I woke up before my alarm because my brain wouldn't stop reminding me that today was Friday.
Not regular Friday. Volleyball Friday.
The last practice before the club coaches decided who would officially make the teams.
Which meant I spent the first five minutes after waking up staring at my ceiling while thinking about every single thing I had done during tryouts so far. Every pass. Every mistake. Every good rep. Every bad rep. My brain replayed all of it automatically whether I wanted it to or not.
Eventually I rolled over and grabbed the volleyball sitting beside my bed. I had started sleeping near it without realizing it lately. Mom said it was becoming "a little concerning." Dad said it was "the origin story of every sports documentary ever."
Honestly, I thought both were probably true.
The second I stepped into the hallway, I could already hear chaos downstairs.
Dad was opening and closing cabinets too aggressively. Mom sounded like she was trying to make breakfast while simultaneously preventing multiple disasters from happening at once. Something metal crashed loudly in the kitchen.
Then Mom yelled, "Henrique!"
Dad immediately answered, "That wasn't even my fault this time!"
I walked downstairs slowly with my backpack already on, mostly because I liked being prepared early and partly because I knew mornings in our house got more dangerous the longer you waited.
The kitchen smelled like coffee, toast, syrup, and scrambled eggs. Sunlight filled almost the entire room already, bright California morning light reflecting against the counters while Mom moved around the stove quickly and Dad searched for something near the fridge.
"Has anybody seen my car keys?" he asked.
Mom didn't even look up. "Left pocket."
Dad checked immediately and froze.
"…Wow."
"You do this every morning."
"I like routine."
"You create routine problems."
I laughed quietly while climbing onto one of the stools at the kitchen island. I still had my volleyball tucked under my arm without noticing until Mom pointed at it.
"No volleyball at breakfast."
I looked down.
"Oh."
Dad glanced at me and grinned while pouring coffee into a travel mug. "At this point we should just give the ball its own bedroom."
"I forgot I was holding it."
"That somehow makes it worse."
I set the volleyball beside the stool and started eating while bouncing my leg under the counter so fast the entire stool shook slightly every few seconds.
Mom noticed almost immediately. "You're nervous."
"I'm not nervous."
"Matteo." I sighed dramatically. "…Maybe a little."
That felt more accurate.
Because it wasn't just nervousness. It was excitement too. And curiosity. And something else I didn't really know how to explain yet. Volleyball made my brain feel different from school. At school, sometimes it felt like I had to slow my thoughts down constantly so other people wouldn't look at me strangely. But volleyball rewarded noticing things. The more details you paid attention to, the better you got.
That made sense to me.
Dad leaned against the counter holding his coffee. "You know what happens if you don't make the team?"
I looked up. "What?"
"You practice more and try again. Or we try another team."
Simple answer.
Dad did that a lot. He never turned things into giant emotional speeches. Sometimes adults tried so hard to make kids feel better that it almost made things worse. Dad mostly just told the truth and expected me to handle it.
It actually helped.
The drive to liams house felt shorter than normal because my brain stayed busy the entire time replaying libero drills from Wednesday. Defensive positioning made sense in my head in a way almost nothing else ever had. Reading hitters felt less like reacting and more like solving puzzles.
Shoulders. Foot angles. Approach speed. Contact point. Everything connected together.
"You're thinking too loudly again," Dad said while stopping at a red light.
I blinked. "How do you know?"
"You have the face."
"What face?"
"The volleyball conspiracy face."
"That's not real."
"It absolutely is." I laughed a little and looked back out the window.
The second Dad parked in front of the small two-story house near Old Pasadena, I could already hear noise coming through the open front window. A soccer game blasted from the television somewhere inside while somebody laughed loudly enough that even Dad smiled before turning off the car.
"You've got practice at four" he reminded me while unbuckling his seatbelt. "I'll pick you up around three."
"I know."
"And don't completely exhaust yourselves before training."
"That depends on Liam."
Dad snorted quietly. "Interesting that it's somehow never your fault."
"It statistically usually isn't."
Dad gave me the exact look parents give when they think their child is being ridiculous but technically can't prove it.
Before we even reached the front door, it swung open.
Liam appeared wearing basketball shorts, mismatched socks, and an LAFC jersey that looked like he'd slept in it.
"You're late."
"It's 11:58."
"Exactly."
"That's not late."
"It emotionally felt late."
Dad laughed under his breath while Liam stepped aside dramatically to let us in.
