The Digital Apostle
“Go! Go! Go! Yesss!” Carlo said, pumping his fist in the air. I sighed,
“How are you so good at this? You don't even play that much!” He grinned,
“FIFA has always been my best... but if you want a real challenge, let's actually go kick around!”
We biked down to the park and messed around for a couple hours, getting gelato on the way back (He insisted on paying, as always, even with that tiny allowance). We turned our separate ways, and I called,
“Bye!”
“See you at school!” Carlo said as we started biking down our different roads.
I saw him in the hall the next day, facing down one of the biggest bullies in the school, Dario, which was widely considered a very dumb thing to do, but Carlo was like that. He defended those who needed defending. I picked up my pace, eager to get away from Dario, and headed to my next class, history. Signor Conti was our favorite teacher. He walked in a couple minutes later with the kid who was getting bullied, patting him on the back. We had a great class period, and in the break, I said,
"Only one week left of freshman year! Are you excited?"
"Yeah! He replied. Hey, I want to show you, I made a new update to my website! Wanna come over and see it?" he replied.
"Sure!" I said. We biked to his house after school and looked at his website, then we went back down to the park for some soccer.
The summer was much the same, with our playing soccer, FIFA, and exchanging the worst dad jokes ever. We started school as normal, and we were both looking forward to going to my family's vacation home in Dolomites, when one night in October, Carlo was rushed to the hospital, and he was diagnosed with leukemia. I only visited a couple times, because it was scary seeing my best friend in a hospital bed with cancer. The one thing I really noticed was he never really lost the passion for life that I always remember him having. It is not a fight, he said, but a gift. After his death, I continued life as if nothing had happened, trying to make it seem ok, but I always have and always will miss Carlo. Years later, I heard people talking about a new Blessed from Milan, named Carlo Acutis. A couple years after that, Pope Leo XIV canonized my best friend, St. Carlo Acutis. He called the Eucharist his highway to Heaven, I guess he made it.
Carlo’s website (the one he made that is talked about in the story)
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