Chapter 2
A LOW OOMPH COMES out as I kick the ball back into play, a side volley that keeps low to the ground, curving just slightly while it gets some air. It lands exactly where I want, right at P é rez’s feet, who’s on it in less than a second after it hits the grass, heading for the other team’s goal.
“?Corre, papi!” I yell, my gloved hands circled around my mouth. “Don’t let them take it from you!”
I watch him sprint down the field, whispering, “There you go. Good movement. Great pass,” as the attention quickly goes to the other side of the pitch.
And now that my half’s quiet, I can take a second to stretch out my right leg and knee.
Do a couple hops and try to forget about how tired I still am from this morning.
Saving this last attempt required a rough dive, and I got a big green stain on my white shorts for it, and grass sticking to the sweaty skin of my thigh.
There’s also some pink near my elbow and on my leg where I slid a second after and cut myself up.
As long as someone caught that save on camera, I don’t mind leaving this game a little bruised up. I know it looked sexy.
All in a day for a keeper.
These guys—a team from a Catholic university in San Antonio—got some drive in them.
Definitely the best offense we’ve faced so far.
If anyone on my squad thought the past couple of games weren’t anything more than scrimmages, they’re realizing we’re in the real season now.
I’ve kept them at zero so far, and our defense is consistent about making it hard for them to get to me, but I see it in their eyes: they want to give us our first L at our first home game, and they didn’t come all this way to let us off easy.
On the other side of the pitch, their keeper has been just as on it as me.
No one out here has got a point on the board so far, and with most of the game past us, we could be looking at a tie today.
I’d prefer the win, obviously. But at least my shutout holds up. And—
I perk my head up, hearing a couple loud voices becoming a few more and then turning into full on hollering.
Good hollering. Not like the last game when someone tried to fuck with Ahmed and almost broke his ankle sliding for the ball.
Had our whole team about to jump some El Paso putos.
This one—this is a goal holler , nearly covered by the little bit of “Techno Cumbia” playing on the speakers, which is something that happens when we score, I guess?
Oh, yep. There’s P é rez with his damn Naruto run. Must’ve been his point. He sees me and gives me two thumbs-up, and I’m yelling back to him, “?A huevo, papi! Keep it up!”
When he’s in game mode, focused in, no one’s able to handle him.
Same with the rest of my boys, as underestimated as we are by the rest of the team.
And, I’ll admit, even I was on the fence at first, with how P é rez is kind of weird and always a little silly, and Ahmed is kind of introverted at first, and Nguyen has resting bitch face.
But we’re also all good enough to be here, and we’re showing them that.
It’d been zero-zero the whole game until one of them was finally given the ball, and Nguyen’s been a guard dog on defense, keeping these San Antonio boys on their toes.
Catch us three years from now, when we’re seniors, and see what we do with this team.
The final few minutes of the game start, and we’ve finally got something to show for it.
Now it’s my turn to make sure we leave this pitch with the win.
I get myself ready, standing in the middle of the goalpost, my feet light and ready to move as one of the other side’s guys rushes my way with a couple of his boys on either side of him.
Este ching ó n—he’s already tried to get a couple shots past me today.
He’s got nice control of the ball, clearing through my teammates, passing to his, determined to try one more time.
“Echegaray! Nguyen! Get in there,” I yell, pointing a gloved finger toward this crew. My legs are loose and my body is ready for the kick that’s sure to happen if neither of my teammates starts hustling. “Ponte las pilas, boys!”
Nguyen tries his best to speed up and take the ball, but he’s never fully closing the space between them.
One of El Ching ó n’s boys, the one on his left—no, wait, my left, his right—passes it back to him.
And as they go into formation, I immediately recognize this move.
One that my high school teammates learned, and that I’ve blocked tons of times (after I finally figured out how to catch it before they got a clear shot of the net).
He’s going to fake a kick high to his corner, but it’ll actually go to the far side of the goal, and low, so I’m already mid-jump and it’s too late to turn that into a slide and boom , we end in a tie. I look like a fool. My short-lived shutout just a memory.
Except I won’t. And it won’t be. Because I’m onto them. So, instead, I’ll take a step up and go straight for the dive. Stay low. Watch for his kick to do exactly what I know it’s going to do, and—
Hold up. The second the ball’s speeding toward me, I realize it’s not going low.
He faked a fake. Or he … just did the thing?
I don’t know. But it’s going high and far.
Shit. Swear, if I’d had an extra hour of sleep instead of getting into some tonter í as at the beach, my brain might’ve picked up on something here.
Seen him doing the math in his head and picking a point in front of him to shoot for, and I’d have been able to go quick into a jump. Because I need— I need to jump .
My cleats dig into the dirt as I pivot as fast as I can, and my legs push me up to my left in as high of a hop as I can manage.
An arm stretches out, and I can almost feel my whole body try to grow a couple inches in this last second where everything seems to be happening in slow motion.
All around me, everything except for my hands and the ball is a blur.
And, as far as I can see, I don’t think I have this one.
If I’d been a little more ready, if I’d been thinking a little more clearly, if I was just a little taller.
I’m great with jumps, but I don’t think it’ll be high enough.
I’m about to get scored on, and all the things Barrera was just telling me are going to go to shit, and it had to be at a home game with my parents watching, and—
A hard pop hits the center of my glove and, without thinking, my other hand flies up, trying to grab at whatever made contact.
An oof comes out of me when I hit the ground, landing pretty dirty, getting some air knocked out of me, and adding a rib to the list of bruised body parts I’ll be feeling tomorrow.
But then, as everything goes clear and time sets itself right again, my brain starts realizing what happened.
I caught it. I saved it. The ball is in my hands. And as the loud horn signaling the end of the match rings, I know I did it.
We won.
I’m too busy staring at the ball to see my teammates sprinting over and falling on me in a dogpile.
And if I wasn’t bruised already, Ahmed’s bony elbows or knees—I’m not sure which right now—are going to do it.
Even after Coach and Barrera get the squad up, everyone’s coming in for a hug or a back pat or a hand to my head.
I wave back to my parents in the stands; my Pops shouting “That’s my boy!
” and my T í o Los next to him screaming “Yeah, Gabo! Yeahhh!” with a crowd of uncles, aunts, family friends that I grew up calling t í o and t í a, and cousins who showed up for my first college home game.
And if I weren’t still riding this victory-high—or if this isn’t exactly how they’ve acted for the past fifteen years, since my first games when I was three years old, and, most recently, at my high school graduation a few months ago—it might be kind of embarrassing.
Instead, it feels like I won the CONCACAF Gold Cup.
Yeah, I love this. Me, right here, on this pitch, playing better than I ever have in my entire life. This is me meeting my dream.
“Pi n a, Pi n a , ” P é rez calls, jumping into my side with his phone held up for his pinche footballer vlogs.
“We killed it today. Specifically me, with a goal late in the game, and this guy right here! Best goalkeeper in the game. Mi hermano. é l es un crack. El Chivo. Match MVP. And he’s single, ladies.
Or … guys? All? Dude, what are you into?
You’re straight, right? I’m trying to hook you up.
People are all over my comments telling me to get you to drop the links, if you know what I mean.
Or, at the very least, take your shirt off. ”
“I—what?”
“Straight?”
“Oh. Uh, I mean … yeah. Of course.”