Authors: Tera Lynn Childs
“Thank the gods,” Griffin gasps as we keep climbing.
I manage a smile that probably looks more like a wince. Griffin doesn’t notice—he’s too busy trying not to die.
“Sixty-three, sixty-two . . .” I manage, though my lungs and my quads and my everything are burning. Every last muscle in my body is screaming, desperately begging me to stop this insanity, to just drop down and die like a normal person.
But I’m not a normal person,
I tell my body.
I’m a runner. Pain is my game.
All this bodily rebellion tells me I’ve let my endurance go. Cutting back on my running time for the last few months to work on controlling my powers has made my running suffer—and it hasn’t done wonders for my powers, either.
A wave of endorphins washes over me, bringing that familiar feeling of invincibility. With crystal clarity, I know that somehow—I’m not sure exactly how, but somehow—everything will work out. I’ll get a hold on my powers. I’ll keep my race training on track. And I’ll learn to trust Griffin . . . somehow.
A girl can’t spend her whole life suffering the aftershocks of one bad boyfriend.
“When we reach the top,” Griffin wheezes between sucking breaths, “just push me over the edge.”
“Not on your life.” I wince-smile again. “Nineteen, eighteen, seventeen . . .”
He grunts, but keeps taking step after step.
We’re so close.
The muscle burn is overwhelming. I concentrate on the lactic-acid buildup in my quads, embracing the pain and knowing that it means my muscles are trying to work more efficiently. Trying to keep up with what I’m forcing them to do. I’ll pay them back later with a long soak in a hot bath.
“Three,” Griffin says, probably trying to hurry the countdown.
“Two.” I can almost feel the recovery that will begin as soon as we reach the peak.
“One.” He bursts up onto the top level of the stadium, raising his fisted hands in the air at our success . . . and then dropping them immediately when the exhaustion overtakes the thrill.
“We did it!” I join him and stop long enough to squeeze a quick hug around his waist.
“Let’s never do this again,” he gasps.
“Never again,” I agree as he turns and starts the final descent. Then I smile. “Until next week.”
I can hear his groan from a dozen steps away.
Before following him to the stadium floor, I hesitate, casting a glance out over the parapet to appreciate the view from this far up.
The island of Serfopoula stretches several miles to the east, covered in barren rocky patches and thick pine forest, interspersed with stretches of shrubby plains. To the north, a lush green valley peeks out between rolling hills. As I turn to descend one last time—for today, anyway—I think about how little of the island I’ve actually experienced. Since the school and the village are on the west end, I’ve only really seen that part. The only beaches I’ve run are on this end. I wonder if the beaches on the eastern shore are the same silky white sand?
“I think I’m going to die,” Griffin says as we reach the field and he collapses on the grass. “No. I think I
want
to die.”
“Don’t be silly,” I say, pacing a circle around his carcass. “Besides, we have to cool down.”
“I can’t move.”
“You have to.” I focus on my breathing as I reach down and grab his wrist, tugging him back to his feet. “You won’t be able to walk tomorrow if you don’t.”
Despite his groans, he follows me into a jog around the track.
After one lap at a casual pace—and on flat ground—my breathing has almost returned to normal and the burn in my quads has ebbed to a comfortable ache. Trust me, after this many years of running, a dull ache
is
comfortable. It’s comforting.
“If I didn’t know you adored me,” he says as we start our second lap, “I’d think you were trying to kill me.”
“Just imagine what I would do to someone I
don’t
like.”
Someone like Adara.
No. I shake my head. I will not let her sneak into my thoughts, into this time with Griffin. My time with him is limited enough this summer, between his job and my camp and the looming test and whoever is sending me on a wild-goose chase for the missing record of my dad’s trial.
Why can’t anything on this island be simple? At Pacific Park, the most dramatic thing that ever happened was a social nobody winning homecoming queen. One year at the Academy and suddenly I’m a goddess, dating a real-life hero, and hunting for a Mount Olympus record book.
“What do you know about the secret archives?” I ask absently.
Griffin stumbles. “The what?”
