Futbolista
Chapter 1
I LOVE PLAYING FOOTBALL. The soccer kind. The real football.
I love playing college football.
“ This is the dream,” I say, half muttered, barely louder than a whisper. “I wouldn’t trade being here right now for anything. I worked hard for this.”
And then, looking ahead toward the gulf, its water nearly black right now, and the small orange lights of plants and rigs way out in the horizon, I repeat those words.
Over and over again, I speak them out loud for only me to hear.
Because remembering these truths is the only way to make sense of why I’m at a beach half an hour outside of Corpus Christi, Texas, at three in the morning, somewhere on a lifeless part of Padre Island, glad that the police and the Coast Guard don’t bother coming around here.
“This is some ‘balls sticking to my leg’ weather,” P é rez groans before letting out a long yawn.
“ Shut the fuck up ,” Nguyen snaps in a whisper next to him while I’m trying my best not to let out the khh , keying-a-car sounding cackle right at my throat.
“Personally speaking, P é rez ain’t wrong,” I add with a smirk on my face, knowing that Nguyen’s probably glaring at me now too.
Which gets Ahmed letting out a “ Yo! Same,” as he laughs, and then P é rez and I are laughing, all while Nguyen’s trying to tell us, “Can y’all be serious for five minutes? !”
Might be less funny if it weren’t true and we weren’t all lined up and naked right now, on what’s got to be the muggiest night-slash-early-morning in South Texas history.
Mixed with the wind, it’s like I put the heater all the way up in my truck and also set up a little mist machine shooting humidity right at my face.
Really proves that, ninety-nine days out of a hundred and all twenty-four hours of those days, I can count on the weather out here to be ass.
My skin’s already dewy only a few minutes in and, yeah, there was no way I wasn’t going to be cranky about being woken up before my alarm on a game day, but standing out here, cheeks out in this weather has only got me that much crankier.
So maybe a laugh and trying to see this as something fully lacking in seriousness for just a second will make all of this a little less stupid sounding.
This being Wake Up Call. That’s what the guys on the team call it.
From what I’ve heard, the seniors way back when used to actually kick a ball into the water and the freshman players had to bring it back.
Or else. They also allegedly used to have to jump from the pier straight into the gulf instead of starting at the sand.
I don’t know if I believe that one, though.
I take a quick look to my left, that legendary pier visible in my periphery, the farther half of it gone now from a lightning strike or something and the entrance blocked off with lots of tall metal beams. Guess we won’t ever have to find out if the stories were true or not.
I also heard that one year the freshmen had to do this while a hurricane was coming ashore. I believe that even less. But that didn’t keep me from constantly checking my weather app the past week.
Now there are no balls involved. At least, not the kind you dribble and kick into goals.
But everything else about the tradition has stayed mostly the same.
The morning of our first home game, the team gets up way too early and the new players (we) take off all their (our) clothes and run into the Gulf of Mexico, as far as they (we) can go, and then back.
Why? I don’t know. Standing here now, about to do it myself alongside my fellow freshman teammates, I can’t think of any actual reason for why this started.
And it’s not like every alumni Islander who has ever played football for Texas A&M at Corpus Christi is going to vote to banish us from the squad if we don’t.
While there’s some superstition to it, I want to think that no one here really believes our win or loss today will be because of what happens right now, except for the fact that maybe getting a good night’s rest might be a healthier way to spend this time.
“Want to make this interesting, boys?” Ahmed asks. When I glance over at him, he’s got this devious smile on his face like he’s already picturing one of us doing whatever shameful thing he’s thinking of.
“Down,” P é rez says so quickly. Nguyen lets out a loud I’m going to regret this sigh before his “Fine.”
“I … sure. Yeah.”
“Last one to hit the water has to voice-text their ex and tell her you’re still in love with her.”
“You motherfucker,” Nguyen replies. “I’m pushing you down.”
“Try it.”
Yeah, there’s got to be a better way I could be spending this time.
