“Please don’t what?” George has overheard us whispering.
“Nothing!” Gracie says with a frown.
I turn to George. “She’s got a crush on a much older guy. I don’t want her to hang around him.”
George raises one eyebrow. “Who is it?”
“Don’t!” Gracie screams at the same time as I say, “Daniel, one of the guys you’ve just had dinner with.”
“Hmmm.” George makes a noise and looks serious. “Okay, yeah. He’s definitely too old.”
“I hate you! I hate you both!” Gracie wails, and suddenly turns around and takes off.
“Gracie! Stop!” I exclaim in her wake. “Please don’t be like this. . . .”
But my little sister turns a corner beyond the food court enclosure and walks with long jerking strides and furious determination, her long dark blond hair swinging down her back, until she disappears into a large rowdy group of Candidates with mostly green tokens.
George and I both stand sheepishly staring at her retreat. What would Mom and Dad want or expect us to do in such a situation? I think, while this new anxiety rips through me. George’s expression seems to say, Yeah, I’ve got nothing.
“All right, what drama did I miss?” Laronda says. She’s been chatting with Dawn, Logan, and Gordie, a few steps away near the service cart that we’ve just loaded with our empty trays.
“You really don’t want to know.” I sigh, tiredly.
Laronda nods, and looks like she has a pretty good idea.
Meanwhile, I notice Logan has made a point of sticking around with us, instead of heading out with the other Reds. Maybe he just wants to hang out with George whom apparently he seems to know a little from school. That would make total sense.
On the other hand, maybe he really meant it when he said he’ll help me train?
“Is it eight o’clock yet?” Dawn Williams rubs her skinny arms and scratches her elbows. “I want to head back to the Dorm before first curfew. Can’t afford another demerit. Those things add up.”
“How does that weird Homework Hour curfew work anyway?” Gordie pushes his glasses up his nose past the purple bruise that appears to have turned an even darker shade since earlier this evening. “Supposing you have to meet up with an Instructor in this building, but then you need to walk back to your own Dorm later, but you were doing legit homework stuff, so—what’s the deal? How do you prove to them you were not goofing off?”
“I have no idea,” I mutter. I am still thinking about Gracie. Maybe I should go after her, look for her all over the place if I have to, right now. . . .
“The Instructor probably scans your token,” Logan answers Gordie, meanwhile coming around to stand next to me. His warm hazel eyes look into mine. “So—you ready to do some running, Yellow Candy?”
“What’s with the ‘Yellow Candy?’ He-he-he!” Gordie says with a snort followed by a small grin. Meanwhile George turns and pauses to look at me for a second longer than usual. Is there a tiny little grin also, on my jerk big brother’s face? Ugh. . . .
I blush and blush. . . . No one seems to notice, or if they do, no one’s saying anything. So of course I have to open my mouth. “We’re all Candies,” I attempt to explain. “You know, it’s the four color Candies—”
“Yeah, yeah,” Laronda says diplomatically. “Dawn, ready to head back to Yellow Dorm Eight? I think I’ll do my loser homework down in our own gym on the monkey bars. This Arena place is just too huge. Don’t want all those people watching my booty as I make a damn fool of myself.”
“And I’m going to go upstairs and check out the Atlantean Instructors offices.” Gordie points upward. “Not that I need to, but just because. I want to see what’s up there on the top level.”
“I’ll go with you,” George quickly adds, without meeting my eyes. “Okay, later, Gee Two, later, folks!” He and Gordie start walking away.
“Okay . . .” I mutter.
Logan and I are suddenly alone.
Just the two of us.
Chapter 15
Logan Sangre and I walk from the food court to the edge of the gym area where the track begins. The floor of the track is made of some kind of soft and rubbery material. I’m assuming this type of surface is easier on your feet than ordinary flooring. It’s brick red in color, with eight painted lanes and other markings in white.
A few Candidates are using the track already, running laps. I see one girl from my Dorm jogging by.
We stand before the track.