The inside of Liam's house smelled like grilled cheese and laundry detergent. The air conditioning blasted cold enough that I immediately got goosebumps on my arms after standing outside in Pasadena heat all morning. Soccer highlights played loudly on the TV while papers and sports magazines covered parts of the coffee table near the couch.
Liam's mom, Rachel, stood near the kitchen island holding an iced coffee while answering emails on her laptop at the same time.
She smiled immediately when she saw us.
"Hey, Matteo."
"Hi, Mrs. Carter."
Dad stepped further inside while adjusting the strap of his laptop bag over one shoulder. Even dressed casually, he still looked halfway stuck in work mode already.
"Seriously, thank you again for this," he told her. "Summer's gotten ridiculous lately."
Rachel laughed softly. "Real estate season?"
Dad nodded immediately. "Open houses, closings, inspections, clients wanting tours at six in the morning for some reason."
"People lose common sense when houses hit the market."
"That's what I keep saying."
I noticed Dad visibly relax while talking to her, which honestly made sense. Summer break had only been going for a couple weeks, but both Mom and Dad already looked more tired than usual. Real estate apparently became chaos during summer because families wanted to move before the next school year started.
Meanwhile I was already distracted by something sitting on Liam's dining table.
A giant model stadium made out of LEGOs.
I walked toward it automatically. "…Is that the Santiago Bernabéu?"
Liam grinned proudly. "Told you he'd know."
Rachel blinked. "You recognized a soccer stadium from across the room?"
"It has distinctive architecture."
Dad rubbed his forehead slightly. "That sentence shouldn't sound normal coming from an eight-year-old."
Liam grabbed my sleeve immediately afterward. "Come on. I have to show you something."
The second Dad left, Liam dragged me upstairs two steps at a time toward his room. It looked exactly how everyone expected Liam's room to look — soccer posters everywhere, clothes thrown across a chair in the corner, random sports equipment covering half the floor, and one giant whiteboard hanging near his desk filled with soccer formations drawn in dry erase marker.
"You made new formations?" I asked.
Liam crossed his arms proudly. "Coach says I might start playing left wing more this season."
"That makes sense."
"How?"
"You cut inside constantly anyway."
Liam stared at me for a second. "You watch soccer weirdly."
"I watch everything weirdly."
"That's fair."
For a while we mostly just existed the way kids who'd known each other forever usually did. Liam showed me clips from soccer practices on Rachel's iPad while I explained volleyball rotations he still pretended not to understand. Then we played FIFA for almost an hour, which mostly turned into Liam screaming dramatically every time I intercepted one of his passes.
"You defend in video games like a libero," he complained after I stole the ball again.
"That sounds like a compliment."
"It wasn't."
At some point, Liam disappeared downstairs and came back carrying sandwiches and two juice boxes balanced dangerously in his hands.
"My mom said we're not allowed to starve before practice."
"She says that like athletes in ancient times."
"You sound like a history documentary."
We ended up eating cross-legged on the floor beside his bed while sunlight spilled through the windows across the carpet. Liam talked nonstop about an upcoming soccer tournament while I explained the difference between float serves and topspin serves using his desk lamp as a demonstration tool.
Halfway through the explanation, Liam interrupted me.
"You know most kids just… play sports, right?"
I looked up from rotating the lamp dramatically in my hands.
"What do you mean?"
"You study volleyball like it's a science."
"It IS a science."
"No, dude. It's a game."
"It can be both."
Liam stared at me for a second before laughing. "You're actually insane."
Normally comments like that used to make me nervous when I was younger because I could never tell if people meant them in a bad way. But with Liam, it felt easy. He said things like that the same way brothers probably did.
Eventually we moved outside into the backyard because Liam decided he needed to "prove soccer players were superior athletes." That somehow turned into a competition involving sprint races, juggling contests, and trying to hit a trash can from increasingly stupid distances with different sports balls.
I beat him badly at anything involving reaction time.
He destroyed me at anything involving running for longer than thirty seconds.
By the end, we were both sweating hard enough that Rachel forced us back inside before "either of you idiots melt in the California heat."
"You have volleyball in like thirty minutes," she reminded us while handing Liam a towel.
"I know."
"That means no injuries."
"No promises," Liam answered immediately.
"LIAM."
"I'm kidding!"
Mostly kidding probably.
A little later, while we waited near the front door for Dad to arrive, Liam suddenly looked over at me from the couch.
"You're excited for today's practice, huh?"
I tried pretending I wasn't.
"…Maybe."
"You reorganized your volleyball backpack twice while you were here."
"That was equipment optimization."
"You're impossible."
But he was smiling when he said it.
And honestly?
I was smiling too.