wonder if he realizes I’ll have to go up there when I go to bed tonight.
“Jaime can help you.”
“He can carry his half-empty duffel bag on his own.” Jaime is flipping channels, obviously not done holding a grudge.
“I’ll be back before dinner.” I grab my keys and snatch a garlic bread roll on my way to the car. Out of habit, or maybe because I’m not done quite torturing myself, I twist my head to see if Daria is watching me through the window. No dice. Her bedroom light is off through the curtain. Mentally, she checked out of here long before she got on the plane.
As I drive to Camilo’s, I try to call him to make sure he knows I’m stopping by.
He is not answering, and I’m growing irritated. I gave him a direct order to get his ass as far as possible from the snake pit. If I manage to keep my fists to myself when Gus shits systematically through everything I know and love, so can he.
I park in front of Camilo’s door, knowing I can’t knock on it at midnight. Then I hear a baby crying and a woman mumbling in annoyance and know I won’t be waking up anyone. I knock. His sister opens with her toddler on her hip. I push past her to retrieve my duffel bag by the couch.
“Where’s your dumbass brother?” I ask.
“Hell if I know. Maybe that place all the cool kids go to.”
“The snake pit?”
“That what it’s called?” She laughs, opening the microwave in the open plan kitchen to grab a bottle and shove it into the baby’s mouth. “Make sure you protect that pretty face of yours, Scully. Cheekbones like that, you can knock your rich girl up and live off her parents’ money.”
When I drive to the snake pit, my nerves hit an all-time high. Camilo is both hotheaded and easily swayed into doing stupid shit. I know that because for a while, doing stupid shit was our favorite pastime. I kill the engine outside the deserted football field and race my way toward the chain-linked gate. Screams and curses pop in the air like gunshots. There’s a cloud of anger and sweat rising from behind the bleachers, and as I hop the chain-linked fence and get in, I see why.
It’s a goddamn warzone.
There’s a mass fight, and everyone is in it—including Knight, Vaughn, Colin, Will, Josh, Malcolm, and Nelson. Both the Bulldogs and the Saints are in it to win it. Underneath all of them on the dry, brown earth is Camilo, lying on the ground.
I track toward him, shoving people off him as the crowd thickens. Players stomp and kick each other, paying him no attention. Camilo doesn’t move.
“Dafuq happened to you?” I lower myself on one knee. I’m afraid to touch him because I’m not sure of his injuries.
“Broken…I think it’s broken.” He barely finishes, looking down at his leg. I follow his line of sight and see it clearly, even through his jeans. His leg is bent unnaturally. Cartoon-like. His fibula is all distorted. It looks bad.
“We need to get you to the hospital,” I say.
“No shit, Sherlock.” He laughs, his voice dry and crisp. He’s been lying like this for a while, I gather. I call an ambulance while Gus sneaks away from the bleachers, hollering in his wake, “Clear out, clear out, Scully invited the pigs.”
Everyone’s sprinting past us now, leaving dust in their wake. Guys push and yell and plea. They boo at me as if I give a fuck. Knight grabs the end of my shirt and yanks me up. I shake him off.
“I’m staying with Cam.”
Vaughn stops next to him, eyeballing me hard. “You have a game tomorrow,” he reminds me.
“Would you have left Knight?”
Both Knight and I look at him. He claps his best friend’s shoulder.
“His funeral. Let’s go.”
I turn back to Cam. “What happened?”
But I think I already know. Gus didn’t think I’d throw the game, so he sent someone to make sure my quarterback wouldn’t be able to play. It was a calculated, cold move to get rid of Camilo and eliminate our chances of winning.
“Colin went straight for it. Tackled me down and jammed his foot to the side of my knee. Knight and Vaughn came two minutes too late and shoved him off me.”
By the casual way he tells me this, I understand that it still hasn’t sunk in.
No football.
No scholarship.
No future.
“You’re going to be fine,” I lie, elevating his upper body.
He