“Did you see that?” a biker shouts.
“What?” The kid with the camera stands and whirls around.
“You missed a double 360. All the way from the peak.” The first kid turns to Chad. “Who are you?”
Instead of answering, Chad circles the pit, climbs the mound again, and makes a three-quarter turn in the air. His long blond hair flies out around him. The three other boys stand in a clump, watching. They ask him where he learned to ride like that.
“Around,” he answers. The trick he did for me is nothing compared to the ones he shows those kids. The one with the sideburns lifts the video camera to eye level. Recording Chad.
Ignoring me.
I stand at the top of the hill, invisible again.
The BMX track is just another lunchroom table where New Kid has found his group of friends and left me by myself. I feel like crying, but if I do, all three of these boys will also know I’m Crybaby Kiara.
So I call out to Chad, “I have to go. I’ll leave the bike in my backyard.”
I don’t think he hears me.
CHAPTER 15
CHAD NEVER COMES TO PICK UP THE BIKE. I SEE HIM IN THE afternoon, limping along the perimeter of the park, hunched over, head down.
He probably wiped out, the crazy way he was riding. Serves you right for pretending I’m not there, I want to tell him. Instead I lower the blinds.
A distant banjo and guitar greet me when I wake up the next morning. Outside, Dad and Mr. Elliott are playing again. After getting dressed, I roll Chad’s bike from under the lean-to, through the gate, and around the block into the park. I’m going to return it because he didn’t pick it up and I don’t need him or his bike. I can ride Max’s bike to meet Antonio.
Much as I wish I could stay and listen to the music, I can’t because I might say something to get Dad and me hurt or killed. Like, How could you think I was so desperate for a friend that I would break the law and put myself in danger? So when they stop for a break, I push the bike forward and mumble, “Chad left this at my house.”
“Speak up, girl,” Mr. Elliott says.
“Chad. Left. This.”
Dad glares at me. I don’t care. Mr. Elliott doesn’t deserve my good manners.
He sets his banjo on the platform, grabs the handlebars, and leans the bike against the concrete. “Is she your only one, J.T.?”
“No, I got two boys—Eli and Max. Both of them at college.” Dad sets his guitar next to the banjo.
Mr. Elliott holds out his hand, with its stained fingers. “Got pictures?”
Dad takes his wallet from his back pocket. The top photo is of all five of us together, before Eli, Max, and Mami left. I was around ten then, and both Mami and I wore embroidered peasant-style blouses. My hair came to my shoulders and curled under my chin. There was a gap between my teeth. I wore braces all through sixth grade to get rid of it.
Dad digs under the photo for more, but before he can take them out, Mr. Elliott lifts the wallet from his hand for a closer look. He then pulls his wallet from his pocket and hands a worn photo to my father.
“Here’s Lissa with baby Brandon. He was a real sweetie.” Mr. Elliott taps the photo with the corner of Dad’s wallet. “The other one busted our chops from day one. Colic. Wouldn’t sleep …” I peer over Dad’s shoulder at a skinny woman, her long straight hair parted in the middle, holding a smiling, round, bald baby in her lap. She’s smiling too, her thin lips pressed together. Baby Brandon has a pair of teeth on top that glisten like tiny pearls.
Dad has photos of all of us. Mr. Elliott has the one with Brandon and his mother and another of Brandon that looks like it was taken at the hospital, with him all red and wrinkled and wearing a blue knit cap. Nothing of Chad. Even though I’m mad at him for ignoring me and hanging out with the older boys, I wonder what he looked like as a little kid, if he looked like Brandon does now—sweet and innocent rather than hard and mean.
Dad and Mr. Elliott are still looking at family photos when I go back inside. I drag Max’s bike outside, ready to go. Chad has made his own friends at the BMX track. I don’t have to ask Antonio to let him ride there. But Antonio did say he wanted me to return to the trail—he just didn’t show up yesterday. Remembering that kid with the sideburns and the video camera, I get an idea. If I record the stunts, maybe they’ll notice me, talk to me, want me to stick around.
