“You promised, Savannah!” Andreas winked at Emery as she joined us. “The sport of gymnastics will never be the same.”
Marcos sent me a text before he went into work. You were amazing out there. I’ve never seen you so happy.
We need to talk. I know this.
I also know this: he believes in me. Not once has he suggested that I back down and put the Beast and my dreams out to pasture the way I was ready to.
Cassie texted me, too. So sorry I couldn’t make it today. Let me know how you do!
Burritos? I replied, because that seems like the easiest icebreaker.
Now I’m crossing the late-afternoon shadows on Main Street, waiting for Cassie. My wet hair swings across my eyes, and I ignore the wind. I like this chill. It keeps the lightness buoyant.
Nothing happens in Ponquogue on a Sunday afternoon. Middle school boys on bicycles loiter outside of Anthony’s Pizza. A cheer spills out from Sitting Duck–touchdown for the Jets.
A hand lifts in the window of Tastes by Tabitha. Cassie. Her eyes squint against the sun as she walks out to meet me. Her beaded necklace takes flight and then settles onto her chest.
“You’re going to get sick with that wet hair,” she greets me.
“Now you’re the responsible one?”
She pushes my hair out of my face. “You should let me dye it. I think you’d look great with copper highlights. How’d the meet go?”
“I did the all-around and qualified for States,” I say proudly as we approach Pav’s. The chili pepper lights wink under the façade, and my stomach grumbles in anticipation of the spicy deliciousness.
“Wow.” For the first time in a long while, her voice perks up at something gymnastics-related. “Do you think you’ll make it to Regionals?”
“What the fuck!” a voice calls from behind Pav’s.
In the middle of putting her arm around me, Cassie freezes. The little boys on bicycles look at us then look at each other, not daring to move.
The voice continues, “Look, I don’t know what you want.”
I know that voice. I tug Cassie’s hand.
“I don’t–shit!”
Bones slam against bones, so much louder than the hallway scuffle. There’s a scream and a guy in a black sweatshirt and jeans sprints up the alley, his sneakers slapping against the pavement. He passes so close I can hear his urgent breath. Our eyes meet. Crystalline blue eyes. Then he bolts the other way, a limp in his run. Blood on his back.
“What the hell?” says Cassie. I can hardly hear her over the pounding of my heart. It can’t be Marcos, it can’t–
We round the corner to find a facedown, unmoving boy in a lime-green Pav’s Place shirt, and I almost throw up.
Cassie starts crying, fast and sudden as a downpour, a hand on my shoulder to brace herself.
“What?” I say. Annoyed at her. Dizzy. I can’t stop looking at the blood and concrete. Can’t stop thinking out of control thoughts, like what if somebody walks by and implicates us in this?
She looks at me and that look slices straight through the thoughts. “Savannah, it’s Marcos.”
A punch to the chest. I knew the voice, but confirmed by Cassie, it’s so much worse. That God-awful shirt. Pav’s Place, where the fiesta never ends! on lime-green, a seductive woman holding a tray with a single beer.
The back door of Pav’s swings open. Two guys and Juliana rush out. “We heard screaming–” Juliana halts. “Crap, crap, crap.” Her face pales, her hands shake, and she kneels on the concrete. “We gotta roll him over.”
“What if he has a neck injury?” I join her, my head woozy.
“What if he can’t breathe?” she retorts. So together we gingerly roll him over, probably breaking every rule of basic first aid.
As soon as he’s on his back, I swallow back the nausea. The gash in his forehead leaks blood down his cheeks. I hastily yank off the brand-new sweatshirt I bought after the meet and wrap it around his forehead to staunch the flow.
He groans. I feel a flutter of relief–he’s breathing. Who knows what kind of damage has been done to his head? And the way his arm twists…I’ve seen enough gymnasts trip off the low bar, fall to the mat, and start screaming to know what a dislocation looks like.
One of the guys swears. He drops his phone twice before calling 911.