“This is so embarrassing,” I say, quickly looking up into his eyes, before anything else happens, because my mind is reeling with a combination of terror and excitement. “I suck so badly at this. . . . You’re probably going to laugh when you see me run—either that or you’ll just want to cry.”
Logan exhales. Suddenly I feel his hands come around and squeeze my shoulders, as he moves in and looks at me gently. Whoa!
“No problem, Gwen. Nothing to be embarrassed about.” His face is so serious in that moment, and oh, so beautiful. “This Qualification—this whole situation is abnormal. No one can expect you to know how to run, to be particularly good at it, or to know how to do any of these other impossible things they expect of us, out of the blue. . . . Do what you can, the best you can. And I will help you. All right?”
I nod. The feel of his strong hands around my shoulders, fingers pressing lightly, has turned me into a puddle, and at the same time I am giddy as if I’m twelve, like Gracie. If only he knew!
“And no,” he adds, leaning in over me, so that our foreheads are almost touching. “I would never laugh. Not at you. Not at the way you or any other beginner might run. If I did, it would make me the worst kind of jerk. I hope you don’t think that’s what I am.”
“Oh, no! Of course not!”
Logan smiles, and his face just lights up. “Okay! In that case, let’s see how ‘awful’ you really are. Go on and start running. I’ll catch up with you in a few, but first I want to watch your form.”
“My form? Um, how? What should I do?” I say, like a total dummy.
“Just pick a lane—let’s say the middle one—and try to stay in it. Now, go!”
I step onto the track, take a deep breath and start running.
When I say running, I mean, I am barely moving at a jog, my arms flailing uselessly every which way, and my wobbly feet striking the surface of the track. Only about thirty paces in, and my breath is already coming in ragged. The compounded exhaustion of the second day of uncustomary physical effort has taken its toll. I am panting like a dog, my knees start to wobble, and the raw blisters on my feet are killing me—you know, all the same horrible stuff that’s been happening every time I try to run.
I’ve barely gone around one fifth of the track, when I hear Logan come up running from behind me. He’s moving without any discernable effort, legs pumping evenly, and now he runs at my side. The only sound he’s making is the light metal jangle of a key chain in his pocket, attached to a small knife. Not sure why, as I’m fighting to catch my breath, but I think of this knife of his that he’d taken out the other night when we were at Gracie’s Red Dorm Five. . . .
Three seconds later I stop and bend over clutching my knees. Feels like the inside of my head’s going around in crazy circles, and I am about to die.
“Don’t stop moving,” he says, slowing down beside me. “Now, just walk. The key to building endurance is regular intervals of running and rest. You run, then you walk to recover. Then you run some more. And repeat. With time you’ll be able to run longer, and need fewer intervals of walking. That’s all there is to it.”
“But there isn’t any time . . .” I pant, as we walk side by side. “I kind of need a crash course, now.”
He shakes his head with a light smile. “It doesn’t work that way, unfortunately. The best you can do is improve gradually.”
“Oh jeez. . . . I really suck, don’t I?”
“Yeah, you do. The good news is
, you don’t suck as badly as you think. Or as badly as you could possibly suck under the circumstances.”
“Thanks—I think? See, there you go, you’re laughing at me!” I glance at him, but I am smiling too.
“Key word here is, you can improve.” He watches me playfully. “Of course, it also depends on the condition of your body and your determination.”
I make a grimace and wipe the escaped tendrils of hair off my wet forehead with the back of my hand. “I’m pretty determined, I suppose. As for my body—”
His steady gaze sweeps me up and down, and suddenly I feel a full body flush coming on.
“Your body is—fine,” he says after the tiniest pause during which he is looking at me closely and more intensely than before. “You are tall, and have long legs which will always give you the advantage of a longer stride. I have no doubt you will catch up quickly.”
“So . . .” I say, because I don’t know what else to do in that crazy-intense moment. “What about my ‘form,’ as you say? What should I do to improve faster?”
