Rogue (8 page)

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.”

“I didn't bring him.” I feel the burn of Antonio's eyes. “Well, I did, but . . .”
But he wanted to hang out with your friends and they didn't talk to me, so I went home.
I try to tell him that, but the words don't come out. And Chad lies on the ground, motionless.

I run to Chad, stumble in the sand, dust myself off. Lying facedown, he gasps for breath.

“I . . . can't . . . move,” he says.

I stop a few feet away, afraid to come closer.

Please be all right. Please be all right.

Chad pops to his hands and knees, T-shirted back heaving. I notice Antonio and the guy with the helmet standing next to him. “Wind . . . knocked . . . out . . . of me.” Chad flops onto his stomach again.

I take a deep breath. “That's all? Like a plopped-on whoopee cushion.”

He coughs. “Not . . . funny.”

“You know what's not funny?” says a deep voice behind me. “Me missing this shot.”

I turn around to see Veg's face over my shoulder. “Sorry. Missed the shot too,” I say, tugging the strap of my backpack, feeling the weight of my camcorder inside. “At least he's okay.”

“We could have had a thousand hits,” Veg says. He holds up his camera. “What would we call it?”

“Raggedy Chad,” I answer. He looked like a scrawny rag doll when he skidded belly-down in the dirt. Everyone laughs but Antonio.

Chad climbs to his feet, swaying a little. “That was sick! I wanna go again!” he says.

Antonio grabs his arm. “Kid, what did I tell you about not coming here?”

“Don't hurt him.” My words come out as a squeak.

Chad shouts past me, spit flying, “I don't have anything.”

“Dude, he's cool. You should see him ride,” Kevin says.

And I could record Chad. Make videos with different kinds of music for the sound track. Get thousands of hits for rogue266. I wouldn't have just one friend or two friends, but all the kids at the BMX track as my friends—like finally getting to sit at the popular girls' table. My lip trembles. “Come on, Antonio. Let him stay,” I say, my voice so weak that I'm not sure Antonio hears me.

Before I can open my mouth to say it again, Antonio bends down to Chad's level and peers into his face. “Get a helmet,” he says. “We can't have any injuries here, or we'll be in a pile of trouble.”

I wave my hand. “You can use mine. I cleaned it.”

The kid with the helmet, whose name I forgot, knocks the top of his. “I'll let you borrow this one. But I want her to record me first.”

“Cool.” Chad turns his gaze from the other kid to me. “Nothing against you, Kiara. But he has a real skater helmet with stickers.”

“Lemme see your camera.” Veg stands next to me. I hand him mine and he compares it to his, in his other hand. Mine is smaller, but it has more buttons. “You got a really nice one,” he says. “You can zoom in a lot closer and adjust for light.”

“I know,” I answer. “I used it to make videos of my family's band.”

“Great,” Veg says. “Now that you're here, I'm gonna ride.”

“Helmets, everybody, remember,” Antonio cuts in. Stepping closer to me, he adds, “Veg had a really bad concussion last year.”

“Which is how I got my name. My real name's Steve.”

A long whistle interrupts us. I cover my ears. Helmet kid takes his fingers from his mouth and shouts, “We're wasting daylight here, camerapeople.”

“Yeah. And I'm next after he's done.” Chad jumps up and down.

“Better get to work,” Antonio says. “These BMX guys like to fight over who gets camera time. Now that you're getting hits, it's going to be a lot worse.”

Veg hands back my camera, and I apologize to the kid who was waiting. When I press the button, he leans into the camera, says simply, “Brian Gerardi,” and rides off. My recording catches Chad's breathy voice describing the kid's perfect tailwhip.

Their arguments about whose turn it is make me think of that awful birthday party where the girls said I cut in line when I didn't. But somehow the boys work it all out. As I record them, I imagine them as my X-Men. With his wild hair and sideburns and sense of humor, Veg reminds me of Beast. Kevin, the tall, pale one, is Iceman. Brian, who doesn't talk much, is Colossus because Colossus doesn't talk much either.

All week long, I tell myself,
I have friends.
The bike trails are my popular girls' table, even though everyone there but me is a boy.

CHAPTER 17

A FEW NEW KIDS SHOW UP ON SATURDAY, AND EVEN THOUGH
they pay more attention to Chad, they talk to me too. They ask me things like,
Did you get that amazing stunt?
and
How many hits do you have?
and
Will you make a video of me?
I organize the line and make sure everyone gets a turn.

“What do I have now?” Antonio asks me.

