I slipped down and through the open space in the structure of the bleachers into a dark space full of the sound of the concert and the crowd.

I slipped down and through the open space in the structure of the bleachers into a dark space full of the sound of the concert and the crowd. Pieces of the structure slapped at my arms and legs as I fell, and something unseen bopped me on the forehead. But I had seen the shape of someone I thought I knew.

“Mando!” I cried out, falling. It all happened in an instant, in much less time than it takes to tell it.

He’d been closer to the front of the bleachers, standing with his hands to the sides of his head as if he’d been covering his ears. He moved in a familiar herky-jerk rhythm, not in time to the music, more as if his puppeteer were trying to fight off ants. But he heard.

He turned his head, and for an instant, our eyes met. Then I got the wind knocked out of me by an awkward landing that made a cracking sound when my ankle struck one of the ground braces of the stands.

He reached me in less than four strides where I lay on the summer-stunned grass of the vacant lot under the temporary bleachers. Something fell through the semi-darkness to land beside me. My purse probably kicked off the seat I’d just fallen from by the crowd, still dancing to Aron Jones singing, “Beat the Devil.”

“Got them no ‘count Dancin’ Blues,” Jones sang, and a Gatling-gun-drummer cut him down. “Mercy!” he screamed.

Armand knelt beside me, “D-D-Kissy?” he said wonderingly. “Are you all right? What are you doing down here? Did you fall?” His big face was all scrunched-up as he looked around in quick glances, searching for some explanation as to what I was doing under the stands at the concert.

My corset was making it hard to get my breath back. “Mando,” I whispered. “It was you we saw. Ow.” My head and neck hurt, and I had evidently hit my ankle on some structural part of the stands as well. That hurt so much I had trouble thinking.

“Who?” Armand asked. “I didn’t know you were here.” He looked around again. “Are you here with that big guy from the game?”

I tried to laugh, but it came out as gasps. Rory was taller, but Armand probably outweighed him by twenty pounds or more. All I could manage was a nod. “How—why—you?”

He guessed what I was trying to ask. “My aunt is Aron Jones’s lawyer. She gave me a ticket, ‘cause she knows I like the music. So I came down, but I forgot about how loud it would be.” He shook his head. “Even under here, it’s too loud.”

It was loud, but we weren’t quite shouting. Armand never could stand much noise— it’s why he dropped off the wrestling team back in high school. The echoes of even a small crowd in a gymnasium made him freak.

I got enough breath back to squeak, “You’re an idiot.” I meant it fondly, but it was true. Mando was always the last to remember his own peculiarities. I guess he thought of himself as just another one of the ordinary guys.

He flashed one of his grins and nodded. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

“Help me up?” I asked. He did, but I couldn’t stand on the ankle. “Ow, ow, ow!” I yelped. The pain went to the top of my head and came down the other side, leaving me a little sick feeling in my middle.

“You’re not okay,” he decided, and with that, he scooped me up into his arms. “Hmm,” he rumbled, clearly pleased with himself. “You smell nice, Kissy.”

“Thanks,” I said, putting my arms around his neck. The situation was absurd, and I giggled. I’d never felt the slightest bit of romantic interest in Armand before he picked me up. I guess I’m just—face it—turned on by big strong guys who can be gentle.

Knowing that Armand, at least according to Rory, had thought of me as female even before I started being Kissy had some effect, too. I lay my head against his wide chest and sighed. I liked this, I decided.

A voice interrupted my thoughts. “What the hell?” Rory had shown up. He sounded confused and angry, but I couldn’t see him.

“I fell through the bleachers,” I called out. “Mando was down here hiding from the noise.”

“Hey, Rory,” Armand put in. “You need to keep better track of your girlfriend.”

Suddenly Rory was there beside us, just as the sun finally fell below the horizon and darkness washed in like a tide. “Are you hurt?” he asked me.

“Uh-huh,” I said with a princessy little whimper. “I hit my head, and I landed badly on my ankle, and—and—,” I realized I was going to burst into tears just before I did it. Damn hormones, I thought.

“Give her to me, Mando,” Rory demanded.

“Nuh-uh,” Armand grunted. “It’s too dark under here. We might drop her.”