“The secret archives of Mount Olympus,” I repeat. “Come on, I know they’re not really a secret.”
“Oh,
those
secret archives.”
“Are there other secret archives?”
“Not that I know of.” He laughs. “What do
you
know about the secret archives?”
“Not as much as I’d like.” I shrug as we round lap two. “I know they contain the records of Mount Olympus and the remains of the Library of Alexandria.”
“Really?”
“And they have seriously limited access.”
“I don’t know much more,” he says. “What do you want to know?”
There are so many possible questions. How far back do the records go? What else do the archives hold? Who files the documents? But there is only one question I care about.
“I want to know how someone would steal one of the records—”
Griffin stumbles again. “You don’t want to—”
“—and why they would steal the record of my dad’s trial.”
“Someone stole that?” he asks as we slow to a walk. “How do you know?”
“Because when Nicole and I went looking for it yesterday, it was gone.”
“So that’s how . . .” He shakes his head, scowling, and then starts over. “That’s how you knew about the archives.”
I’m pretty sure that’s not what he started to say.
“I don’t know why someone would steal your dad’s record,” he replies. “There’s a rumor about a secret entrance to the library. If someone wanted to get in and out of the secret archives unnoticed, that might be how.”
Great. A rumor of a secret entrance to the secret archives. How is that supposed to help me? I feel like I’ve been dropped into the middle of a Harry Potter book. Next, some evil genius is going to be plotting to kill me.
We finish our cooldown laps and make our way through the tunnel to the campus quad. As we reemerge into the morning sun, I hang back a step to admire Griffin in his fresh-from-a-workout glory. His nicely tanned arms and legs are glistening with sweat, the moisture catching the low-angle sun like a mirror rippling with every move of his lean muscles.
When he realizes I’m not at his side, Griffin turns, catches me ogling, and his mouth spreads in that cocky grin I love so much.
“Enjoying the view?” he teases.
“Maybe.” I saunter up to him, then—unable to keep up the coy act—wrap my arms around his neck and tug him close until our foreheads touch. “You have a problem with me looking?”
Shaking his head slowly against mine, he hums,
“Huh-uh.”
Then his hand cups the back of my neck and he pulls my mouth the few inches to meet his. I love the feel of his soft lips against mine. Nine months of kissing him whenever I want and I still can’t get enough.
I slip my arms farther around his neck, stretching myself into him and up into the kiss. When he drops his hands to press against my lower back, shivers race down my spine and over my exhausted muscles. He’s mine, all mine. No one else gets to kiss him like this.
An image—a memory—flashes into my mind. Of Griffin. Of me watching him across the crowded school cafeteria while he is locked in exactly this embrace. With Adara.
I jerk back.
It feels like a bucket of ice water emptied over me.
Removing myself from Griffin’s arms, I take a step back.
“I, uh . . .” The stabbing pain around my heart is worse than any lactic-acid buildup. I know it isn’t fair, holding something from the past against him. But is it really in the past? I can’t think. I need to get away from him so my brain can return to seminormal function. “Gotta go.”
“Yeah,” he says, breathing heavy. “You’d better hurry if you’re getting a shower before camp.”
Right. Camp.
I glance down at my sweat-soaked I RUN THEREFORE I AM CRAZY T-shirt and shorts. For a second I consider going as is—and taking every opportunity to brush my stinky self up against Adara. But then I remember my dignity—and her e-mail last night about not wearing shorts. As much as I’d like to completely ignore her instructions, I don’t want to wind up bit by a snake or a hydra or some other creepy-crawly just to spite her. With my luck, today would be fight-a-mythological-monster day.
“You’re right,” I say before I get sucked into those bright blue eyes for a lifetime or two. “I need a shower.” Pressing a quick kiss to his mouth, I ask, “Maybe you can come by after you get back from Serifos?”
“I’ll have to help Aunt Lili put everything away.” He gives me a lopsided grin. “But I’ll try to steal away. Why don’t we meet at the dock at seven for a sunset walk on the beach.”
“We could always fit in another training run,” I tease.
Griffin groans. “Are you trying to kill me?”
I glance at my watch and realize just how late I am.
