Authors: Tera Lynn Childs
“Let’s just say I owe Petrolas a favor.”
“Because Damian readmitted you after your expulsion?”
I slap a hand over my mouth. The question slipped out before I knew it was coming. I totally want to know, of course, but I totally
don’t
want to get zapped to Siberia. Xander definitely gives off a cross-me-and-you’ll-never-be-heard-from-again vibe.
I brace myself for subarctic temperatures.
“Not exactly,” he says as we reach a wide spot in the trail—if the barely visible, less dense path is a trail. Picking up his pace, he passes me. “And I didn’t say
which
Petrolas.”
I’m left watching his back as he catches up with my team. He has definitely cornered the market on enigma. I hope Stella goes for the deeply layered type.
“I found one!”
The piercing little-girl shriek echoes through the woods. I follow the sound of yelps and giggles to where my team and Xander have gathered. They’re pointing at a white flag hanging from a low tree branch.
“This is one of ours,” Tansy insists. “I’m sure of it.”
“Remember,” Xander says, “if you choose the wrong flag, then you’ll lose a point and give the rightful team a two-point bonus.”
Note that rebel boy said “you,” not “we.” And he thinks
I
don’t understand the team concept.
Though no one appears interested in my opinion, I evaluate the flag.
According to Xander’s instructions, all the flags on the course look identical. White. We can’t trust appearances to know which one is ours. As soon as we touch the flag, it will change colors—to black if it belongs to us, to red, blue, or yellow if it belongs to Stella, Adara, or Miss Orivas. But we can’t know for sure until we touch it.
“You have to
feel
the flag.” Xander leans casually against a tree. “See beyond the surface.” He looks at me. “If you can.”
I scowl at him. In a perfect world, the tree would be swarming with ants.
Maybe if I concentrate, I can—
“I think we should grab it,” Gillian says, taking a step toward the tree.
Out of the corner of my eye I see her reaching . . . for a
red
flag.
“Wait!” I dive in front of her, pushing her hand out of the way inches before she could touch the still-white flag.
“What are you doing?” Gillian cries.
Muriel crosses her arms over her chest and glares at me.
“What, Phoebe?” Tansy asks, seeming truly interested in my opinion. From the murderous looks on Gillian and Muriel’s faces and the total disinterest on Xander’s, she’s the only one who wants to hear what I have to say. “Don’t you think this is our flag?”
I glance at the flag again. It’s still white. I have no reason to think Gillian’s wrong—especially since
I’m
the one with the defective powers. She’s probably decades ahead of me in the whole powers-control thing. But for that instant I was so sure it—
Red. For another split second the flag was red.
“No.” I shake my head. “This isn’t ours. This flag is red.”
“Whatever,” Gillian says, reaching for the flag again.
Tansy gasps. “I see it, too.”
Gillian and Muriel stare at her like she’s betrayed them.
She points at the flag. “Look.”
They both turn and squint. Gillian’s mouth drops. Muriel huffs and stomps away. “Let’s go find our flags.” She ducks under a pine branch. “I am
not
losing to Tressa Boyd.”
Gillian hurries after her. As Xander passes me, he says, “Nice catch, Castro.”
I just keep blinking, not quite believing what I just did. When I looked at the flag, I saw the white mask or whatever. When I was thinking about something else, though, only catching sight in my peripheral vision, I could see the true color.
“That was amazing,” Tansy says, her voice laced with a sense of awe. “You didn’t even have to concentrate or anything.”
No, I didn’t. In fact, concentrating made it worse.
Stella’s exercise the other night proved that my powers come from my mind. But how am I supposed to control them if focusing doesn’t help?
“We’d better hurry up,” Tansy says. “I bet Gillian tries to grab the wrong flag again. If you’re not there to stop her, we’ll lose for sure.”
I let Tansy lead me up the path, but my mind is still thinking about my powers. And how I only have less than two weeks to figure out how to control them when
trying
to control them sends them out of control.
At this point, I really shouldn’t be surprised by being tossed into such a vicious circle. Try to control my powers, and they go berserk. Train more, control less. Stay on at the Academy to learn how to use my powers, but be forced to pass a powers test first. Lately, my whole life is one big exercise in contradiction.
