Key Player

The soccer ball serves as a dynamic symbol that evolves alongside Mia’s personal growth, reflecting her journey from fear and insecurity to empowerment and healing. At the beginning of the novel, the soccer ball is a source of anxiety for Mia. It represents physical danger and, more deeply, the invisible burden of growing up in a financially precarious immigrant family. Even though her family now has health insurance, Mia has internalized the fear of uninsured medical emergencies leading to financial ruin. To her, getting hit by the ball isn’t about a scraped knee, it’s a potential crisis for her family’s financial survival. In this way, the soccer ball embodies the lingering trauma of her family’s past struggles and the protective instinct she’s developed as a result.

As the story progresses, the soccer ball takes on new meaning. Instead of fearing it, Mia begins to engage with it—first reluctantly, then with growing confidence. Her shift mirrors her broader emotional work she’s: learning to push through internalized fears, silencing the negative self-talk, and allowing herself to take risks. When she begins kicking the ball around as a way of venting her emotions, the soccer ball becomes a tool for catharsis, a way of physically processing everything she can’t always say out loud.