But the older guys let each of us choose if we wanted to do this. We were told it’s not a requirement. Nothing happens if we say, “Maybe we shouldn’t do a thing this wild and stupid before a game.” The only real pressure they put on us is that everyone ’s done it.
So, maybe that’s why. Why Wake Up Call has been going on for, presumably, a while.
Because, personally speaking, I don’t want to be the player that breaks tradition, and I said as much to P é rez and Nguyen and Ahmed earlier when we were debating about it back at our place.
All of us know how to swim. We’re not expected to go that far.
There doesn’t seem to be an actual danger in this, except for the possibility of a jellyfish going straight for my dick and the fact that one of us is about to have to reach out to an ex at three thirty in the morning.
But, aside from that singular fear (the jellyfish, not my ex) and knowing I could’ve easily decided to still be asleep right now, I’ve got to admit, this seems like fun.
There is an undeniable level of excitement underneath the tiredness.
Plus, I’m big enough to admit that I’m looking to fit in with the older guys.
For them to see me as one of the team even off the pitch.
Being named the starting goalkeeper as a freshman was already a challenge I had to meet them head-on about.
Show them that I deserve to be here. This is just another challenge. And I’ve got it in the bag.
Also, call me superstitious too, but if we’d skipped out on this and ended up with our first loss of the season—if I was the reason for that loss—I’d probably walk straight into the gulf and never look back.
“Alright, boys! On three,” Barrera, our team captain, shouts.
I get into a ready stance, listening to him slowly count down as I whisper, “This will be fun. And, if it’s not, it’ll all be over in a minute, and then I can go back to bed.
” I hold a palm to my chest for a moment, feeling how fast my heart’s beating as my eyes lock on to those little lights in the distance.
My feet are anxious and ready to fly across the sand as soon as I hear the word—
“Go!”
The four of us—P é rez, Nguyen, Ahmed, and me—all yell as we take off.
Well, what P é rez is doing might be closer to a scream.
My legs are on autopilot, focused almost solely on keeping up with my teammates because the competitive nature never goes away and, just like they’ve seen since I first stepped onto the pitch, this goalkeeper will sprint circles around anyone.
Once P é rez finds his footing, he does a Naruto run while yelling “?A huevo!” because, yeah, he’d be the one, and his usual middle-part hair is messy and catching the wind, making him look even more like that guy who plays Blue Beetle.
Ahmed’s arms are up, hands to the sky, and he’s screaming something in Tamazight with a big smile on his face, acting like he wasn’t the worst one to drag out of bed forty-five minutes ago.
And, swear, he’s also flexing his abs while he’s running.
Nguyen, the shortest out of all of us, his own middle part staying mostly intact as he runs, is only concentrated on the tide coming in ahead of us, with a face that’s always looking like he’s got something to prove.
Probably not too different from how I look right now.
As soon as the water meets my shins, I jump, throwing myself into the gulf that’s at least a little cooler than the air.
The visibility is zero, and I feel someone’s hand touch my shoulder.
It only lasts for a few seconds, and then I’m back up, taking a gulp of air that turns into a scream all four of us do together, looking right up at the sky like we just won a war, riding this adrenaline rush and tasting salt on our tongues.
We yell some more, forgetting our tired, cranky moods while throwing water and trying to dunk one another for whole minutes as our team cheers us on from the sand.
The four of us were put together in one of the off-campus townhomes the university owns only a couple minutes from campus, right on Oso Bay.
It’s been a few weeks since I met them and once they became my roommates and teammates, we began spending nearly every single minute of our day together.
I learned that P é rez’s favorite midnight snack is Doritos and spicy bean dip (RIP to his toilet), and that one of Nguyen’s exes got him listening to K-Pop as study music (which made me realize how catchy it is, and I’ve caught myself singing “BLACKPINK in your area” more than a few times), and that, while Ahmed was a bitch and a half to get up for this, he will wake up at four in the morning to watch a French National Team game, if only because he loves to yell “Fuck France!” for ninety minutes.