My throat constricts. I can’t get enough air. I’ve never tried to throw a double iron whip, forget about his damn variation. I’m doomed.
“That was Black Magic kickin’ butt!” Rozelle hoots. Whose side is she on?
Black Magic salutes the crowd, which brings more whistles and applause.
“What’d ya call that move?” Rozelle thrusts out a hip.
“The magic whip.” He grins.
Rozelle smirks and then bellows to the crowd. “Who wants to see the Yo-Yo Prophet crack a magic whip?”
A weak cheer leaves me feeling more than useless.
“This here’s a duel for real, folks.” Rozelle tosses her hair, which she’s straightened to hang to her shoulders. “The Yo-Yo Prophet has gotta repeat the trick, or lose a life!”
Maybe she’s trying to rev up the crowd. Maybe she wants him to win. Either way, I’m frozen in place, staring out at the audience.
Faces zoom in and out of focus. Joseph seems to be moving his mouth in slow motion, and I hear the slurry words, “Go, Yo-Yo!” Eleanor Rizzo is clapping. Marshall is scribbling in his notebook, probably about how crappy I am. I recognize Geordie—I can’t believe he came. My eyes leap over Sasha. I can’t take her venom right now.
How do I get out of this?
Then I see the gray-eyed girl near the front. She’s waving up at me and looking awesome in a silver top that makes her eyes glimmer. I shake my head, clearing a mess of thoughts.
I predicted she would come. And she did.
I predicted I would beat Black Magic. And I will.
My breathing slows. Time speeds up. Sound rushes back in. I hear Rozelle going on about dueling to the death. The crowd is getting worked up, probably eager for blood. What am I afraid of? I’m the Yo-Yo Prophet.
I pitch out my yo-yo, hoping for the best. I struggle through a jade whip, which is less advanced but the most I can do. No one but Black Magic and I know the tricks, so what does it matter?
Except that the camera is recording my moves. And there may be other yo-yo fanatics watching.
The crowd claps a bit. I try to breathe. The sun beats down, making me sweat. The giant billboards flash. The music’s techno beat hammers at me relentlessly.
“The Yo-Yo Prophet cracks it!” Rozelle bellows across the square. “Let’s see you bust another move!” She winks at me.
The cameraman zooms in. Joseph is cheering louder than anyone. I gulp in some air and perform his favorite trick.
“Buddha’s revenge,” I say. It’s a solid effort.
The crowd applauds. I feel lighter, higher.
Black Magic matches the trick—no problem. With his tight leather pants and long black hair, he looks so damn cool, like he has nothing to prove.
We’re even now, with two tricks each, when Black Magic throws out a Yuuki slack. It’s a trick first performed by Yuuki Spencer at the World Yo-Yo Contest. When he threw it, the audience went wild.
So does this crowd.
It’s a master-level move. Although I’ve tried it before, I’ve never done it successfully. I straighten my shoulders and go for it anyway.
“Yuuki slack.” I nod to Black Magic, Rozelle, the crowd, like I’m facing a firing squad. I launch into the trick. It starts with a trapeze and moves into a double or nothing. The secret is to pinch the string while it’s looping, slackening it and then whipping the loop back and forth between your hands while rotating the yo-yo.
I bomb, sending the yo-yo into a spin-out.
“Shit,” I mutter.
The crowd doesn’t boo me off the stage, but they don’t cheer much either.
“Ouch!” Rozelle struts the stage. “That’s one for Black Magic. The Yo-Yo Prophet better pull up!” She shoots me a warning glance. Maybe she is rooting for me after all.
I guess she wouldn’t want me to fail. Or would she?
The torture continues with three more tricks, which I barely manage. It’s obvious to everyone that Black Magic is a pro, and I’m not.
When the crowd has built up to about a hundred people, Rozelle announces that round one goes to Black Magic, although I can make it back in round two. Freestyle.
I’m doing my best to ignore the reporter and the camera as Rozelle tells the crowd, “Each of these boys gets three minutes to showcase their best. All you gotta do is cheer for your favorite.”
“You first.” I nod to Black Magic, figuring I better see what he’s got so I can try to outdo him.
Black Magic conjures a slew of master-level tricks that rage against me. Double suicide. Reverse trapeze whip. Kamikaze. Superman. Tricks I can’t even follow with my eyes.
He starts into a ladder escape, popping the yo-yo in and out of a triangle formation in the string so fast that gold sparks seem to shoot from his yo-yo.
It’s an awesome routine—he’s even invented new tricks. It casts a spell over the screeching mob.
“Time!” Rozelle shouts. In my daze, I realize that she’s been using a stopwatch.
I’m trembling, waiting for her to call the start of my lousy routine, but the crowd won’t stop chanting Black Magic’s name.
That’s when I see the gray-eyed girl, staring dreamily up at him.
I turn away.
Forget her, I think.
“Yeah, folks! Now that’s a cheer.” Rozelle throws me a concerned look. “But wait till you see our own Yo-Yo Prophet!”
The crowd screams and yells for Black Magic.
I am so dead.
Rozelle raises one arm to start the countdown. Her bicep quivers. I snap to attention, fingers tingling, every muscle tense.
“Now.” She lowers her arm.
I throw out my yo-yo like a life preserver into the ocean and then dive in after it.
No thoughts, just my hands working the string, the yo-yo flying. I’m throwing strong; my sleepers last forever. I do a shockwave. Cold fusion. Laceration.
I’m in the zone. I can do this, I think. I can beat this sucker.
That’s my prediction. It has to happen. I have to make it happen.
I move into the beginning of my most ambitious sequence of tricks. My grand finale will stun the crowd, make them scream only for me. I shoot my yo-yo skyward, soaring above the crashing ocean waves. My yo-yo extends gloriously on the string. It grips, ready to reverse direction. Then my string breaks.