“Congratulations, Phoebe,” Stella says when camp breaks up for the day. “Xander says you found two of your team’s flags, and saved them from choosing three wrong ones.”
I shrug. It’s not like I actually
did
something to succeed. “No big.”
“It is a big,” she insists. “Most
neos
are lucky to find one. They almost never identify enemy flags. You’ve earned your second merit badge. ”
She hands me another round patch. This one has a red outer ring, a black background, and the center picture looks like a magician’s wand with little sparks coming out the end. I guess it has something to do with masking appearances or making something invisible. Making the colored flags look white.
Big whoop.
I glance around to make sure everyone else is gone. I don’t want to get caught confessing to the evil stepsister.
“But what good does it do me?” I ask when I’m sure we’re alone. “If I try to use my powers, they go wacky. It’s only when I’m not thinking about it that they come out right.”
“Hmm.” Stella taps a French-manicured finger on her lips. “There has to be a way to reverse that. Or at least harness it.”
I can see the gears turning, her mind working to figure out the solution.
“Maybe you’re overthinking, overanalyzing,” she suggests. “There’s an exercise designed to—”
“Forget it,” I say, walking away. I’m so not up for Stella’s full attention right now. After six hours of indirect powers usage in the company of ten-year-olds—except, as I found out, Tansy . . . she’s twelve—my mind is fried. “I can’t think about this anymore right now.”
“We can try that exercise tonight,” she calls out.
Following the path around the quad, I pass the girls’ dorm. I’m thankful I don’t have to live there. Sharing my bathroom with Stella is bad enough. I can’t imagine sharing with an entire floor full of girls. Like Adara. I feel sorry for Nicole—she is so not the slumber-party type, but she’s on the same floor as the cheer queen and three of her cheer minions.
As Nicole puts it, she’s trapped in cheerland. This is her fourth summer in the dorms. Maybe she’s built up a defense against Aphrodite’s descendants.
Or, knowing Nicole, maybe she’s placed some kind of curse on her door so they can’t get into her room.
I’ll have to ask her.
Detouring from the path, I decide to see if she’s home. Maybe she can shed some light on the anonymous e-mail.
Her room is at the end of the first floor, with a great view out over the quad. Even if I didn’t know which one was hers, I’d be able to guess—it’s the only one with a sign that says KNOCK AT YOUR OWN PERIL just below a skull and crossbones. Braving the warning—but making sure to knock on the door itself, and
not
the sign—I rap my knuckles on the smooth wood surface.
No response. If she were here, I’d at least get a threatening “Who is it?”
I’m not ready to go home and I don’t want to be alone. Classes should be out for the day. Maybe Troy is in his room.
I head back out and toward the boys’ dorm and climb the front steps and the two flights of stairs to his third-floor room. My quads cry out a little at the climb, reminding me that recovery time is a good thing. When I reach the room with a giant foam guitar on the door, I knock. Three seconds later, Troy pulls it open.
“Phoebe,” he says with huge smile. “What are you doing here?”
“Camp just ended,” I say. “I was heading home and thought I’d stop by.”
“Get your butt in here, Castro,” Nicole barks.
Troy swings the door wide so I can see Nic lounging on the bean-bag in the corner. She’s just sliding a big leather book into her messenger bag.
She waves me in. “We’ve been waiting for you to show up.”
“What’s up?” I ask.
“I don’t know what Nic’s doing here,” he teases. When she casts a scowl his way, he grabs the guitar off his bed and sets in on the stand next to his desk. “I was just about to play for some stress relief. My brain was not made for organic chemistry.”
“I don’t want to interrupt.” I do, actually, but it seems way rude to say that. Even if I’m desperate for some reprieve from my own troubles.
“No worries.” He drops into his dorm-issue desk chair and motions me to the bed. “You’re stress relief, too.”
“Thanks,” I say, sinking onto his black-and-white-checkered comforter. “I don’t feel much like stress relief today.”
“Hard day at camp?” Nicole asks, pulling a bag of butterscotch candies out of her bag. She thrusts the bag in my direction.
Troy growls a little and frowns at the candy.
I lean over and take one. “Yes. No. I don’t know.” I twist open the cellophane wrapper. “It’s more than camp, I guess.”
