danced like prizefighters. They looked like they wanted to go fast.
“No, no, Piccolina!” Nonna would shake her head in disapproval. “You must look beyond the shiny coat and the pretty face. You need to look deeper, look at the heart.”
“That’s silly! I can’t see their hearts, Nonna!” I would giggle.
“Try again,” Nonna would say. And then she would give me a hint. “Look at that one over there. You see the way his ears pricked at the roar of the crowd in the grandstand? The flick of his tail when the jockey mounted? He has heart, Piccolina. I think he is the one.”
“Should we bet on him then, Nonna?” I would ask.
“Oh no!” Nonna would say. “Racing is the sport of kings, but gambling is for fools and scoundrels. A Campione never bets.”
That’s our name, Campione. It means Champion in Italian. Our stables are called Champion Racing. Not that the horses we train are champions. Often, by the time they come to us they are ten-time losers, and it’s our job to turn them around because no one else will take them.
My dad, Ray Campione, was a pretty famous jockey back in the day, but he was always falling off and breaking bones, and after my mom died Nonna said it was too dangerous. She said if he fell again then us four kids could wind up being orphans, so Dad gave up riding and started training. He’s supposed to be the head trainer, but everyone knows it’s really Nonna who calls the shots, deciding the feed and workout regimes, which jockey will get the ride and when the horse is ready to run.
Nonna used to ride track, but she’s too old for it now. “Eighty-five, Lola! How did that happen? I still feel sixteen.” That’s how old she was when she came to New York on her own, all the way from Italy. It was 1945. The war had just ended and she arrived on a boat at Ellis Island “with nothing except the clothes on my back and my jodhpurs and riding boots in a duffel bag”.
Nonna never liked to talk about “the old country”. I would try and ask her about what life was like back in Italy, but she never did say much. The only thing she would ever talk about was the horses. “They were Anglo-Arabs,” she told me. “Very intelligent, beautiful creatures, quite different from these hot-heads we have to train!”
I didn’t realise what she meant until I met Nico. He isn’t like any horse I ever met in New York, or even any of the other horses he shares a stable with at the Castle of the Four Towers in Siena. He’s enormous for a start, and he’s showy with his rich honey-chestnut coat, white blaze and thick flaxen mane. He could almost be too pretty, except he’s burly too; real powerful with these strong shoulders and haunches. If he wanted to, he could lash out with a hoof and kill you with a single blow, but he would never do that. He’s sweet-natured and gentle as a faun. When I’m in the loose box with him I never even need to use a halter to restrain him. I can leave the doors wide open and he’ll just stay in the stall with me like he wants to be here, shoving his muzzle up against me as I pet him, just like he’s doing right now.
“Tomorrow,” I tell him, “we’re going to go out there and win this crazy bareback race in front of all of Italy, and when we cross the finish line we will be heroes and the contrada will remember us for ever.”
The Palio is the world’s most dangerous race. The horses are ridden by hard-bitten jockeys – men who won’t think twice about using whatever means necessary to beat us if we get in their way.
“There are no saddles,” I remind Nico. “And no rules either. The other horses will crash into you and their jockeys will whip and push me if they can get close enough.”
Nico shakes his mane anxiously.
“Hey, hey, no …” I reassure him. “Don’t worry, Nico. Those guys, they think they’re tough, right? But they never met a girl from Ozone Park before.”
It’s not like I’m lying to him. Nico is my best friend and I would never do that. But he needs his jockey to be strong right now. If he realised the fantino was nothing more than a scared twelve-year-old girl then we’d both be in real trouble.
Lucky for me, if there’s one thing I’m good at it is acting tough when I am actually terrified. I guess I have Jake Mayo to thank for that.
It’s funny to think that you owe a debt to the boy who made your life at middle school into a living hell, but in a weird way I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for Jake. Growing up in Ozone Park, I was already pretty battle-hardened before he started his own personal war against me. But after our fight, something changed deep inside of me. So if you want to know how I got here, then I’ll tell you. It all started the day that I broke Jake Mayo’s nose.
The linoleum in the hallway was pale blue with dark swirls. I stared down and imagined it was the sea, about to swell up beneath me and swallow me. As if I was that lucky.
“Miss Campione?” The door beside me opened and a bony finger curled out to beckon me in. I stood up and walked over the ocean and into Mr Azzaretti’s office.
“I don’t usually see you in here, Miss Campione.” Mr Azzaretti moved around to his side of the desk and motioned for me to sit.
“No, sir.”
“Do you want to tell me what happened?”
I shrugged my shoulders. “He was asking for it.”
“Is that all you have to say?” Mr Azzaretti looked serious. “Because I’ve got a boy in sick bay right now with a broken nose and he’s saying you did it.”
A broken nose. I felt the blood rush to my cheeks. I broke Jake Mayo’s nose?
Serves him right. I thought, but I didn’t say it. I knitted my fingers together to stop my hands shaking. I was still charged full of adrenaline and my throat hurt from where Jake had held me. He was much stronger than me, a real all-American quarterback in the making. I’d only managed to throw that one punch before he’d lunged at me, locked his arm around my neck and dragged me to the ground. That was how the teachers had found us, squirming around on the asphalt, red-faced and sweaty with a circle of kids all around us chanting “Fight! Fight! Fight!”
Mr Azzaretti waited for me to say something while I looked down at my hands. There was a long silence between us and then he gave a sigh and pushed his chair away and stood up. He came right around and perched on the edge of the desk beside me. He was a tall, angular man. He always wore a shirt and tie, but he kept his sleeves rolled up as if he had proper manual work to do, like a groom at the stables instead of a middle-school principal.
“Lola.” He said my name, and my heart sank. It was the softness of the word, the kindness in his voice, that made me realise I was in real trouble. “Do you know how much it concerns me to see the smartest kid in this school, a student I consider to be scholarship material, being called in because of this sort of behaviour?”
I could feel my eyes getting teary. “I’m sorry, Mr Azzaretti.” I wiped them with my sleeve, noticing the bloodstain as I did so. That blood wasn’t mine.
“You know I’m going to have to call this boy’s parents?” Mr Azzaretti said. “And your dad too, obviously?”
I felt a flush of pleasure at the idea of Jake Mayo having to explain to his dad that a girl had broken his nose. It almost made it all worth it.
“My dad’s asleep. He turns his phone off in the afternoons.”
“All right,” Mr Azzaretti said. “Then you’ll give him this as soon as you get home and ask him to call me, OK?” He handed me an envelope. “Tell him you’ve been suspended from school until further notice.”
It was fourth period and everyone