Estoy en la Banda. And the band had never been louder.
Leo hit it again. Still dead.
He swung.
“ Estás en la Banda ,” Abuela Carmen whispered. You are in the Band.
Leo wanted to be made for something. Anything. Estoy en la Banda
He did—a clumsy, angry thwack. The sound was dead, flat. The band stopped. Mateo winced.
It was the summer the asphalt melted in Seville, and thirteen-year-old Leo Díaz had exactly two problems: his older brother, Mateo, was a saint, and he was not. Still dead
Leo closed his eyes. He thought of the hot pavement. The way his mother hummed while frying churros. The pause before Mateo took a breath before his solo. That pause. That tiny, trembling silence where everything waited.