The praise after the Mainz game was a roaring fire, but instead of warming Mateo, it felt like it was casting long, distorted shadows in his mind. The world had decided who he was now. He was the "Hybrid Terror," a "force of nature," a "finished product." He was a weapon. A monster. A thing of power and dominance. He read the words, translated by Sarah, and felt a profound and terrifying disconnect. The person they were describing was a stranger.
The person he felt like was a sixteen-year-old boy whose knees ached in the morning and whose favorite hoodie no longer reached his wrists. The person he felt like was a collection of limbs that seemed to have been assembled in the dark, a clumsy puppet whose strings were being pulled by a brain that was still working off an old instruction manual.
This disconnect became painfully, humiliatingly clear on a Tuesday afternoon, on what was supposed to be a triumphant mission: Operation New Wardrobe.
