It doesn’t.
I end up on top of Cole, with the bike on top of me. When I shove it off of us, I realize Cole’s arm took the force of the back gears and wheel.
His left arm.
The one he throws with.
And it’s worse than that. Cole’s eyes are shut, and I wonder what part of the bike cracked him in the head when we fell.
I put my hands on the sides of his face and say his name, over and over, my words wobbling and panicked but still loud in my leftover Cereza-Shakespeare-recitation voice.
“Cole,” I call his name again.
He opens his eyes, which look clouded over, the pupils wide even with the sun behind me.
“Cole.” Now the word sounds strangled. Nothing like how Cereza is teaching me to talk. “Say something.”
He gives me a weak smile. “You’re so sparkly.” His voice is dry and soft, like he’s been asleep all day.
My throat tightens. “What?”
His eyes clear a little. “You’re all stardust.”
I look around to see if anyone heard that, those few words that could make everyone look at me twice. Not like I’m a beauty queen.
Like I’m something to be explained.
“This man is severely concussed,” I project, exactly like Cereza taught me, like there’s a whole audience who needs to hear. “He’s making no sense at all. He needs immediate medical attention.”
I look across the field to the cornhole team, waiting for them to do something, to show up and be at Cereza’s command so she won’t be the only one trying to help Cole.
And some of them are running across the field or running for help.
But Royce just stands where he is, grinning at me, like this is how he always saw it going the whole time, all the way back to elementary school.
Chicky
HERE LIES CHICKY Quintanilla. Worst pageant campaign manager in history.
I can almost see the tombstone between where I’m still frozen and where everyone has rushed to help Lita and Cole. I don’t actually move until I see Royce and Kendra approaching, and then it’s pure rage at the controls.
I’m storming across the field before I can think better of it, nothing in my head but incoherent rage-sounds that will hopefully form themselves into words by the time I reach him.
Except they don’t.
Kendra is already at work by the time I reach them, unloading on Lita as she stares tremulously at Cole. “What is wrong with you?” Kendra asks in a deadly voice. “Being an utter failure wasn’t enough? You have to drag everyone else down with you? Look at my brother! How is he supposed to play cornhole? How—”
“Lay off!” I shout, storming up to them without a single thought for self-preservation. “It’s his fault this happened, not Lita’s!”
Royce steps between Kendra and I, six feet, four inches of pissed-off jock.
“What did you say, dyke?”
Really? I imagine saying, my voice calm and level and devastating. Your teammate is down because of your stupidity, and your first order of business is to get a homophobic insult in. What team spirit, Bradley. What fucking solidarity.
The words are there, but my mouth won’t move, because his word, his one little word, is big enough to swallow them all.
Dyke.
“I asked you a question, you little psycho. What did you say?”
All I can say is “Nothing” in a pathetic voice that doesn’t even sound like mine.
“That’s what I thought,” he says, and he looks so tall, so impossibly square-jawed, and his teeth are white and straight, and even his little, mean, beady eyes are terrifying somehow, and I feel like a slug at his feet because he has all the power.
And then Kendra steps up beside him, furious and shining like a golden statue, beautiful and terrible and cruel, and I wonder how I ever thought I could destroy them. How could I even make a dent? Even before this horrible disaster it was a stupid, childish plan.
“Chicky!” Fresa is coming toward me, eyes narrowed at my tormenters as Cereza kneels beside Cole, and I can tell she wants to tell Royce and Kendra off, protect me like the pathetic little sister I am, but if she gets too close she might find out what they have on me. Ring Pop and Allison and everything that came after, and I just can’t.
Not in front of Fresa.
Not now.
“Forget it,” I say, walking past her, deactivating her seek-and-destroy eyes. “It’s nothing.”
“Chicky, I need some help over here,” Reza is saying from behind me. But look at me. I’m nothing. How can I help anyone?
I glance once more at Lita, who looks shaken but not hurt. Cole is beneath her, clutching his arm while she shouts his name again and again.
“Chicky! Now!” But she’s all focused fire and I’m water vapor, scattering into the air. I can’t do it. I can’t face them. Not like this.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper to my sister, but maybe it’s really to Lita, for being too much of a coward to help her. Or to stay and be her friend.
I’m backing away before Cereza realizes what I’m doing. “Don’t,” she says. “They need you.” But she’s wrong. No one needs me.
“I’m sorry,” I say again, a little louder, and then I walk away. Not just to the sidelines to wait, or to be there for Lita. Not just to the park where we used to trace planetary orbits, or where Lita made us light a candle for poor Pluto in its time of need.
I keep walking until walking is running. Until the sounds of the crowd and Cole’s moans of pain and Lita’s panicked shouting have faded, and it’s just me and the beating sun in the streets.
I’m already almost back downtown when it hits me:
Lita Perez, the Cinderella story of the Fiftieth Miss Meteor Pageant has just done the unthinkable. The unforgiveable. She injured the throwing arm of the cornhole team’s second-best player less than a week before the match of the half-century.
Even if we give up, it won’t be enough for the town we needed to love us.
Forget loving us, I think. They’re going to hate us.
Forget hating us. They’re going to destroy us.
Lita
IN A VOICE that sounds half-asleep, Cole insists he’s fine, he’s absolutely fine, that it’s nothing some ice and Advil won’t fix.
Cereza wants to take him to the hospital. But I can think of a hundred reasons we’re not doing that unless Cole says we can.
We compromise. Cereza puts Cole’s arm in a makeshift sling with the wand’s stick and the cloth from the ribbon, and we take him to Bruja Lupe. Not through the front door with the dimmer lighting and the globes of polished gemstone, but the back way, into our apartment.
Cole looks both in pain and nervous all the way there. Bruja Lupe can feel it on him. She puts her hand under his chin and makes him look at her.
“No te preocupes,” she says. “I’m not gonna give you the tourist treatment. You’re one of our own, and we take care of our own.”
His expression clears, just for that second, and I think maybe he understands.
“It’s not a break,” Bruja Lupe says once she gets to checking him. “At least I don’t think so. What do you think?” she asks Cereza.