“Besides practicing?” Logan continues to watch me with his amazing hazel brown eyes. “I noticed that you either flail your arms too much or keep your hands clenched up, and too close to your chest when you pump your arms. Don’t do that. Instead, keep your hands open rather than in fists, your arms loose, and your elbows at a 90-degree angle.”
He takes my right arm and flexes it at the elbow gently, making a right angle, then opens my hand, loosening my tense fingers, as his own fingers brush my palm. “Keep it loose and relaxed, like this. Let your arms fall naturally.”
I feel electricity and shivers coursing up my arm where he touches me. . . .
“As far as breathing, it should be even and regular. If it helps, count paces as you inhale and exhale.” He looks down at my legs again. “Oh, and try to keep an even, regular stride. With your long legs you don’t need to compensate. In fact, short and quick strides work better in the long run—pun intended.”
He can tell my breathing has slowed down closer to normal. Of course he has no clue how his proximity really affects me. . . . I appear to be holding my breath without meaning to, and it’s miles-to-the-Moon far from normal. Breathe, Gwen, breathe!
“Ready to run some more?” he says.
I nod. I inhale then exhale.
And I begin to run again.
An hour later, we exit the Arena Commons and head back to our dorms, taking the scenic route around the compound perimeter. Logan is walking me to mine, because it’s night and it’s after Homework Hour, and yeah, we are risking being out and about during the limited curfew period.
I shiver from the cold in my sweaty thin T-shirt. But Logan’s presence at my side adds a strange feverish frisson of energy to my otherwise zombie body. Lord, but I’m tired, after having run then walked, and run then walked, over and over, around that track for who knows how many turns, with him keeping pace, running and walking beside me in absolute patience.
“I am sorry I totally wasted your evening,” I say, feeling the guilt bubble up now, feeling the insecurity and the general sense of “what the heck is he doing here with me?”
“Are you kidding?” Logan’s dark eyes sparkle in the bright lights of the compound. “I’ve had a great workout, and great company.”
My cheeks grow hot. Once again I hope he does not notice the rising color in my face. “Not much of a workout, for you,” I mutter.
“It’s funny,” he says. “We both go to the same school. But it took an asteroid, Qualification, basically the end of the world, and us getting out of Vermont and ending up in Pennsylvania, before we could meet.”
I laugh. “Yeah. Pretty funny.”
“Strange how I never ran into you at Mapleroad Jackson High.”
Oh yeah, real strange. I think about how I pretty much stalked him from afar, all these past three years. Okay, not really stalked for real—since mostly it was all dreamy romantic drama happening in my pathetic mind—but I certainly spent a great deal of my free time at school fantasizing and hoping to catch a glimpse of him on campus.
I say nothing.
We pass some more dorm buildings then a stretch of open space with concrete walls. Then an area opens up that looks like a field—or better to say, a small airfield, because there’s something that looks like a short landing strip and several small hangars. A helicopter is parked far away, and beyond it there’s open space and darkness interspersed with a few lights in the distance and what is probably a chain link barbed wire fence.
“So how is everything else going for you so far?” Logan puts one hand in his pocket and I hear the key chain jangle again. It must be a habit of his, holding on to that pocket knife.
“Okay, I guess. . . . Barely surviving Combat and Agility, doing reasonably average in Culture and Tech. Wondering how my poor parents are doing. Wondering if there are crazy desperate people camped outside, beyond that fence and trees right now, looking in on us and planning who knows what. . . . And you?” I glance at the airfield then try to look straight ahead and not at him.
He laughs, once. It’s a tired, slightly bitter sound. “Mostly same as you. My parents are left behind, back in St. Albans. And my older brother Jeff is in the military. He’s just been deployed on his first tour of duty, they don’t tell us where. Not much guessing involved however, considering all the places worldwide that peacekeeping forces are needed these days.”
I turn to glance at him in surprise. “Oh, I didn’t know you had an older brother!” And then I realize how weird that must sound. As far as he’s concerned, we’ve just met a day ago and I’m not supposed to know anything about him or his family.
