obstacle course like no other.
Sure, it had the wooden bars, old rubber tyres, ropes, step ladders, chain bridges and metal poles, but unlike the obstacle courses at fun fairs and amusement parks, this one included real electric fences, real fire pits and real sharp, turning blades.
A handful of staff members assembled the course in under five minutes. It sure helps to have super speed, sometimes.
Of course, irony would have it that none of the Gamma Accidents would be paired together, and that they would be paired with the last person on Earth they wanted (or expected) to be teamed with.
Bella was less than thrilled with her selected partner. She really should have seen it coming. Who else would she be paired with than Sara Cover?
"Terrific," was all Bella mumbled before walking away from her friends to stand by her obstacle course partner.
"Don't hold me back," Sara warned, looking down her nose at Bella.
"Like I could be bothered to hold you back," Bella retorted.
She knew she was going to be run in the ground... she just knew it.
Janie, although upset she couldn't go with her twin, was uplifted by the fact she got paired with Jack. Unlike his bumbling friends, Jack seemed like he could keep pace with her.
Caleb was paired with a straight-faced, unenthusiastic kid who seemed to have no interest in Caleb's attempts to be friends.
Ethan, for a change from the norm, was teamed with someone nice. His partner was a girl practically half his height, with short, feathery black hair and cheerful green eyes. She seemed sweet.
Ty didn't have such luck. His obstacle course buddy was tall, nearly as tall as Jack was, but he seemed, to Ty, to be taller than the Empire State building. His huge muscles and unimpressed expression plastered on his tanned face only made Ty feel worse.
Ty had always been lean and slight. But under the glare of the tall, wrestler of a teenager... Ty couldn't help but feel like a toothpick.
"I'm Ty," he introduced himself, desperately trying to stop his knees from shaking.
The towering teenager looked down at Ty. "Dean," was all he said. Ty felt like passing out from sheer fear.
"Okay," Mr Hilton said, standing at the beginning of the obstacle course. "This is how we work it: the pairs enter the course ten seconds from each other, to avoid confusion and tumbles. You must work with your partner to get across all the obstacles... alive."
Ty raising an unsteady hand. Mr Hilton nodded for him to continue. "What if we get hurt?" he asked, trying not to look at his formidable partner.
"Don't," Mr Hilton replied, simply. He blew his whistle and the first team ran off.
On the course, it was mayhem, to say the least.
It was noisy, it was fast, it all happened at once and it was difficult.
Bella had never been too bad at obstacle courses. She always beat the boys, as long as Jack didn't use his super speed and Caleb didn't bounce.
But this one she struggled with, a lot.
The first hurdle was simple: a six-metre high rock wall.
There were no safety harnesses or ropes, though. If you slipped and fell, you fell on a worn and hardened foam mat.
Sara simply flew over it, leaving Bella behind to climb her way up. It took Bella five minutes to get past and onto the next obstruction.
Monkey bars. Plain, metal bars painted red... hanging over a large, fake crater filled with water.
As she clung to the bars, suspended above the water, Bella couldn't help but wonder if they had put sharks in the water...
Sara, again, flew past the bars, this time stopping to hover over Bella. A mean expression on her usually pretty face, Sara flew around Bella like a mini tornado, making the girl dizzy.
Bella lost her grip, near the end; her right hand slipping and leaving her dangling from her strained left arm.
Knowing she was never good at regaining her grip, Bella started swinging herself. Back and forth, until she was a swinging pendulum, clinging to a red, metal bar with her left arm.
When she decided she could make it, she released her grip and fell, straight onto the platform on the other side.
Knowing she was losing time, Bella ran to the next obstacle: a basic chain bridge. It was longer than any chain bridge Bella had seen before, but it was still the easiest part of the course.
All around her, kids flew past as blurs, jumped like human bouncy balls, created bridges of ice and slid along or got far ahead and turned around, just to muck about and mess with the slower kids.
From the chain bridge, Bella could see her friends.
Ethan and the small teenage girl were going along just fine. The girl seemed to be able to control plants, and grew a strong, sturdy vine for her and Ethan to walk across at the monkey bars obstacle.
Caleb was bouncing, happily, on top of the monkey bars, his partner swimming in the water and punching the mechanical sharks that lunged for him.