“No-o-o-o!” I yell.
Time slows down. The string jerks in a crazy snake-like dance. My yo-yo arcs high over the crowd, heading for the jets of water that spurt from the ground into the square.
I fumble for my backpack—my extra yo-yos.
“I can start again,” I plead.
There’s a free-for-all as a few people scramble toward my wayward yo-yo like it’s some kind of trophy.
The crowd starts chanting Black Magic’s name. Rozelle is shooting daggers my way.
“It’s just a broken string,” I say.
The crowd won’t shut up. They keep cheering, “Ma-gic! Ma-gic!” It goes on and on. No one cares that I’ve pulled another yo-yo from my pack. No one wants me to try again.
Rozelle fires me a desperate look. She hollers, “The winner is…Black Magic!” Her eyebrows knot.
My shoulders slump. The crowd roars even louder.
The reporter leaps onto the stage—a hunter closing in on her kill. She’s got her mike ready, questions already forming on her lips. She positions herself next to me as the cameraman follows her up. Rozelle stomps over to Black Magic and congratulates him, although she’s red-faced and glowering.
“How do you feel about your first failed prediction?” The reporter drives the mike into my face. The cameraman has me in his sights.
“I guess I’m not one-hundred-percent accurate all the time.” I shrink away.
The reporter nods and swivels to Black Magic. “It looks like you crushed your competition. Are you surprised by today’s events?”
Black Magic shrugs. “Strings break. It doesn’t mean I won. The kid is pretty good.”
The crowd doesn’t agree. They yell his name, ask for more. The gray-eyed girl calls up to him, “You smashed that routine.” She lifts her silky blond hair off her neck and lets it fall in a slow cascade.
Black Magic ignores her. He slips his yo-yo into his holster. “Tough luck, kid,” he says to me before he saunters away.
The music ends abruptly; the crowd is thinning. I try to slide away too, crawl into a crack in the granite slabs of the square, but Sasha is suddenly onstage, blocking my escape.
“This isn’t the first prophecy he’s gotten wrong,” she says loud enough for the reporter to hear. “The whole thing’s a joke. He’s a joke.” She glares down at me through mascara-laden eyelashes.
I grind my teeth. This day is bad enough without Sasha getting in my face. “What’s your problem?” I say to her, not caring who hears. “Why are you always out to get me?”
“Because I’m sick of covering your ass,” she hisses and turns to the reporter. “He can throw a yo-yo” — she smirks—“most of the time, but everything he predicts…” She gestures toward Annette over by the speakers. “We have to make it happen.”
“What are you talking about?” I glance at Rozelle, whose jaw is clenched as she glares at Sasha. My palms are sweaty. What has Rozelle done this time?
The reporter perks up. She positions her damn mike in Sasha’s stupid face. “Are you calling Calvin Layne a false prophet?”
People in the crowd are listening—Eleanor Rizzo, Marshall, Joseph, Geordie—now that Black Magic has left the stage.
“Yup.” Sasha flips her bangs off her face. “The first time he made a prediction, we had to help this woman” — she points to Eleanor Rizzo—“get a job. Which wasn’t too hard, since my uncle owns a copy shop downtown.”
Eleanor Rizzo gasps.
Rozelle says, “Don’t lie, Sasha.”
“Give it up, Roz.” Sasha juts out her chin.
“Let me clarify. The Yo-Yo Prophet predicted she’d get that job?” the reporter asks. “But you made sure it happened?”
Sasha nods at the camera. “Ever since then, we’ve had to run around and make sure his predictions came true.”
I shut my eyes briefly. This can’t be happening.
“When he said some man would find his lost cat, we had to search for it. When he told this guy he would pass his science exam, we had to pay for a tutor. We even broke up this woman and her boyfriend by flirting with him. Whatever he said, we had to make it happen.” She snorts.
“Is he ever right?” the reporter asks.
Sasha shrugs. “Sometimes, but it’s just a fluke.”
“So you lied to the media about your predictions?” Marshall is pale and furious. His pen is poised above his notebook, ready to record my every word.
“I…I didn’t know…,” I say, even though part of me did. I knew Rozelle was making me into a liar, a cheat, a fool. I just didn’t want to admit it.
Even Geordie is shaking his head. I guess he doesn’t think much of me now.
“Don’t listen to her.” Rozelle’s neck muscles are tight cords. “She’s just jealous. Right, Annette?”
Annette backs away, almost tripping over a speaker wire.
My stomach clenches and unclenches like a fist. If only I’d never met Rozelle. If only I’d never listened to her. She did this to me.
“This is your fault,” I say to her.
“Watch what you say, Yo-Yo.” Rozelle’s voice is threatening.
“Just leave me alone.” I grab my backpack, jump off the stage and race across the square. I take the stairs down to the subway two at a time, fleeing the judgmental faces, the reporter’s questions, the camera lens capturing my humiliation for the world to see.
The train takes forever to arrive. I keep my head down, too embarrassed to look anyone in the eye. How long until my shame is out there for everyone to see? On tv? On my blog? Or Marshall’s?
When the train finally squeals into the station, I slink into a seat in the last car. How could I have been so stupid? I knew Rozelle couldn’t be trusted.
I just want to go home—stay there forever.
Half an hour later, I’m slipping into the alley behind the store, inhaling the stench from the Dumpster. The sun is low in the sky, making long shadows against the buildings.
Luckily, I avoid Spader. When I get to the metal staircase leading to our apartment, a pale white arm dangles over the top step. Someone’s collapsed on the landing.
“Gran!” I race up the stairs, stumbling, desperate.
The door is half open. Gran’s key is in the lock. And Gran is lying at an awkward angle, eyes closed, her head jammed sideways against the railing.