirement home. Parents live with their children until they pass, like my grandma. My parents always say, ‘We will be together forever until the end.’ ” He pauses. “And I think the end is coming pretty quick.”
Lucy nods like she already knows.
“Grandma Ho?” I ask. “Why didn’t you say anything?”
But I know why. I’ve been so super focused on only me. “I’m sorry, Benny.”
He just nods. “Me too.”
Lucy looks deep into my eyes and puts her hands on mine. “Are you scared?”
“I guess. Sometimes. Yeah.”
“Me too,” Lucy says.
“Me three,” Benny says, putting his hands on top of ours.
The suctioning stops.
“Good?” we hear Coach say.
Jaimes suddenly opens our bedroom door and sees the three of us sitting.
My face goes red.
“Just tell him,” Lucy says.
“Tell me what?” Benny asks.
Sigh.
“We have to share. Okay? I share a room with my sister.”
Benny laughs. “That’s cool.”
“Um, no way!”
Jaimes walks back into our room and pulls out the hamper filled with my forgotten water balloons.
“Why don’t you go use these? They’re cramping my style.”
“Those are for George,” I say.
“Well, he just pulled up.”
We rush to the window and wouldn’t you know? She’s right.
“Serendipitous moment, right, Lucy?”
Benny grins. Lucy giggles.
“Hey, George!” I yell.
He looks up, sees what I’m holding.
“Don’t even think about it, Golden Macaroni.”
“What did you call me?”
“I said, GOLDEN CHEESEBURGER WITH PICKLES MACARONI!”
I launch the water balloon at him. He jumps. The balloon smashes on the ground, soaking his foot—and Curtis Meowfield, who meows noisily at me.
George points at me. “Oh, it is so on.”
I turn and smile at my audience. “You know, I’ve always liked that guy.”
* * *
Banquet food at Mudbury Middle School is sometimes stellar and sometimes… not. You never know what kind of potluck you’re going to get. Of course the Maroni family is hoping for stellar because, as usual, we are late and rushing, down to weird food choices at home.
But at least Roma and Whitney’s matching French braids (I know) are looking stellar—and so is Dad’s shaved face. Not a cut or rash anywhere. Who’s the man now?
“Ah, I remember this place so fondly,” Jaimes says in her superior older-sister voice as we walk into the school.
“Yeah, it was a mere four months ago,” I say, discreetly shanking her in the back.
“It was like two years ago—did you just seriously shank me?”
“Childre…,” Dad says as I open the door for him. He wheels in, giving me a warning look to get along with the beast.
Mr. T stands at the podium with Coach, arms folded in an intimidating Don’t mess with me way. He’s got a new haircut: three shaved lines on the side of his head. Around his neck is one of his funky-colored scarves.
“Golden.”
“Sweet haircut,” I say, pushing up my own hair. “Maybe I should shave some lines too. We could be twins.”
“You couldn’t pull it off.”
While I try to think of a comeback, he cracks, “Anyway, it’s a little Ronaldo, don’t you think?”
I cover my face in horror and shrink away. I can’t admit it or anything, but Ronaldo might be growing on me.
While we eat pretzels and some sort of Jell-O salad with Cool Whip, Mr. T says, “I’d like to thank Coach for another great soccer season. We are lucky to have her expertise, especially in light of the… hardships her family is going through.”
Clapping and whistling fill the gym.
“What hard… ships?” Dad whispers.
“Jaimes,” I whisper. “She’s such a hardship. And we have to share a room.”
Jaimes purposely tosses her hair into my eyes, blinding me.
“Thank you, Mr. T,” Coach says, smiling at the audience. “Thank you all for being here this evening. It’s been a wonderful season. This team has surpassed my expectations with their hard work and effort. The stats are impressive: forty-four total goals scored by fourteen different players. Assists by sixteen separate players.
“Winning is fun and rewarding,” Coach continues. “But the best part of coaching this year was witnessing the love these teammates have for each other.” I start squirming at the mention of love and glance over at Lucy and Benny. “Soccer is not an individual sport, but there are certainly moments when one can be selfish. This team was pretty special.”
