Mía and Lucrecia echoed, “Chau, Furia.”
Coach Alicia was packing the equipment into her car: balls, nets, and corner posts. At the sound of my new nickname, she looked up and winked at me. “No days off, team!” she reminded us.
I waved at Coach and the girls. And without owning up to my ulterior motives, I followed Roxana to her dad’s car.
The roads around the stadium were all closed. Even when Mr. Fong explained that he lived on the next block, the young traffic officer wouldn’t budge.
The song blaring from thousands of throats in the stadium swallowed Mr. Fong’s protests.
Un amor como el guerrero, no debe morir jamás...
“Drop us here, and we’ll walk,” Roxana said to her dad. “I’m dying to go to the bathroom.”
Her parents argued back and forth until Mrs. Fong said, “It’s fine, Gustavo. Let’s drop them off. I need to check something at the store in Avellaneda anyway.”
“In that case, this is your stop, girls.”
“Just be careful, chicas,” Mrs. Fong called after us as we got out of the car.
“I love your parents,” I told Roxana. “My dad would’ve fought me even if he’d wanted me to walk home to begin with.”
Roxana shrugged, but her cheeks turned a little pink. “I guess they’re all right.”
The men’s game was over, and people trickled out of El Gigante, their faces glowing with glory. They swung yellow-and-blue-striped jerseys and flags in the air, chanting our Sunday hymns, happy because Central had won and nothing else mattered.
Fútbol could do that—make people forget about the price of the dollar, the upcoming elections, even their love lives. For a few hours, life was beautiful.
We stood at the corner of Cordiviola and Juan B. Justo behind a group of guys singing and jumping in place, waiting for an ambulance to drive away. The scent of charred chorizos from the choripán vendor made my stomach growl. A line of officers made a roadblock across the street. Before we could continue toward the house, a rumble of excitement erupted from the singing guys.
A girl in their group ran to the barrier of disgruntled guards.
“She just saw el Titán,” a boy announced. “Diego Ferrari.”
Like the rest of the people in the street, I turned my face toward the bar like a sunflower chasing the dawn. Right then, Diego walked out, and the street exploded into applause and cheers.
In a distressed but obviously new leather jacket and a white T-shirt with the image of Lionel Messi as the Sacred Heart, Diego looked like the superstar he was. His brown hair was gelled back, but it still curled around his ears. He wore studs. Diamond studs that glinted when he moved. The reporters swarmed around him while he signed everything people put in front of him: paper, jerseys, an arm, a baby’s blanket.
Roxana rounded on me. “Did you know he was here?”
I didn’t even have the chance to deny it.
“Amore mío, fai l’amore con me!” a woman in her twenties yelled from behind me, startling us. Roxana started laughing. Even though I was about to die of embarrassment on the woman’s behalf, I couldn’t help laughing, too.
A couple of years ago, Roxana became obsessed with the book and the movie A Tres Metros Sobre el Cielo. It was a classic, but Roxana was all in. She tagged “3MSC” everywhere. She even learned Italian to read it in the original, and she made me practice with her. I’d make it fun for myself by repeating silly phrases in Italian, things we’d never dare to say in real life.
This was my phrase.
The woman repeated it, and this time, Diego must have heard her. Even from afar, I saw him blush. He waved, biting his lower lip. It made me want to forget everything and run to him.
Just as I was about to tell Roxana we should go home, he looked straight at me. His face broke into a megawatt smile.
Its force knocked me breathless.
“Camila!” he yelled, and waved for me to join him.
But Roxana shielded me with her body. “The cameras!” she warned me, but I had already scurried behind a group of girls fighting over who Diego was calling out for. All of them seemed to be a Camila.
Of course, I was the one he was calling for, and I wanted to go to him. But Roxana was right. This moment could be the end of me. Now that Diego was home from Italy, the news of a team of unknown girls winning the Rosarinian League Cup wouldn’t get any airtime. This would give me some time to break the news about the Sudamericano to my parents before the news did it for me. But not if the cameras following Diego turned their attention my way. Then I would have a different kind of trouble at home.
We ran away from the crowd. Once we were out of reach of the cameras, Roxana hooked her arm through mine. Sore from the game, we hobbled our way to her house in charged silence.
“What was he thinking?” Roxana finally said, shaking her head. “Putting you in the spotlight like that . . .”
The chants of the fans hanging from a bus that thundered down the avenue swallowed the rest of her words. But not the thoughts clamoring inside me. Diego had seen me. He had called for me without hesitation.
The first-place medal pressed against my chest, reminding me of the most important thing that had happened today: my team had won. Now I would have to tell my parents.
5
By the time I showered and changed back into my obedient daughter uniform and the buses started running again, my seven o’clock curfew had come and gone. When I actually left Roxana’s hours later, night had fallen dark and damp over the city. The bus left me on the corner of José Ingenieros and Colombres. Far from home, but still better than walking by myself through Empalme and Circunvalación.
With only a flicker of starlight to guide me, my mom’s warning about the murdered girl didn’t seem empty anymore. I quickened my pace. Finally, I saw the light in front of my building, number six, shining bright yellow. It was ten forty-five. The more I delayed, the more trouble I would be in.
With each step I took, I forced my face into a mask, obliterating the vestiges of my rebellious afternoon: the sunshine breaking through the clouds during my victory goal, us picking up Coach Alicia, Diego with his leather jacket and gelled hair. I moved all these images to the back of my mind to revisit in the quiet of my room later.
“Chau, Pablo’s sister!” a small boy riding a bicycle shouted at me cheerfully. “Say hi to the Stallion for me!”
“Camila!” I yelled. “My name is Camila!” He didn’t turn back, though, and soon the darkness of la placita swallowed him.
In my barrio, most of the people didn’t know my name or even that I existed. To them, I was only Pablo’s sister, or Andrés and the seamstress’s daughter—my mom, too, was nameless. But I was determined to leave my mark. And with the Sudamericano, I would have my chance.
No one in the barrio knew that I’d been reborn as Furia, and I held this luminous secret inside me like a talisman.
As I reached my apartment at the top of four flights of stairs, my father’s laughter boomed through the metal door. The hallway light went off, and damp blackness enveloped me. I filled my lungs with wintry night air and went in.
The scene around the table was always the same after a game. My brother, dressed to go clubbing, was sprawled on a rattan chair with Marisol the girlfriend, the permanent ornament, by his side. My father, also ready to go out, was flanked by Tío César and Tío Héctor, his sidekicks. They weren’t really my uncles, but they’d all been friends since they were young boys.