The dream: Football

Elias, fourteen, was not gently awakened; he was hauled into consciousness by the brutal, suffocating heat of the La Ciénaga shack. The air inside was thick and stale, a permanent blend of dried sweat, stale tortillas, and the pervasive metallic smell of the nearby industrial waste site. His sleep was shallow, his mind never truly resting, always cataloging the financial precariousness of their existence. The sound of his mother, Carmen, coughing—a dry, persistent hack that rattled her frail chest—was the constant rhythm of their poverty, the sound of their debt. It was the physical manifestation of the long hours she spent on her feet, breathing chemicals at the packaging plant, a constant reminder that every minute of rest he stole was a minute of labor she was forced to endure. His narrow bed, shared spine-to-spine with his seven-year-old brother, Marco, offered no actual physical comfort, only the fleeting warmth of a shared biological existence.His first chore was the pre-dawn haul, a non-negotiable ritual that began while the sky was still an absolute, inky black. The communal pump, located a quarter-mile away, was a fickle source, dispensing water for only the first hour before it ran dry for the day. He grabbed two rusted, heavy galvanized buckets, the cold metal biting his hands. He began his silent trek, moving with a low-energy, practiced efficiency. His calloused feet barely registered the broken glass, sharp stones, and garbage embedded in the dirt path. He focused on maintaining a long, even stride, leaning into the rhythm that would later define his running on the pitch—a functional, economical movement born of necessity. The route was etched into his muscle memory, past the defunct oil drum, around the collapsed tire pile, and through the narrow, unlit alley.Poverty was not an abstract concept from a textbook; it was the taste of dust coating his tongue, the chronic, hollow ache in his stomach, and the constant micro-decisions over every handful of rice. Football, at this stage, was not a dream of glory in a packed stadium. It was a rough, vital ritual of escape—a few hours where the limits of his body were his own to define, governed by sweat and lungs, not by the limitations imposed by the neighborhood. But even this escape was a form of labor. He had to be up before everyone else, hauling the water that was their lifeblood, before he could earn the right to train. Every heavy, disciplined breath he took on that cold morning path was an implicit, desperate vow: he was the only chance they had at escaping La Ciénaga, and success could only be paid for in a brutal, unrelenting equity of work. The cost was already staggering, but Elias knew the price of staying was infinitely higher. He reached the pump just as the first weak light touched the horizon, his buckets clanging against the metal casing, marking the precise beginning of his sixteen-hour day.