Responding to that, Rory pulled out his phone and used the flashlight app to light up the space we were in.

I had the hiccups again, and I was scared and still crying.

“Put her down,” Rory ordered. “Then you hold the light while I pick her up.” The words sounded reasonable, but I had never heard that mean tone from Rory, not even when Dr. Bellerophon threatened me with Bad Axe.

“Nuh-uh,” Armand countered, and he started toward the end of the bleachers where the temporary fence separated the impromptu stadium from the rest of the empty lot.

Rory grabbed his shoulder, but Armand shook him off without changing his grip on me. “Let’s get out of the dungeon before we start a party brawl,” I protested.

“Why is he carrying you?” Rory demanded.

“I can’t walk on my ankle,” I explained. I had stopped crying but still sniffled a bit.

“Turn off that flashlight or get in front of me,” Armand ordered. “The shadows you’re making are very distracting.”

“Stop then,” said Rory. Armand stopped, and Rory moved past him to take the lead, giving me a squeeze on the arm in passing. “Babe,” he murmured. He sounded concerned but maybe still a bit angry.

We moved toward the end of the bleacher section where it would be possible to exit into the concourse around the concert seating. Rory and Armand argued as we walked.

Armand asked. “Why did you leave her alone, Calhoun?” A nickname for Rory I’d never heard used before, or maybe one Armand made up on the spot. “She wouldn’t have fallen if you had stayed with her.”

Rory made a noise like an angry gargle. “I saw you stalking her and went looking for you to tell you to knock it off.”

“Woof,” said Armand. “I wasn’t talking or even following her. I got tickets for this concert from my aunt.” The words were mild, but delivered in Armand’s usual near monotone, they seemed fraught with menace. His flat affect could sound scary if you didn’t know him well.

We emerged from the under-bleacher darkness, and Rory flicked off his flashlight app. I had gotten over my weepiness and felt a bit pissed at both of them. The testosterone in the air affected me, too, and I didn’t like it.

“So it’s just a coincidence that you keep turning up?” demanded Rory.

Armand ignored his question to ask, “Do you think you can walk, Kissy?”

I nodded against his chest. “Put me down,” I told him.

“Give her to me,” Rory said, stepping up.

“No,” I insisted. “Just put me down.”

“Babe.” Rory sounded hurt. “You mad at me?”

“Not exactly,” I admitted. “But I’m not happy at the moment. And I want to see if I can walk.”

Armand put me on my feet but kept an arm around my waist. I tried to take a step with Rory on my other side, but the ankle protested with a flash of pain that made me sick at my stomach again. I whimpered, biting back a scream.

Predictably, they both tried to pick me up.

“I am not a chew toy!” I protested when they pulled on my arms, but neither would let go. “Guys! Cut it out!”

Suddenly, it wasn’t tugging and yanking but pushing and shoving. I staggered out from between them and found myself clinging to a bleacher support beam. Waves of pain from my misaligned ankle made me cross my eyes.

The boys grunted and snarled and called each other names. “Rainman!” Rory accused, prompting Armand to respond with a more visceral if less clever, “Jockstrap!”

“Stop it, stop it, stoppit!” I squeaked. I wanted to hit them with something, but I needed both hands to hold myself upright. A roar from the bleachers above us signaled the end of Y-NOT’s first set. I knew from having seen the show on HBO that the break would be filled with recorded music and a performance by the Jazz-in-Motion Dancers, so it didn’t really get quiet.

Armand had picked Rory up in a body hug and slammed him into another steel beam holding up the stands while my date chopped at Mando’s thick neck, big hands held like knives. A crowd had begun to form around them, adding encouraging yips and squeals to the noise.

I couldn’t even hear myself, so I was free to say whatever. “Stupid! Stupid! Stupid heads!” I raged ineffectively. My tiara slipped over one eye, and my purse threatened to escape my grasp.

I couldn’t have heard her in all the racket, but somehow I knew she was there before she touched my arm. I looked at her in her skinny jeans, green polo shirt and tan Nike windbreaker. My mouth was open, so I may have been shouting at her. Had I been expecting her to show up? I probably should have.

She leaned close. “Let me get you out of here,” Marjorie said right into my ear.