We sit in silence, waiting for the ambulance. I can’t form words. I can’t think. I just grab the moist hand of the boy who’s still breathing but not moving. Juliana keeps blinking rapidly. Cassie sits between us, face ashen. “Where’s the ambulance?” I say. “Where are the police? What about whoever did this?” My voice reaches a panicked pitch.
“Chill, Savs, we’re doing all we can.” Cassie’s voice wobbles. I wait for I told you so, but it doesn’t come.
Blood dribbles from under the sweatshirt onto the concrete. I don’t care who provoked whom or if his hero complex got the best of him. He doesn’t deserve this.
An eternity later, red and blue lights spill over the pavement. Juliana strides over to the police officers. The EMTs check Marcos’s heart rate and blood pressure as I strain to hear what she’s saying. “All I know is he went to take out the trash and then we heard screaming.”
“Do you think he knows who was involved?” one officer asks.
“If someone was waiting for him, I wouldn’t be surprised.” She glances toward me. “It’s not the first time people have stirred up shit here.”
“That’s for sure,” Cassie mutters.
Marcos groans again. I squeeze his hand and for a moment, his grip tightens.
Eventually the police have collected their answers–I keep describing the guy I saw although they ask me only once, and the officer keeps saying, “I understand, miss.” Marcos’s arm has been braced, and I’m forced to pull away when he’s hoisted onto the stretcher, stumbling against Cass as we watch him get lifted into the ambulance. The door shuts. I squeeze my eyes shut against the beating lights, and we stand there as the siren reverberates down Main Street and slowly fades.
“What do we do now?” My throat is dry and my heart aches.
“You have Victor’s number?” Juliana says. I shake my head. “I’ll tell him to go to the hospital.”
“What about you?”
Her lips press together. She nods to her coworkers, who linger by the door. “We gotta go back inside and do damage control.”
“And the police are going after that guy,” I say.
Juliana’s ponytail shakes. “He’s probably long gone.”
Those words puncture the numbness. Long gone. Getting away with this.
I look at Cassie, but she stares at the pavement. “They’re letting him go?”
Juliana rolls her eyes. It lacks her usual verve. “I mean, that’s not what they said, but obviously the guy got a head start. I didn’t get the impression that there was gonna be a manhunt, did you?”
“You’re telling me this is it, then.” Anger kicks up with each word. That someone won’t be held responsible for this–it’s unthinkable. Apparently it’s all right for blood to seep into the concrete without repercussions, without ensuring that it never happens again.
“Yes, Savs, she is,” Cass says. “We’ll get my car and go to the hospital, okay?”
I can’t sit in a hospital waiting room. I can’t linger, floating down, resigning myself to whatever happens next.
I rise to my feet. There’s no ache in them from the meet. “Not yet.”
Cassie looks at me sharply. I grab her elbow more roughly than I need to. “Let’s go.”
She yanks it back. She’s never failed to read me, and this is no exception. “You think that guy’s hanging around waiting for us to say hi?”
“He’s getting farther away the longer we sit here.”
“Are you serious?” Juliana nearly shouts. “He’s dangerous.”
“What’s going to stop this asshole from hurting us?” Cassie adds.
The fact that she’s making sense hardly regi
sters. For once she’s the logical one and I’m the one trying to make the bad idea sound feasible–and we’re running out of time.
Physically, I can’t do anything else for Marcos. But I can make this right, and I’m not going to let them stop me. “You can stay here, or you can come with me.”
We stare at each other. As kids, Cass was the staring contest queen, outlasting me when my eyes watered or she made a silly face to make me laugh. My legs are tingling, ready to run, but I can’t do this alone. I need fearless Cass at my side.
She blinks first. Long and slow, like she’ll open her eyes and I’ll have changed my mind. When she sees me still staring at her, the worry in her eyes hardens.
I take that as a yes.
After a moment, her footsteps echo behind mine.
“Where the hell are you going?” Juliana calls after us. “Cassie!”
You’re an idiot, I think as we cross Main Street, cars honking.
That guy is going to hurt you, I think as we follow drops of blood leading into the dirt motocross trail in the woods by the high school.