Popping the butterscotch between my lips, I let the smoothly sweet taste melt over my tongue.
“Like what?” Nic asks.
Oh, everything. It’s that I can only control my powers when I’m not trying to. It’s that I’m afraid my boyfriend is getting back with his ex—or that I’m having an overreaction of jealousy. It’s that I’m stuck at home with Stella, with her taking me on as her pet project. It’s that I’m suddenly doubting what I learned about my dad’s death, my boyfriend’s loyalty, and my own sanity. It’s a million things and nothing.
Not that I say any of that. Don’t need to expose my friends to the insane ramblings of my brain. They might never recover.
“Like this.” I lift one hip and pull two pieces of paper from my back pocket.
Nicole snatches them from my hand.
After unfolding them, she says, “They’re blank.”
“I know.” I slide the butterscotch against my cheek so I can talk. “They’re not
supposed
to be blank. They’re
supposed
to be e-mail printouts.” I slip the butterscotch back onto my tongue and mutter, “
Th
tupid, cur
th
ed e-mails.”
“They wouldn’t print?” Troy asks.
I shake my head. When I received the second e-mail last night, almost identical to the first, I wanted a printout so I could I analyze them. Maybe find a clue to who sent them.
Forty-seven attempts later, all I had was blank paper.
“Huh.” Troy’s brows scrunch together. “Who were they from?”
“The same person who sent the note,” Nicole suggests.
“Probably.” Unable to resist, I crunch the butterscotch. Someday my teeth will be dust. “The sender’s address was blocked.”
“Blocked?” Troy’s eyes get all wide. “This was to your Academy e-mail?” When I nod, he shakes his head. “The Academy e-mail system doesn’t allow blocked senders.”
I shrug. As if I can change what happened.
“Show me.” He leaps up from his desk chair and waves me over. “Log on to your e-mail.”
With a heavy sigh, I push off the bed. It’s not that I don’t want to find out who sent the message, and how they managed to block the sender
and
keep it from printing. I am just running low on motivation.
When I’m slow to move, Troy takes my shoulders, urges me into the chair, and shoves me closer to the desk. Grabbing the mouse, I click the Academy e-mail logo and enter my user name and password.
“See.” I point at the blocked messages, still at the top of my inbox.
Troy leans over my shoulder, squinting at the screen. “I can’t believe it. Academy e-mail is impenetrable. No one can bypass the security system without major repercussions.”
“What about last year,” I ask, “when Griffin messed with my e-mail? Every time I deleted his message a new one popped up.”
“That’s different.” Troy rubs a hand back and forth over his short hair. “Anyone can create a simple hack on their own computer to automatically resend a message. But this messes with the Academy server. It’s impossible.”
“Maybe,” I say, thinking,
Clearly not
. “But that doesn’t change the fact that—”
“Let’s take this to Urian,” Nic says. “He’ll figure it out.”
“She’s right. The kid’s a genius.” Troy jerks the desk chair back, with me in it. “Let’s go.”
He hurries out into the hall. Nicole shrugs, like we both know he’s overreacting, but follows him through the door. When I get into the hall, I see Troy knocking on a door three rooms down. When there’s no answer, he rolls his eyes and knocks again, this time with a
knock-knock . . . knock . . . knock-knock-knock
pattern.
“Password?” a muffled voice says through the door.
“Chimera.”
No answer.
“Shoot,” Troy whispers. “That was yesterday’s password.” To the door, he says, “Scylla’s strait.”
Nicole rolls her eyes.
The door swings open silently.
“Don’t,” Troy whispers through clenched teeth, “laugh.”
We walk into a room straight out of
Star Wars
. Complete with crossed lightsabers over the desk, black curtains blocking out the window, and a life-size Han Solo cutout in the corner.
A giggle bubbles its way to the surface. Troy cuts me a harsh look and I stifle my humor. But seriously, a life-size Han Solo?
“State your purpose?”
Turning toward the voice, I see a short, dark-haired boy pushing the door closed. I can’t tell for sure—like I said, the window is blacked out and the only light in the room is coming from the glow of a computer monitor—but I don’t think I know him.
“Academy e-mail,” Troy says.
“Familiar,” the dark-haired boy says, leaving his post at the door and sliding into the chair in front of his computer. “Situation?”