But Logan does not appear to take my outburst as an oddity, thank goodness. “Yeah. My brother Jeff is twenty-two, and that makes him too old, and ineligible for Qualification. Before shipping out, he told me he does not plan to wait for the asteroid, but to give it his all—take all the risks for the sake of performing his job in an exemplary manner. . . . And if necessary, he said, he wants to go all out with flying colors, in the line of duty.”
“Oh . . . I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t be. If I were in his place, I’d probably do the same thing, go out with a bang, make it mean something. Better to die in a blaze of glory, defending the honor and interests of your country than to rot away waiting for the asteroid to hit. . . . What a damn waste.”
I watch Logan’s gorgeous face in profile, his dark hair, the high cheekbones and angular jaw. There’s a new, withdrawn, reserved feeling about him, as he speaks of his brother.
“It really is so senseless,” I whisper. “The only difference between us and all the rest of them out there, the whole world, is—hope.”
“Hope? Not all that much of it. Mostly it’s just illusion and BS. A way to buy time for a huge chunk of the population, keep us all docile as we go through the motions of this craptastic Qualification farce while our families watch from the outside and wait, and live vicariously through us for as long as they can. But the truth is, you and I will both very likely end up out of the running, and back home, waiting for the asteroid apocalypse with the rest of them. Think about it—most of us here, most of the Candidates, are going back home in a few weeks. We might as well get used to it.”
I am stunned. Logan Sangre, so confident and comfortable, so steady and cool, is having personal doubts?
All right, I mean, he’s human—yes, I know it with the rational portion of my mind, sure. But to me he has always seemed perfect and invincible.
“If anyone is going to qualify, Logan, it’s you!” I say passionately, and just as soon as I say it, I realize how my intensity must be coming across.
Stop it, Gwen, cool it. Stop with the crazy!
Logan pauses walking, and turns to me with a blooming smile. “You don’t even know me, but—thanks, Gwen. You make a good cheerleader—in the best sense possible.”
“Thanks for what?” I pause also, and n
ow I’m staring up at him. “I’m being practical here. I just think you seem to be the kind of guy who—who will Qualify for sure! Maybe I’ll be the one heading home, but you definitely won’t be. Want to bet on it?”
He smiles. His expression is so gentle, kind, that it’s melting my heart completely. “No way. Because I don’t want to bet against you, Gwen Lark. So how about this—let’s not think about it for now, okay?”
“Okay,” I say, thinking that the real Logan Sangre is an even better human being than my idea of him has been all these years—way better than I expected him to be.
We resume walking and we’re almost at the end of the airfield clearing, approaching another dorm structure, when one of the hangars comes awake with lights, and its wide doors slide open.
We stare, and it’s an amazing sight. An Atlantean saucer shuttle pulls out of the hangar, hovering silently about three feet in the air. Considering that it’s over a hundred feet away from us, I judge it to be about thirty feet across, flat and slightly oval instead of perfectly round. The material it’s made of is dull grey from the distance, and yet the bright hangar lights give it a strange prickling sheen of gold, which—I’m suddenly very certain—makes it orichalcum.
“Oh, wow!” I say.
Logan watches with equal wonder. “So that’s how they go up and down,” he muses.
As we stare, the shuttle glides away from the hangar, and pauses, then without a sound it seems to pick up a bluish-violet glow around it, and then it streaks upward with impossible speed, and momentarily hangs low above the trees.
At the same time, a second shuttle exits the same hangar.
It too, hovers just off the ground, and pulls away, then pauses. It’s as if it’s waiting for the first shuttle to move away a sufficient distance before following.
In the next moment, two things happen simultaneously. The second shuttle still on the ground now starts climbing. And the first one that’s higher up above suddenly ejects a blinding flash which then turns into a nova. . . .
The night sky is rocked by an explosion.
And the ball of fire that was the first shuttle falls.
As the sonic boom and blast hits, I scream and hide my face, as burning debris rain all over the airfield.