My legs never tire and Cassie doesn’t flag beside me. Leaves crunch under our feet, branches fly up, a deer scuttles out of the way. We follow the dirt motocross trail.
Hurry up, hurry up.
“There’s no way we’re going to find him,” Cassie says, panting. “Just let me take you to the hospital.”
I’m not stopping. If I do, that means it’s okay that this happened. I’ve done enough sitting back in the last few months.
The trail winds over roots–I trip and Cassie catches me, keeping me from hitting the ground– and the longer we run, the more I start to wonder if she’s right. If this is stupid and useless, if I’m better off staring at the ceiling in the waiting room–
At the exact same time, we halt.
There he is. With his back to us, hands on his knees, gasping so loudly he must not have heard the branches snap under our feet.
Cassie’s hand clamps my shoulder. “I’m not doing this,” she hisses.
“C’mon.”
“I’m not.”
“You can’t leave me out here alone.” Now that we’re here, I have no idea what the hell I’m going to say or do, but I know that I’m not turning back.
“This wasn’t my idea.”
I search Cassie’s face for a breaking point. She’s the girl with an opinion about what to do, the girl who’s the first to make the dare and the first to take the dangerous leap. I look for sympathy, however reluctant. “I’d do it for you, Cass,” I hiss.
I see fear.
Cassie is never afraid.
I can’t turn back now. The decision has been made.
I walk forward on shaking legs, my heart sprinting past my feet. Cassie tries to snatch me back. I keep moving. “Excuse me.”
Blue eyes. He straightens, confused.
“What the hell happened back there?” I say.
He looks up to the trees and stumbles back a step. The fading afternoon sun through the trees hits a shock of red hair. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He’s monotone, trying to be uninterested, but his eyes dart almost as quickly as my heart.
“Let’s go, Savannah.” Cassie’s voice quakes.
“What’d he do to you?” I say. “Did he look at you the wrong way? I bet he’s cleaned your table at Pav’s. Wiped your spit and threw out your crap. Did you leave him a tip?”
“What, is he your boyfriend or something? Sent you to fight for him?” There’s a laugh, and then another guy, grass stains across his jeans, steps onto the path. Cassie grabs my wrist. We both know without speaking that this one is no amateur. His arms are thick as tree trunks.
The words keep spilling out. “He’s unconscious,” I say, and with heart pounding, “and he’s not breathing.”
That catches both of them.
“Maybe he needs a little mouth–to-mouth,” the first guy says, laughing, but the other guy doesn’t crack a smile.
“You think it’s hilarious that you almost killed someone?”
“Savannah, shut up,” Cassie mutters. “He’s not dead.”
“What’s Goldilocks saying?” says the one with the blue eyes.
“Cut the bullshit,” the other says. “There are some things you don’t understand, little girl.”
In the next instant, my toes scrape the dirt and an arm as firm as a deadbolt wraps around my stomach. The second guy’s arms, powerful as falling boulders, nearly knock the wind out of me.
I kick his shins. My fists lash out for his face, but he dodges. He laughs. The laugh of older brothers who hold the basketball above your head, higher and higher, the more you swipe at it. They never drop it; they never let go.
“Thing is,” his voice says from somewhere behind me, “it’d be better if you didn’t see us. Am I right?”
“What are you doing?” says Cassie, thin and quaking.
“CASSIE, GET–” The second guy’s thick hand swallows the last word. I thrash my head. His hand tight, untrembling, presses my lips against my teeth.
“Jesus, this girl’s out of control,” he says.
“You can stay here with your friend and we’ll make sure you’ll regret it,” the one with blue eyes tells Cassie. “Or you can get the hell out of here, and pretend you never saw us. Nice girls from Ponquogue don’t call the police if they want to stay out of trouble.”
She looks at me. I thrash harder, the way I would to kick out of a riptide. My eyes plead with hers.
Then she turns away and runs.
“Real friend you got there,” the Boulder says behind me, his words muffled by my hair.