Coach looks around the room, somehow able to make eye contact with each of us.
“Early in the season I asked for leaders to step up. There are many scenes that stand out, but my favorite moment was on the last Wednesday in August. Preseason. We were sprinting on the hottest day of the year. Remember?” There is a collective groan. “Some of you finished the sprints quickly. When you saw your teammates struggling to finish, all of you stepped off that white sideline and brought your teammates in. That was the moment you became a team.”
Coach smiles and pats her heart. Come on, Coach. Hold it together.
“The end of this season is particularly bittersweet as our eighth graders move on. My husband and I have coached you your entire lives; we’ve seen you grow up. And we are so proud of you.”
Everyone claps, but Dad can’t. He’s swallowing hard.
“Okay?” I whisper.
He blinks once for yes.
“Now for the awards,” Coach says, back to her business voice. “Captains?”
We go to the front, and my voice cracks only once through the microphone as I call everyone’s names. The Squirrels giggle. Most of the boys give me a half hug while discreetly shanking me so the parents can’t see.
“Suárez?” Slick says. He leans over and tries to bite me.
Archie fist-pumps the air when he sees his Iniesta paper plate award.
Coach makes eye contact with Dad as we finish. It’s like I know what they’re thinking: everything changes after this moment. Our season together is over. And Coach? She’s pretty much indestructible ’cause she’s had so much practice holding it together, but tonight it looks like we’re headed down Breakdown Lane.
I save the day by yelling, “To the Mudbury Magpies!”
Coach laughs as we have our last big group soccer-banquet hug, and all the parents take a zillion pictures.
“Guys, come on,” Benny says.
The team heads over to Dad, Dragon-Ball P, clapping him on the back, telling him stories.
I hang back, watching. Coach is by his side, with Lucy, Roma, Whitney, and Jaimes. They all turn and beckon me to come, take my place on the dr
eam team.
Epilogue: The Dream Team
I have come to learn that I am not perfect, nor will I ever be. Perfect is too hard. I’m perfectly fine with being perfectly imperfect.
—ATTRIBUTED TO LIONEL MESSI
I play this soccer game on my Xbox called FIFA (when Mom isn’t taking away my electronics and saying “You’re going to become an addict”). The more points you earn, the more coins you have to buy players or packs, contracts, and fitness boosts.
If I had enough coins I could buy my dream team.
There’s no way I could make this happen on FIFA because there’s no way I could get 200 million coins unless I played for like twenty-four hours a day, which, you know—Mom.
But this is what my dream team would look like:
David de Gea as goalie, anchoring Mom and Dad’s favorite 4-4-2 strategy. Marcelo, Luiz, Hummels, and the great Patrick Maroni at defense. My midfield is pretty sweet: Ronaldo, Iniesta, Sánchez, and Willian. Yeah, I allowed Ronaldo on the same team as Messi.
My attacking forwards are me and the next-greatest player in the world: Lionel Messi, of course.
So that’s my dream team. But in real life, if I had to choose which team to play on, and which players I’d want next to me on the field, I’d always choose the ones I had at Mudbury Middle School, the team who believed in me and made me a captain and took us to the championship game under the lights on the turf so Dad could see us play one more time. Before Verity became Dad’s full-time nurse, before Mrs. Ho organized a town-wide meal delivery system. Before Lucy Littlehouse moved.
You know what Lucy left me? Her CAT. Curtis Meowfield is now a permanent fixture in my life. He still chases me and tries to bite my ankles. What gives?
You know what Lucy left Roma? Her roller skates.
So every time Roma skates up and down the driveway I think maybe it’s Lucy. The wheels always sound like they’re coming back for me. And she does whenever she can.
Some friendships have short life spans. Like Sugar Ray, who I eventually had to retire. Still, what a kid.
Others are GOAT: Greatest of All Time. Like me, Benny, and Lucy.
Like Dad.
He didn’t live to see another fall soccer season—but I think he saw me at my very best, when I managed to pass the ball to a player who had a better shot under the lights on a turf field named after Patrick “Dragon-Ball P” Maroni. What more is there?
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