I flip to the page in my notebook where I've kept count from Monday to this morning. “‘Riding the Rock'—one thousand, one hundred twenty-four.” I pause. “‘Crash Splash'”—Wednesday's wipeout caused by a homemade bridge with an unexpectedly missing board—“one thousand, five hundred thirty-six.”

Brian stands in front of me. I move my finger to his line. “‘Perfect Ten Tailwhip'—five-oh-five. Sorry.” He nods and steps back.

“Me! Me! Me!” Chad twirls in front of me.

I'm especially proud of “Gambit Double 360,” with his stunt in slow motion to Nirvana's “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” “You have one thousand, three hundred eleven hits. In just two days.”

Chad stops abruptly and blows his breath through pursed lips. “You mean I didn't beat him.” He points to Antonio.

“His went up a day ahead of yours. You might catch up,” I say.

But Veg calls out from behind Chad, “Nah. People like the wipeouts best.”

• • •

All the way home, Chad begs me to make a new video of him. So even though his father is an evil creep who I never want to see again, I go to the park on Sunday morning to record him and Dad playing bluegrass together. This time Brandon comes outside with his father, and I'm glad because I can pay attention to Brandon and not look at his dad. Or mine.

Except that my dad decides to start up a conversation. “You're even cuter than your picture,” he tells Brandon.

Brandon grins. Dad musses his hair.

Brandon puts both his hands on his hips. “My daddy says you were in a band.” I think he's more impressed about the band than Chad ever was.

“Sure was.” Dad starts to tell Brandon about Corazón del Este, but banjo music drowns him out, Mr. Elliott telling Dad without words to quit the chitchat and play. Brandon sits on the platform next to Dad and kicks his little feet in time to the music. I stare at those feet while I hold my microphone in front of the guitar and the banjo.

I use one of the tunes as the sound track of a new video I title “Hanging Chad.” In it Chad hangs weightless in the air for what seems like forever, his bike dangling from one hand.

At three in the afternoon I hit the upload button and wait for the views. I think it's my best video ever, even better than “Gambit Double 360” because the stunt is so graceful and the music captures Chad's hyper energy so perfectly. I have a hundred views in the first hour. Maybe this video will give Chad the most attention since he wants it so badly.

Mami calls at seven that night. After Dad talks with her, going upstairs to do it in private, he hands his cell phone to me. He's smiling, as if he thinks there's good news on the other end.

Is Mami coming home after all?

The phone is greasy from hands that have been sautéing vegetables for ratatouille, Dad trying for more variety with the dinner menu. I think I maybe had something to do with it. After my meltdown over the takeout pizza, I made a list of cheap and easy dinner ideas, asked Mr. Internet for the recipes, and gave them to Dad. I'm happy that he's cooking, but he makes a big mess that I have to clean up. I wipe the back of the phone on my jeans and the screen and keypad with my shirttail. Good news can wait until Dad's phone isn't disgusting anymore.

“
Hola, Mami. Te extraño.
”

“I miss you too,” she says in Spanish. Her English isn't very good because she was already sixteen when she fled to Canada with her mother and her two younger brothers, my
tíos
Mauricio and Rogelio, after their father was killed back in El Salvador. And in Montreal, they speak mainly French.

Mami said you have to start speaking another language when you're a baby or you'll always speak it with an accent. When I stopped talking in kindergarten, my
abuela
in Montreal said it was because I got confused with parents who taught me two languages at the same time when I was a baby. But I know that's not the real reason. You don't become a mutant by learning too many languages at once but by messed-up DNA.

My mouth is dry when I speak again. “I want you to come home.”

Quiero que vuelvas a casa . . .
The subjunctive. That's what I like about Spanish. It has rules to tell you about emotion.
I want. I wish. I need. I hope. I dream. I'm sorry.
When you know something's sure to happen, you don't use the subjunctive. You use the indicative. When something might not happen, or has no chance at all of happening, or you really, really want it to happen, that's the subjunctive. In Spanish you know the difference. English doesn't use the subjunctive nearly as much, so a person can lie, and the words don't tell you he's lying. They don't tell you what a person is feeling, and without the right words to tell me, I don't understand.

“That's what I called about,” Mami says.

“Yay!” I shout in English, then switch back to Spanish. “When are you coming?”

The phone line crackles. Some cell tower or satellite between northeastern Connecticut and Montreal must have burped.
Come on,
I mouth.

“We've decided you're spending the summer here.”

“What?”

She repeats the words.
Hemos decidido que pasarás el verano aquí . . .
The indicative.