Dad keeps our video camera in his tiny recording studio. He bought it a little over a year ago, and I used it to record Corazón del Este’s concerts. Most of the time, I’d set the camera up on a tripod and let it run. Sometimes I took handheld footage, getting right in front of the musicians or sneaking backstage to shoot them from behind, which was my favorite because it sort of made me part of the band too.
I posted the videos on YouTube—Dad’s idea to get more people to hire us. We got over a thousand views in all and a few people left thumbs-ups. When someone wrote, Nice-looking band. Great costumes, I ran bragging to everyone in my family because it was hard to get the colorful outfits they performed in to stand out with the bad lighting. But even though the band looked good, Mami said we didn’t get enough gigs to pay the cost of the camera, even with Dad’s employee discount at Tech Town.
I wait until after breakfast, when Dad leaves for work. Then I put the camera into my backpack and ride to College Park.
Like yesterday, the mountain bike trail is deserted. The extra day of sunshine has chased away the musty smell, but the breeze makes me shiver where the trees block out the sun. I think about turning back. Antonio never gave me his phone number. Maybe he didn’t mean it when he said he wanted to see me again …
“Hey, Max’s sister! Like your bike.”
Antonio rides downhill toward me on the trail next to the creek. Even with his helmet on, I recognize the solid jaw, the skin almost as dark as mine. I squeeze my brakes and glide to a stop on the bridge.
He stops at the edge of the creek just before the bridge, lifts his leg over the bar, and slides to the ground. His face glistens with sweat. Today he wears a long-sleeved shirt, but with the sleeves rolled up to the middle of his forearms.
“I fixed it up,” I say.
He strips off his gloves and runs his finger along the top bar, stopping at the bumps where I sanded and repainted the frame. “Nice job. What did you use for paint?”
“Nail polish. Looked it up on the Internet.”
“I guess you can get away with buying that stuff easier than I can,” he says.
I swallow the tightness in my throat. “Where were you yesterday?”
“You stopped by?”
“Yeah.” I say nothing about Chad.
“I had a race down in Mystic.”
I examine Antonio’s bike up close. Its metallic red paint is nicked and dulled, but the bike is way fancier than Chad’s, with shock absorbers underneath the seat as well as on the front fork. The wheel rims are black rather than chrome. It’s the kind of bike someone would use for racing. “How did you do?”
“Not so good. Fourth. I was in the lead until my asthma kicked up.” He clears his throat. “I’m taking it easy today. Still hurtin’.”
I wish I could touch him, help him feel better, but I keep my hands on my bike. I’m not Rogue, I tell myself. I won’t suck out his emotions if I touch him.
I step backward, stumble over a root, and plant my foot in the creek. Cold water rushes over the top of my canvas high-tops. Antonio grabs my upper arm to steady me. I stiffen.
“You okay?” He lets go.
I pull my foot onto the bank. Water streams toward the creek, back where it belongs. I shift my weight, hear the squish, feel the icky cold dampness.
“I’m fine,” I mumble. “It makes me nervous, people touching me.”
“That’s like this kid in my calculus class. He sits in a corner because he doesn’t want anyone near him, but he’s pure genius. He says he has some form of autism.”
I smile. Antonio understands. Like Mrs. Mac. “Asperger’s
syndrome,” I tell him. “It comes from a genetic mutation. My father had cancer before I was born, and I think …”
Antonio holds his hand out, palm up, as if telling me to stop.
“Max must have told you,” I say.
“No. He never said anything.” Antonio bites his lower lip, and I wonder how good a friend Max was if Antonio didn’t know a basic fact about our family. “My father had cancer too,” he says softly. “But he … didn’t … make it.”
“He died?”
Antonio nods.
“Is that why you have the Livestrong tattoo?” Today the shirt covers it up, but I know it’s there, and it’ll be there forever.
“Yeah.”
“Even though Lance Armstrong didn’t die either?”
Antonio grimaces, and I realize I said the wrong thing. But he doesn’t call me stupid or retard or freak, like most kids would. Instead, he reaches into a cargo pocket, pulls out his wallet, and slides a photo from behind what looks like his driver’s license. I notice UNDER 21 in big red letters on the license.