She’s getting help. She has to be. Running for the police station or back to Marcos or to someone, anyone who can get me out of this–
Blue Eyes leans close to me. I see the freckles across his cheeks and nose. When Marcos said there were guys causing problems at Pav’s, I pictured older thugs. This kid has to be my age, maybe younger. He could be from Galway Beach or from Ponquogue and I never noticed. He could be Tommy Brown, Always Late Nick, any kid who walks the hallway like he’s friends with everyone. His breath is too fast. He’s nervous. I scare him. Maybe I can make him more afraid of me than I am of him.
“You’re all alone out here with the two of us,” he says.
I shake my head.
“She’s not coming back.”
A more ferocious shake. Of course Cass is coming back, and if she’s not, she’s sending someone else who will. She’ll run to Juliana. Juliana will know what to do.
He nods to the Boulder. “Let’s go.”
I swing my feet for the back of the Boulder’s knees. He dances back. I swing harder and his right leg buckles for a moment. “Help me out with this bitch, will you?” he grunts.
I have to get out of here. I have to get back to Marcos–
Blue Eyes reaches for my legs, but I kick his chest and he stumbles back. He comes back and I kick again. This time he dodges my feet.
I’m fading. I can feel it. Not my will, nor my anger, but there are two of them and one of me and I know they will carry me off, no matter how hard I fight.
So I kick harder. He grabs my shoe and my foot wrestles its way out. I wriggle violently from side to side, hoping the Boulder will lose his grip. I’m slipping, I can feel it, my head down lower on his chest, and if he tries to readjust, I’ll break out. Then what? Run like hell, that’s what, with one shoe.
“Let’s go,” Blue Eyes says. “Hurry up, you idiot, we have to get out of here–”
“That’s enough, gentlemen,” says an unmistakable voice. “Put her down.”
He stands next to his bicycle, one hand holding it steady. Helmet and jersey. Skinny legs beneath tight Spandex shorts. Dirt spattering his wheels and legs.
“Who is this clown?” says the Boulder in my ear.
Blue Eyes swaggers a bit. “Yeah? What are you gonna do?”
My father does not move. “I will kill you. Do I need to
be more explicit?”
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
“DID CASSIE FIND you?” Those are the first words I speak to my father. Not thank him, not reflect on what just happened.
His brows crease. “She was out here, too? Did they scuffle with her?”
I tug out my phone, drop it in the dirt, pick it up again, hit her name on speed dial. The ringing I’ve come to know too well. My entire body vibrates, yet there’s a weird calmness within me, the eye of the hurricane. “Hey, mates…” her voicemail begins.
“Cass, it’s me. My dad’s here. I’m okay. You must have just missed him,” I say more confidently, creating stories that I want to believe. “Um, yeah, call me?”
As we emerge from the woods, I’m met with the first bit of luck all afternoon: a series of texts.
At hospital w/ Victor wtf is life!!
Vic says Marc is conscious and talking. Going in for a CAT scan. Doc says prob a concussion.
Btw this is Dre.
I almost drop my phone with relief. Thank God for Andreas. Thank God that Marcos is okay. I pull it together enough to request frequent updates and then to text Marcos. Call me when you can.
“You don’t think they followed her, do you?” I ask Dad when we reach the police station. He shakes his head but says nothing. There’s a special kind of hell for this silence.
I call her again when we’re out in the parking lot, after I repeated the story over and over until I started to think that the Boulder’s eyes were red instead of blue. The officers gave me hot chocolate and handed me a scuzzy blanket that I gratefully wrapped around my shoulders. I couldn’t stop shaking.
No updates on Marcos from Andreas. “Can we go to the hospital?”
Dad looks exhausted. Older. No hint of the Smirk, of you’re not mature enough. “What did they do to you?”
“I’m okay,” I say quickly. “I want to see how Marcos is.”
“Let’s get you home first,” he says, “unless you want to ride on a bike all the way there.”
“What about Cassie’s house?” My words are still too fast, too high-pitched, and Dad agrees.
Three miles is a long way to ride on bicycle handles. By the time Dad turns right at the stop sign for Cassie’s road, I jump off and start running.
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