“NO!” I yell. Dad slips through the open doorway from the kitchen into the living room. Making his escape rather than helping me. Abandoning dinner preparations too.

“I thought that's what you wanted,” she says.

“Where did you get that idea?”

“You were telling your father.” She pauses. I hear Dad's footsteps going up the stairs. “How much you missed me.”

Right. In Dad's truck. The day I met Antonio and found out about the bottles Chad made me carry. Stupid me.

I whack my head with the edge of Dad's phone.

“I didn't want to leave here. I wanted you to come back.”

“Kiara,
amor . . .
”

Amor?
Like she really loves me? Or is she just saying that to get me to do what she wants?

Mami continues. “It works out best this way. I can see you. And your father wants to play festivals this summer.”

“So it's all about him! And his stupid festivals!” I stomp my foot. The house vibrates.

“What's going on, Kiara?” I hear Dad's voice from upstairs and stalk toward the stairs.

“Liar! You said you'd bring me to the festivals. And now you're shipping me away,” I yell up to Dad. Even if I miss some weekends, I'll still be able to see my friends if I stay with Dad. If I go to Montreal, it's all over.

Mami's voice sounds tinny. “Max will be here. They liked his audition and hired him to play keyboards.”

“I don't care!” I don't tell her that my new friend Antonio is even nicer than Max. He doesn't talk about me being different—or hard to handle.

“At the end of the summer, we can all come back together.”

“First you said you'd be home in May. Now you're saying the end of the summer.” I rub my eyes with the back of my hand. When people lie to me once, I never can believe them again. “How do I know you won't decide to stay there forever?”

The moment of silence tells me she doesn't have an answer. “After school's out—”

“No!” Another stomp. “No. No. No. No. No.”

Does she even know I'm not in school anymore? I don't plan to tell her because then she won't do anything I want her to do.

“Your father will drive you up,” she continues as soon as I stop saying my noes to take a breath.

“He wants you to come home too, Mami. He wants you and him to be together.” She hasn't heard his songs in minor keys. If she did, she'd cry and realize he can't live without her.

And I can't leave my friends.
I can't.

I think of Chad, launching himself into the air with his bicycle, twisting and spinning against the laws of gravity. My mind flashes to Brandon with his wrestlers, how we keep each other company in the park in the time between when Ms. Latimer leaves and when the middle-school bus arrives.

I can't forget the rest of the guys either, my own X-Men—Veg, Kevin, and Brian. Beast, Iceman, and Colossus.

Above me, the floorboards groan. It's all up to me to bring Mami back.

“I have friends here, Mami.
Friends.
”

“Yes. Your father mentioned a new boy.”

“You don't get it. If I go, they'll forget all about me. They'll make other friends and I'll be alone again. Is that what you want?” My voice rises an octave. “Is that what you want? No friends?”

“Kiara,
listen.
”

“Don't . . . make . . . me . . . leave . . . my . . . friends. Please!” The phone slides down my face. I push it back up. “Please.”

“I'm sure they'll be there when you get back.”

“No, they won't!”

Mami clears her throat. “I haven't seen you since—”

“And whose decision was that?”

“Don't interrupt, or there will be consequences.”

Like what? You'll spank me and put me in time-out, from three hundred miles away?
That's what she used to do when I was younger. She never hit me hard, but what really stung was my brothers watching bad little Kiara get her punishment.

“You won't be bored. I promise,” Mami says. “You can work on your French. And if your father doesn't mind you bringing the camcorder, you can record us.”

“I'm doing it here. That new kid? He does cool bike stunts. You should see my videos.” I stop to take a quick breath. “And he's helping me. He's my . . . tutor. And way cooler, because he's my age and you aren't.”

She sighs. “Are you done?”

I can't think of anything more to say that'll change her mind. And maybe I shouldn't have said Chad was way cooler and she's old, but it's the truth. “I guess.” I squeeze the phone, as if I could choke off her words.

“He's not going anywhere.”

“No!” I can't stop my tears now. “He'll find some other friend he likes better. Like all the rest of them.”

“Don't argue. It's final. As soon as school's out, get your things ready.” The imperative has the same verb form as the subjunctive when it's a “no.” And after that, it doesn't matter. I don't have a choice. I'm a little girl who can be dragged from one place to another without anyone caring what she wants. Inside my head, I'm screaming, and it drowns out most of what she says about Dad and my
abuela
and touring with her new band.

“I hate you! I never want to see you again!” Blindly, I slam the flip phone shut and hurl it across the kitchen. It hits the door frame and splits apart, one half skittering behind the refrigerator and the other bouncing toward me.