He hands me the photo. The way Mr. Elliott and Dad traded photos with each other this morning. “My father.”
The man has deep-set eyes, a narrow face, and straight, dark hair. Antonio’s hair is lighter and wavy, and his face fuller. I think this man in the picture already looks sick, with sunken cheeks and thin lips.
“I’m sorry,” I mumble. I know it’s what I’m supposed to say when I hear that someone has died, even though it isn’t my fault that he died.
I give the photo back to Antonio. He slides it into his wallet.
Antonio and I never get to the BMX track that day. Instead, he shows me the entire route of trails, though many of them are too hard for me to ride and I have to walk my bike across them or go around them. Standing on the opposite bank, I record him riding the narrow single track that he tells me Ice Age glaciers carved into the rock above the creek. At one point he drops six feet from a rock to a root-rutted dirt path and crosses the creek atop a fallen tree trunk.
“How do you do that?” I ask him while I play back my recording. He stands beside me and peers over my shoulder at the tiny image of his daredevil ride.
“It’s all balance. Speed. How you use gravity.” He strips off his gloves and holds them in one hand. I turn to face him.
“But the tree? It’s not flat on top. Did you ever fall off one and end up in the water?”
Antonio nods. “Lots of times. You can’t slow down. If you get scared and slow down …” He makes a chopping motion with his free hand. Like sliding into the water.
“Ouch,” I say.
“Yeah.” He points to a scar that starts at the bottom of his cargo shorts and runs about six inches down his calf. “Got that one in a race a year ago. Thirty-five stitches. Still finished the race, though.”
I play the video again, looking for any wobble on the tree, anyplace Antonio slowed down. I don’t find any.
From behind me comes Antonio’s voice. “My dad taught me everything about riding.” He pauses. “My bike … it used to be his.”
I squeeze the battered red bike’s front tire, rock-hard and slick from riding through mud. “I can put music with the videos,” I say, because I already told him I was sorry about his father. “Anything you like?”
“You heard of Rage Against the Machine? They’re my favorite band.”
“Max likes them too.” Even though they’re totally different from our family’s band.
“I know,” Antonio says.
I stare at his hands, at the rope bracelet on his left wrist and the gloves in his right hand. I don’t want to be afraid of touching him. He’s Max’s friend, which almost makes him my big brother too.
I hold my hand out toward Antonio and close my eyes. My fingers close over the stiff, scratchy bracelet. I let my hand slip down until it reaches his calloused palm. He squeezes. A current runs through me. Wolverine’s special powers? I open my eyes.
Antonio is smiling.
CHAPTER 16
INSTEAD OF FINISHING MY HOMEWORK FOR MS. LATIMER, I make the video of Antonio’s ride. The music is as chaotic as a tangle of roots, as angry as knobby tires tearing up packed dirt. I pound my fist on my desk in time to the beat. I can’t concentrate on anything except the images of Wolverine, Antonio, his red bike that once belonged to his father, the twisting trails, and Rage Against the Machine.
That’s what music does for me. It shows me the emotion that Mr. Internet says we Asperger’s mutants have trouble understanding. When I hear the songs, I get that Antonio beats up his bike and his body on the trail because he’s angry at what happened to his father. I also understand that he misses his father the way I miss Mami, but while Mami can come back anytime she wants, his father will never come back.
I call the video “Riding the Rock” and sign up for a new name on YouTube because I can’t use Corazondeleste when the band doesn’t exist. “Rogue” comes to me right away, but someone else already took it, so I have to add numbers. I pick 266, the numbers on the license plate of Dad’s pickup. When I turn sixteen, I’ll get to drive it.
In the morning I upload the video and wait for the views. Ten in the first hour. Nearly 100 when Ms. Latimer shows up. After she leaves, 259. An hour later when I’m packing the video camera to ride to College Park, 318.
As I ride, I recite the numbers in my head. They make me feel powerful. Instead of bad things happening to me—Mami leaving, my brother Eli saying I shouldn’t have been born, Mr. Mac dying and Mrs. Mac moving away, New Kids dumping me, Chad using me for his parents’ meth cooking—I’m the one in charge. I have some kind of special power, even if I don’t know exactly what it is yet.
