Chapter 6

The rain didn't stop. It just kept falling, steady and cold, as if the sky had decided I deserved it.

I walked the whole way back from the cemetery. My dress and sweater were caked in mud, and my fingernails were black with dirt from my mother's grave. People crossed the street to avoid me. I didn't blame them.

When I reached Mateo's floor, the apartment door was already open.

Sofi stood in the doorway in a Westbrook jersey three sizes too big, her brother's number eleven hanging past her knees. She took one look at me, and her eyes went wide.

"Lena! Where were you?"

"Sofi, why are you alone?"

"Mrs. Ortiz from next door was watching me, but she fell asleep on our couch." She grabbed my muddy wrist without flinching. "Mateo already left for the semifinal. He read your note and left two tickets on the counter. He said you'd come back."

Something in my chest cracked open quietly.

Then she held up a faded red wristband, frayed at the edges.

"He forgot it," she said, her voice wobbling. "He never plays without it. Never. Our mom gave it to him."

"Sofi, I can't. Look at me."

"Please." She tugged harder. "He can't play without it. And there's a rumor someone famous is coming! Coach said the scout's bringing a guest."

I looked down at the wristband in her small hand.

I had lost my mother twice, my father in one sentence, and my art to a knife in the dark. Everyone I'd ever loved had been taken from me, or had chosen to leave.

Mateo was the one thing nobody had taken yet.

I left a note for Mrs. Ortiz, grabbed the tickets, and took Sofi's hand.

"Okay," I said. "Let's go."

The semifinal was at the city stadium downtown, miles from the campus I was banned from. It was chaos.

Floodlights turned the rain into silver needles. Thousands of fans crushed against the gates, chanting, singing, and waving scarves soaked dark with water. Sofi held onto my hand so tightly my fingers went numb.

Near the VIP entrance, the crowd suddenly surged.

A convoy of black cars rolled up to the curb. The first door opened, and a silver-haired man in a navy coat stepped out. Sofi gasped.

"That's the scout from Spain," she breathed. "Mateo showed me his picture."

Then the second door opened.

A man climbed out, small, bearded, and unmistakable, and the stadium lost its mind.

Lionel Messi.

The roar hit like a wave. Security lines buckled. Phones shot into the air, and grown men burst into tears behind the barricades.

Sofi screamed, jumping up and down. "I told you! I told you!"

Across the barricade, past the security guards, I saw him.

Mateo stood by the players' lot in his tracksuit, his kit bag on his shoulder. He'd stopped dead twenty feet from his idol, the man from the poster above his television.

Then he laughed.

It was a stunned, boyish laugh, as if he couldn't believe the world had given him something good for once. It was the first real joy I'd ever seen on his face.

My heart squeezed so hard it hurt.

He shook his head, still grinning, pushed his headphones into his ears, and turned down the wet service road toward the tunnel. He favored his right knee, just slightly. No one else would have noticed. I did.

"Mateo!" Sofi shouted, but the crowd swallowed her voice.

I pulled her along the barricade, searching for a gap.

That was when I saw them.

Caleb and Brielle were near the VIP rope, shoving past an older couple to get closer. Brielle had her phone raised, angling for a photo, and Caleb was barking at a security guard as if the stadium belonged to him. His own team was already out of the Cup. He'd come anyway, just to be seen.

Brielle's eyes found mine.

She looked me up and down, at my mud-streaked dress, my soaked hair, and the grave dirt under my nails. Her glossy lips curved.

Pathetic, she mouthed.

I waited for it to hurt, but it didn't.

I turned away. She could have the rope, the photo, and the crowd. None of it mattered anymore.

Behind me, the security guards hurried Messi back into his car. The convoy pulled away from the curb, swinging around toward the players' entrance at the end of the service road.

I found a break in the barricade where a guard had stepped away. "Stay here," I told Sofi, pressing her against a pillar. "Don't move."

I slipped through and onto the service road.

Mateo was halfway to the tunnel, his head down, nodding to whatever was playing in his ears.

Then I heard an engine.

It came from the side lot, a white van with no headlights, tearing out onto the road after Messi's convoy. Through the windshield, I saw the driver hunched over a camera, his lens pointed at the black cars instead of the road.

He hit the curve too fast.

The tires lost the asphalt. The van slid sideways on the wet road, hydroplaning in a long, screaming skid.

It was heading straight for Mateo's blind side.

I ran.

"Mateo—"