Page 1 of It Happened on a Sunday
Chapter 1
Sly
I’m no stranger to a crowded stadium.
The cheers. The lights. The ground shaking beneath my feet as hyped-up fans stomp and scream with excitement.
And I’m definitely no stranger tothisstadium. Most months, I’m here or at the training center next door nearly every day. Running tape, working out, drilling hour after hour, day after day, year after year.
You don’t get to be an NFL quarterback by phoning it in.
Apparently, you don’t get to be a pop star that way, either—at least not a pop star of Sloane Walker’s caliber, because the Black Widow herself is here in Austin tonight, and she is killing it.
This stadium,mystadium, has been transformed into a pop show extravaganza.
The end zones are gone, the lights are down, and where there should be turf, there’s a massive circular stage dropped dead center like it’s been airlifted from another world. Eight glowing catwalks surround her, lit up and slicing through the crowd.
From the nosebleeds, it must look like a giant robot spider has invaded from the skies—all chrome and smoke, pulsing with the bassline like it’s actually got a heartbeat. But from down here, it’s organized chaos in the best way. Sloane’s fans are everywhere, all around us, going wild as she struts down one of the legs like she owns the whole damn place.
Probably because, right now, she does.
Lights blink and shimmer. Lasers cut through the darkness, and flames roar up from the edges of the stage. Sloane’s face—gaze fierce, smile dangerous, confidence radiating from everypore—fills the massive display screens that form the backdrop as she belts out the final chorus of a song about getting it right and feeling all wrong.
As the song comes to an end, the crowd doesn’t just cheer—iterupts. Phone lights bounce around in the darkness as people scream, waving signs and glowsticks and anything else they’ve got in their possession, all in an effort to get her attention.
It’s pandemonium. It’s spectacle. It’s not just a concert, it’s a phenomenon. A conquest, one where the queen invites her adoring subjects along for the ride.
And they take it, loving every second. Surprisingly, so am I. I came for my abuela, a longtime Sloane Walker fan, but so far it’s been one hell of a show. And I don’t see that changing any time soon. Especially since the fire along the stage sputtered out when the last song ended, and now Sloane is crouching down to touch the hands of a few of her adoring fans.
The screaming gets even louder, and people start crowding closer to us, their seats abandoned in their frenzy to get to the edge ofthiscatwalk, just in case Sloane decides to come down here next.
There’s passage under the catwalks, so it’s not as dangerous as it sounds. But still, I shift a little to my left, positioning myself directly behind my abuela’s chair so none of the people surging around us can jostle her.
She pats my arm and shouts, “It’s okay, Mateo. I’m fine.”
I know she is—my abuela is as tough as they come. But she’s also in her late seventies with bad knees. It doesn’t hurt to take a little extra caution.
“Over here!” the girls next to us shout, screaming and waving their signs so vigorously I’m a little afraid they’re going to hit each other in the eyes with them.
Disaster’s averted when Sloane glances their way and points at their signs. She even mouths something that looks an awful lotlikethank you, which makes one of them burst into tears as her friend screams even louder.
Sloane sees that, too, and as the band starts playing the opening to another song, one that’s faster and has more rhythmic drums than the last, she switches direction on a dime, moving toward us like the storm my team is named after—wild, destructive, powerful.
Mesmerizing.
Not to mention impressive as all hell, considering she’s wearing black thigh-high boots with sky-high heels and running like she was born in them.
“Help me up!” My abuela grabs my arm, her brown eyes gleaming with excitement at just the idea of being this close to her hero.
I do, letting her use my arm as support as she moves the few steps from our seats to the edge of the catwalk. She doesn’t have a sign to attract Sloane’s attention, but I bought her a glow light necklace and a ton of bracelets when we got here. Not to mention she’s wearing a glittered-up Black Widow T-shirt and waving nails tipped in red with black spiders painted on them.
So am I, for that matter, though my little sister painted my nails a different color. “A little abuela/mijo bonding outfit,” she told me when she presented me with the blinged-out shirt this afternoon. I like it, though I am a little concerned my favorite pair of jeans is going to be sporting red glitter for eons to come. Not a big deal, except red and blue make up the uniforms of my team’s biggest rivals. The guys will never let me hear the end of it if I show up to game tape day in the Grizzlies’ colors.
All of a sudden, the beat slows, and so does Sloane. She stops right in front of the girls, in front of us, and kneels at what feels like the edge of the world. Her world. She reaches out one hand to them, another to us, and when my abuela’s fingers clasp hers, Sloane’s eyes meet mine. And in that moment, she’s not theBlack Widow. She’s not the queen who rules the stage, and my stadium, with a sequined fist.
Instead, she’s a goddess undone—glitter-streaked, mascara-stained, wild-haired—offering a piece of herself in a world that too often worships the spectacular and forgets the sacrifice.
“I love you, Sloane!” my abuela shouts at the top of her lungs.