“Of course not,” I say, backing away across the quad. “If you were dead, who would I train with?”
“Today we are going to do a team exercise called Navigator,” Stella explains as I try to slip unnoticed into the group assembled behind the maintenance shed. She glares at me. I’m not
that
late. A minute or two. Five at the most.
“We have divided you into four teams—three teams of three and one team of four.” Adara throws me a glare of her own, like I intentionally ruined her even division of teams. She gives me too little credit for inventiveness—like giving her an odd number of campers is the worst thing I could think of—and too much credit for interest in her. I have better things to do with my mental faculties than make her life miserable. It may be a bonus effect, but I have plenty of my own miseries to worry about.
“Each team will be assigned a supervisor, either Miss Orivas, Stella, Xander, or myself.” She flips over a page on her clipboard and reads aloud. “The teams are as follows . . .”
As Adara reads the names on the list of teams, I glance around at the ten-year-olds. They are all dutifully wearing pants and either sneakers or hiking shoes. She lists the members of the first three teams, those supervised by Stella, Adara, and Miss Orivas. The girls line up behind their assigned leader.
“The remaining four campers—Tansy, Muriel, Gillian, and Phoebe,” Adara says, with an extra-sugary-sweet grin at me, “are assigned to Xander.”
“Each supervisor will now explain the exercise,” Stella says. “The teams are not allowed further communication until Navigator is over.”
As Stella, Adara, and Miss Orivas lead their girls in separate directions for the debriefing or whatever, Xander doesn’t move from the spot where he’s comfortably leaning against the maintenance shed. My three teammates settle into the grass at his feet.
He glances at me and raises a brow.
The rebel thing doesn’t do it for me. I move to stand behind the older girl—I think her name is Tansy—and cross my arms. As if I’m going to sit at his feet.
“Navigator,” Xander begins, “is an exercise in strategy, teamwork, and most of all, trust.”
Again with the trust thing? We’ve already done that.
He pushes away from the shed and jerks some pink papers from his back pocket. As he hands them to Gillian he says, “Hidden in the woods behind us are a dozen team flags. Three for each team.”
Tansy twists around to hand me one of the papers. It’s an odd-looking map, with a series of twisting trails, bushy kindergarten-looking trees, and a dozen
X
s marked in evenly distributed spots. There’s a map legend at the bottom and the
I
s are dotted with little hearts. Adara’s handiwork, no doubt.
Although, with Stella’s crazy crush on rebel boy, she might have sunk to heart-doodling, too.
“Are we to find the flags?” the third girl on my team—what was her name?—asks.
“Let him finish, Muriel,” Gillian says.
“Yes, Muriel,” Xander says, not a flicker of emotion in his lavender eyes, “we will find the flags. The trick is finding the
right
flags.”
Whatever that’s supposed to mean.
Fifteen minutes later, I’m traipsing through the woods behind the ten-year-olds, with Xander bringing up the rear. This is the dumbest game I’ve ever played. Like I don’t have better things to do than hunt for stupid flags in a stupid forest. I could be visiting Serifos with Griffin or helping Nicole with her research project or figuring out who is sending me mysterious messages.
“You’re falling behind.”
I don’t have to glance over my shoulder to know Xander is right behind me. “And your point is?”
“This is a team effort.” Twigs crack beneath our steps. “Maybe, since running is an individual sport, you’re not familiar with the concept.”
Like he has a clue. Sure, each race is an individual runner against other individual runners, but there’s also the overall competition. Every race is worth team points. A different number of points for each scoring place—the number of scoring places determined by how many runners are in the race. If there are thirty runners, then usually the first three finishers get points for their team. These points accumulate over the course of the meet, and the
team
with the highest total at the end wins the overall.
I’m never racing only for myself.
But I don’t expect him to understand. Stomping harder across the forest floor, I retort, “And just what teams have you been on?”
“I never said I was a team player.”
“Then why are you here?” I ask. He seems more like the type to take a solo motorcycle trip across China than to spend his summer babysitting tweens and
dynamotheos
rejects. “You’re not exactly oozing enthusiasm.”