Bella couldn't see Ty, however. She guessed he had shrunk to his smallest size: she saw how scared he was of his partner. She couldn't figure out what power Dean Lightbody had, though.
Then, she turned and saw Jack and Janie, far in front of her. Bella didn't know what other powers Janie and Sara had, but she knew they both could fly. Janie, though, was happy just to go through the course on foot.
Bella was afraid Jack wouldn't stick with his old friends. After all, technically, he had inherited his powers from his superhero father. His dad was known as a great hero, until his unfortunate death seven years ago.
Jack didn't have to remain an outcast, like his friends. He wasn't actually a gamma accident. He could be one of the popular kids, with Janie and Sara.
Maybe that's what he wanted... Bella shook the thought out her head. Jack was practically her brother. He wouldn't just leave his friends, not for something as trivial as popularity.
Caleb caught up to Bella on the bridge. "Howdy!" he greeted.
Bella smiled. "How's it going with you and Mr That's-Not-Funny?"
Caleb rolled his eyes. "He didn't even smile when I told him the bean joke."
Bella laughed, for his sake. "I love that joke."
Caleb beamed. "Glad to know I'm not losing my sense of humour." He looked around. "Hey, where's your partner?"
Bella pointed to the end of the obstacle course where a smug Sara stood, arms crossed, watching Bella slowly make her way through, alone.
"That's so mean!" Caleb stated, his tone filled with indignation. "She shouldn't do that to you. Mr Hilton said-"
"Don't worry about me, kiddo. This isn't a race."
"But how are you going to make it through the spinning blades? You can only glow, remember?"
She nodded. "I know."
"I'll help you," Caleb offered, earnestly. "My partner doesn't like me anyway. He keeps trying to ditch me. I can-"
Bella again cut him off. "Caleb, thanks, but I... I have to do this on my own."
"What if you get hurt?"
"Well, then I know not to trust flying blondes again."
Caleb knew Bella wanted to end the conversation, so he said nothing more and continued with the course.
8
Bella managed to get past the fire pit and the electric fences with minimum difficulty.
At first, she thought she was finished. She stood, staring at the fire pit below her, dread growing deep inside.
Only when she raised her eyes did she realize a rope hung above the blazing fire pit.
Backing up, Bella psyched herself up, put her head down and ran. She launched herself through the air and snagged the rope, feeling the intense warmth of the fire pit reaching up and heating up her feet within her sneakers. Her heart pounded so hard she could have sworn it was about to burst.
She swung across and landed on the wooden crates on the other side, amazed at how easy the hurdle proved to be.
The electric fences were harder. Ten-foot high, wire fences laced with live electricity towered over Bella. She felt lower than defeated.
&n
bsp; Bella stood there, watching flyers fly past, bouncers bounce across and stretchers stretch over, all with confidence but herself feeling afraid and unsure.
Suddenly, it came to her. With a half-smug smile on her face, Bella simply walked around the fences.
When on the other side, and no one having stopped her, Bella continued, gaining confidence with every hurdle passed.
All that confidence evaporated when she was faced with the treacherous, spinning, razor blades.
There was no way around, no way over and almost certainly no way through.
You had to rely solely on your powers or your partner to get you past this one.
There was no way she could make it. Not without her partner, who was still smiling, arrogantly, at the end of the course.
Bella couldn't do it. She could only glow and of what use was a walking nightlight right now?
She couldn't stand there and do nothing, either. She couldn't go back, couldn't leave and couldn't walk through.
She was stuck.
She needed help, she really did, but Sara had left her on her own and Mr Hilton hadn't noticed. Or, maybe he had, but wanted to see Bella perform alone.
She watched the blades, wondering if there was a moment, a split second, that she could slip past.
It wasn't much, but she realized every ten seconds, two blades in the middle spun away from each other just long enough to create a clear path.
Swallowing hard, struggling to keep her heart from bursting and feeling her cheeks burning red, Bella waited for the gap and ran.
The blades were layered; rows and rows of sharp, spinning metal gyrating at lightning speed.
There were small gaps in between the rows of speedily rotating wheels, just big enough for a sixteen-year-old girl, sucking in with all her