Chapter 6: Mask On

By eleven that night, my turn had been watched four million times.

The comments under the clip said the same thing in a hundred ways.

That's Ghost. The Brescia girl is Ghost.

I sat on my bed with my phone dark in my hand, and the house was silent around me.

Paolo was in the hospital with two cracked ribs and a gash on his chin.

My father was in the waiting room.

Luca was downstairs with the TV on, because I had asked him to be.

The phone lit up.

It was the account I only opened in the dark.

The old woman who ran the warehouse rink had written: Come now. He's here.

I took the black visor out of the bottom of my closet.

I went down the back stairs in a hood with my old skates tied to my bag.

Luca did not look up from the screen.

"Whatever happens," he said to the TV, "text me."

"I will."

"Mara."

"I'll be back before Dad is."

I took a taxi to Allston and got out two blocks short.

The bakery had been closed for eleven years.

Behind its steel door was a concrete floor frozen over with a hose, with nine rows of folding chairs around it.

Forty kids had paid ten dollars each to watch grown men break each other.

The old woman who ran it was waiting at the back door with her arms folded.

"He bought the whole room," she said. "He paid every kid double to move seats. He put a sign on the wall."

She pointed.

Lev had hung a banner over the goal.

GHOST, NO MORE HIDING. ONE-ON-ONE. IF I LOSE, I SHAVE IT AGAIN.

"He wants a camera on you," she said. "His father's outside, and I think they're going to call the city."

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