I find Antonio and three other boys in the field next to the BMX pit, digging holes in the grass with a shovel. Antonio lets his shovel drop and trots over to me. When I dismount, my legs get tangled in the bike. Antonio steadies me by holding my elbow, but I stiffen and fall anyway.
I untangle my foot and brush myself off, hoping none of the other boys noticed my clumsy entrance. “Guys, this is Max’s little sister. Kiara,” Antonio calls out.
“No way.” I recognize the kid with the sideburns from my trip with Chad on Saturday. “You’re, like, big.”
Antonio introduces them to me. The one with the sideburns, who had the video camera, is called Veg. Then there’s Kevin, nicknamed Cap’n Crunch—he’s tall and blond, and I also saw him on Saturday. The one I never saw before is Brian, known as Dunk. He wears a helmet even though he’s not riding but digging. I repeat their names and nicknames in my mind, but I know I won’t remember them. I never do.
“She’s going to help record our stunts.” Antonio turns to me. “Unless you want to ride, that is.”
“Nah.” I’d probably fall on the first mound and hurt myself. Lowering my voice so only Antonio can hear me, I add, “I’ll stay behind the scenes. Invisible.” The way I’m used to being. The way I was when I came here with Chad.
“Like water.”
“Like water?” I shake my head, confused.
“Yeah. Water goes where it wants to go. Breaks through everything in its way.” I peek above the screen at Antonio. The other boys talk about their bikes, their tricks, impressing the girls from College Park High School who they say show up to watch them sometimes. Antonio says unexpected things, as if beneath the mountain biker surface—the helmet, the tattoo, the talk about “sick trails”—a different person lives. A moody Wolverine with a tragic past.
I stand next to Antonio while he works. He tells me they’re clearing a single-track trail next to the BMX track and building a ladder bridge with logs from the tree that fell down two weeks ago, the one he was cutting with the chain saw when Chad and I met him. My face flushes when I think of him catching us with those four nasty bottles.
“I uploaded the video of you this morning,” I tell him, to chase that first meeting from my mind.
“I’ll have to check it out. How many hits so far?”
>
“Three hundred eighteen. I checked before I left.”
A grin breaks out across Antonio’s face. “That’s way better than Veg’s average. And it’s only been what … five hours?”
“Six.”
“He doesn’t hold the camera still. That’s why he doesn’t get any hits.” Antonio pushes his hand through his hair. “Your school lets you put videos on YouTube?”
I swallow, choke. “I was … kicked out of school.”
“What?”
I tell him about Melanie Prince-Parker and the lunch tray. Not even Max knows about this, but I tell Antonio as if he’s the only person in the world who’d understand. Who might even be proud of me for standing up to the mean girls. My throat and chest relax as I speak. My words trip over each other.
“That’s heavy duty,” he says when I finish. He steps backward, and the tight band snaps around my lungs again. Maybe he wasn’t so impressed after all. “Now I see why you thought you’d end up in juvie.”
“Yeah.” I stare at the churned-up dirt and grass. “I guess you think I’m pretty weird.”
If he were Wolverine and I were Rogue, he’d invite me to join the X-Men now. He’d lure me away from Mystique’s Brotherhood of Evil Mutants by showing me how to use my special powers to help the world instead of destroying things and avenging those who mistreated me.
When Chad tutored me, he told me not to talk about the X-Men, so I press my lips together and wait for Antonio to say something.
He doesn’t get the chance.
A scream from the top of the hill is followed by a whooshing sound. I spin around to see Chad riding down the hill at full speed toward the BMX track. But this time his wheel skims a rock, he wobbles slightly, and when he hits the mound, he goes airborne at an angle. After a single 360 he lands on his front tire near the bottom of the mound and flies headfirst over the handlebars. The bike skids in one direction, Chad on his stomach on the other.
“Oof!” Veg calls out.
Antonio glares at me. “I told that little dirtbag not to come here.”
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