Furia(32)

“How come you didn’t tell us you were dating him?”

When I didn’t give them any answers, their words turned venomous.

“Some have all the luck in the world, and they don’t even know it,” Vanina said as her friends nodded in agreement. “In her position, I wouldn’t have even come to school today.”

“Dios le da pan al que no tiene dientes,” Pilar added. “She didn’t even like his post.”

“Don’t you have anything better to do than talk about me?” I said, rushing at her. A surge of pleasure went through me when she scrambled away too quickly and fell backward.

Roxana pulled me by the arm, and Pilar’s friends helped her up. If the bell hadn’t rung, I don’t know what I would’ve done.

But after that, the gossipers left me alone.

Throughout the morning, I updated Roxana in bits and pieces, ignoring the teachers and the forty girls around us. I didn’t mention we’d gone out on a real date, though. And of course I didn’t even hint at the kiss.

“I don’t understand,” she said through clenched teeth. “He said ‘I’m here for Camila'? Who does he think he is? As if you’re gonna jump into his arms and let him take you to Italy!”

Turning my body to the side so the teacher wouldn’t see me talking, I said, “I don’t know, Roxana. I, like . . . avoided the topic in the car. I don’t think he wants me to leave with him. He got me a job, actually, at El Buen Pastor.”

“The old women’s prison?”

“Yeah. He wouldn’t have done that if he wanted to whisk me away.”

“You’re a futbolera, not a botinera. Did you tell him that?”

“I wanted to, but there was too much going on. I can’t drag Diego into my mess.”

She shook her phone in front of my face. “It seems to me like he’s dragging himself in of his own free will. And when he posted that photo, he dragged you into a greater mess.”

“Once he leaves, everyone will stop talking about that post.” I didn’t know how I expected Roxana to believe me when I didn’t even believe myself.

“And you?” she asked. “Will you be hung up on this for a year like you were obsessed about that kiss?”

I couldn’t meet her gaze. I’d told her it had been just one kiss. If she knew about yesterday . . .

“Camila, be careful.”

It was more than Diego’s kisses that tormented me. We had so much shared history that every memory was wound around him.

But we were both sick with this incurable fútbol illness. It was bigger than everything else in our lives. Diego was my first love. Seeing him again had proven that in spite of the silence, the time, and the distance between us, he felt the same for me. But to get to the next level, we had to follow our own paths.

We were running in different directions.

Roxana pressed my hand. “I know it must hurt, but I’m proud of you. We’re going to the Sudamericano. What else could you want from life?”

“Winning the Sudamericano,” I said. I didn’t say: the freedom that would come with winning. The freedom not to answer to my father or even my mother for every choice I make.

Roxana’s face lit up. “You never asked me why I called,” she said over the sound of the bell that ended class.

“You should’ve told me first thing, che,” I teased her.

All around us, people relaxed, taking their phones out, snacking, getting caught up on gossip. We had five minutes between accounting and history.

Roxana closed her eyes and shook her head, like she was resetting her brain. “Do you know about the team meeting tomorrow night?”

“No practice today?” My body ached to be back on the pitch.

Roxana handed me her phone again. Her background was the photo of our team raising the cup. With the vintage filter, it seemed like it had happened a lifetime ago and not last weekend.

“Call Coach Alicia,” she said. “She texted me last night that she needs to talk with you and couldn’t get hold of you, either.”

I hesitated. I hoped Coach wasn’t mad at me.

“Call her now, before Sister Brígida gets here,” Roxana insisted.

I wasted no time. Coach Alicia picked up on the first ring. “Roxana?”

My hand prickled with sweat at the sound of her voice. “It’s Camila,” I hurried to explain. “My phone doesn’t work, Coach. Sorry I never saw your message.”

Coach got straight to the point. “Listen carefully. Tomorrow we have a meeting in preparation for the Sudamericano. My sister Gabi is making a flash stop in Rosario before she heads back to the States. I want you to meet her so that when I gush about you, she can put a face to the name. You have to make it. ?Está claro?”

She hung up just as the teacher walked in, but in any case, I was speechless.

The moment I’d been praying for all my life was just about here.

The rest of the morning, Roxana and I obsessed over the meeting.

“What do you think Coach wants to talk about?” I asked her.

“Money. That tournament’s not free.”

“How much do you think the fees will be?”

She whistled. “We’re going to have to do some serious fundraising.”