knew,” I murmured. “It’s going to be OK, I’m here now, I’m with you.”
I knew that being trapped in this basement stall would terrify him. Nico had never been left alone like this before. He’d grown up in the fields at Signor Fratelli’s farm with the other horses by his side. Even at night when he was brought in to his loose box in the stables, he’d had their whinnies and nickers right next door for company To be brought here and kept in solitary confinement in this tiny, cramped stone cell must have felt like cruel punishment, when in fact it was supposed to be a sacred honour; the final stage before his ascent to glory.
But glory is for gods, not for horses. Nico didn’t know that he was part of an ancient ritual or that the hopes and dreams of an entire contrada were riding on him tomorrow. As far as he was concerned, the only thing on his back when he stepped out onto that racetrack would be me. It was for me alone that he would gallop until his legs buckled and his heart burst. He had the heart of a champion, my horse, I had known it from the very first moment I saw him. I took one look into those deep brown liquid eyes of his and I knew that he was special, that he was the one.
“A horse that’s going to win has a light in their eyes,” my Nonna Loretta always says. “You look hard enough, Piccolina, and you’ll see it. The good ones burn inside with the desire to prove themselves.”
My nonna can look at a horse and tell you straight off before it sets foot on the track whether or not it’s gonna win. When I was little, she’d take me to the Aqueduct on race days and we’d spend hours at the birdcage, me perched on her hip, choosing winners as the horses paraded by.
“Can you see which one it will be, Piccolina?” she would ask. That’s her nickname for me, Piccolina, it means little one.
I always chose the hot ones, of course. Won over by their flashy looks, I’d single out the horses that fretted and 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
