by Abbie Lyons
Chapter Twelve
Classes continued, and I was finding them less than useful. I did really come to like Professor Kennedy, but we hadn’t actually graduated to doing any magic.
Which, considering I couldn’t do any magic, was probably for the best. But it sure made class boring.
Professor Silvestri was equally entertaining, but with a totally opposite demeanor. It’s one thing to find out cupids are real, and another thing entirely to learn they’re being trained by a cranky guy about five feet tall and just as wide.
“You guys are hopeless,” he’d say. “Hopeless! Humanity is doomed! No more human babies!” He rubbed his balding head with a handkerchief to mop up the sweat.
The language classes I just started skipping. I doubted anything there would be useful to me, and it didn’t seem I was missing much. Yoga—eh. It was yoga. Not even guardian yoga, just...yoga.
It was almost starting to become routine until, as it turned out, one Saturday that was our big sportsball season opener.
Steve was nigh on delirious with excitement.
“I've been doing a lot of research into the history of the sport,” he said. “Did you know that it has its origins in the same middle Persian game as polo? Like on horses? Like for the t-shirts where they embroider it right here, and there's collars?” He chattered a mile a minute as he, Lucy, and I followed clusters of students down the pathway toward the Coliseum.
“No kidding,” Lucy said, giving me a wide eyed look of can you believe he's talking about this?
“Yeah!” Steve gushed. He looked positively boyish in the morning air, his big blue eyes agleam with delight. “But, of course, we never had to use horses. Now, usually it's just a male sport, but in the Tang dynasty, there were women who played.”
“Glad I didn't live in the Tang dynasty, then,” Lucy said.
I snorted. “Don't get me started. I can barely keep up in yoga class.”
“It'd be pretty hard to go pro, because there aren't really leagues anymore,” Steve was saying, more to himself than to us, “But still. You could join an exhibition squad and go around for fun. Raise some gold for the kids, you know.”
I thought for a second. “Like the Harlem Globetrotters?”
Steve nodded. “Yeah, just like that. Is that a polo team?”
“Never mind.” I felt wracked with nervous energy. I didn't really care about going to see the sport, although I had to admit it was entertaining to see Steve geek out. But it was something to do. And if the entire school was going to be there, it was a good chance for me to study up and make sure I was blending in.
Okay, and I had to admit it. I was pretty curious.
“Just for the record,” Lucy said, lowering her voice, “not everyone who's full guardian is obsessed with the sport. I have never cared for it. My dad played a little when he was in Elysium, but that's about it.”
“Good to know,” I said, feeling reassured. We'd reached the entrance to the Coliseum, where velvet golden ropes led us into the student observation section. If watching from the tree at the practice field had been captivating, there was no denying that watching in this Coliseum was going to be impressive. I'd been to one or two basketball games in Oakland because Scott's company had floor seats, and I was pretty impressed by it, even if most of what I was doing was eating popcorn. Here, though, we stepped into the open air, feeling a fresh salty breeze coming in off the sea, and wound our way through arched back hallways until we found our section on stone seats. In the middle of the stadium, a larger, more polished version of the practice field spread open and the players were darting through the air like acrobats. I didn't know how just pushing through pure air could make someone look so strong and capable, but it did. It was like watching swimmers who went in all directions as they passed back and forth, warmed up, called to each other. The crowd around us was murmuring with excitement.
Lucy tugged on my elbow. “Look, there they are.” She pointed at the air, but I couldn't tell which individual ones she was looking for.
“Who's they?” I asked.
“You know, the guys from the party,” she said. I squinted and I made out the blonde hair that I finally recognized. I looked back at Lucy.
“Do you have a crush on Aidan?” I asked.
Lucy went bright pink. “I didn't say that,” she said. “I just, I meant—”
“Oh man, oh man, oh man,” Steve said, practically jumping up and down on his tippy toes. “Look at ‘em go!” From his seated position, he did a few arm movements that I assumed were supposed to be imitating the players.
A weird realization hit me. I was the first human who'd ever seen this game played out and that was genuinely kind of cool.
“Ladies and gentlemen of Elysium, please take your seats,” called out a voice from somewhere unseen. The crowd settled and we all sat, except Steve, who stayed standing and cupped his hands around his mouth.
“Yeahhhhhh, boys!” he called.
“Steve!” Lucy hissed, and tugged him down by the hem of his uniform jacket. Sheepishly, he sat.
Up in the air, the two team captains—Marius, and a guy with dark brown skin and black hair who I didn't recognize—were conferring with the guy I assumed was the referee. He was the one holding the disc.
“He's probably telling them to have a nice clean game,” Steve said solemnly. “Very important, sportsmanship.”
“Maybe you could write about sports,” Lucy said. “Instead of playing it.”
Steve scoffed. Yeah, right. “There’s no newspaper here.”
“Well, Lucy’s trying to start a club,” I said. “Maybe that’s it. Steve could do the sports section.”
Lucy's eyes widened. “That's not a bad idea,” she said. “I bet people would really like it if they read it.”
“I wasn't really serious,” I said, but then I didn't say anything more. Lucy seemed very invested in the idea, and I didn’t want to crush her dreams. In fact, between Steve's fanboying over the athletes and Lucy's newfound determination to start a journalism club, I felt oddly left out. What was my passion? Figuring out why my brother died, obviously. And to do that, I'd have to understand what the Order of Eden was. And to do that, well, I probably had to talk to Marius more and get him to fess up, since grilling people in class was going nowhere.
But say I was lucky enough to figure that out. Say I finally put everything to rest. Did my life even have a mission?
It didn't matter, I told myself. It doesn't matter.
Thinking about that would only distract me from my goal.
And dreams, aspirations? Those were for good people. People with something to offer.
I was jolted out of my thoughts by a roar of the crowd as we leaped to our feet once again. The game was on. We started with possession and Marius flung the disc immediately out into the air at an angle. With a snap, it smacked against Aidan's palm, and he chugged ahead with it a few feet before being slammed by a thick, heavy guy from the opposite team.
Aidan went spinning to the ground, head over wing over foot. Lucy gasped. Steve nodded sagely.
“Good play by defense,” he said. “That's what they say. You can't teach big. I should bulk up.” He rummaged in the pockets of his blazer and pulled out something brown and hard-looking in a bit of plastic wrap.
Lucy wrinkled her nose. “What the hell is that?”
“Protein,” Steve said. He took a bite.
“It smells disgusting,” I said.
“The smell isn't the point,” he said, chewing. His eyes were watering a little bit.
“Can you move...that way?” Lucy asked. “You're stinking up the air.”
Steve responded by swallowing the rest in one gulp and jumping to his feet, cheering. I followed his gaze. Two of our guys had linked arms against an offensive player from the other team and straight-up clotheslined him in midair. It looked like he had lost consciousness. One of his teammates caught him and lowered him to the ground. A relief player winged his way up into the ai
r and it was our ball. Disc. Whatever.
Marius flung it forward, Aidan caught it, and this time he didn't get hit. He darted left, right, down, up, and corkscrewed perilously close to the ground before shooting forward and breaking the plane at the end. Immediately around us, the Coliseum erupted in color and sound. Literally.
I yelped in surprise. All of us had gone a bright, plastic-like blue—the seats, our skin, our hair, all like we'd been dunked in a bucket of paint.
Elysium! Elysium! Everyone around us was chanting, Steve loudest of all. Me, I had just gotten used to my Smurf blue hands when the color disappeared again.
The next play had started.
“The hell was that?” I said.
Lucy looked at me. “You've never had team spirit before?”
“I guess not.” Taking in the restored normal colors of everything, a few seats away, I saw out of the corner of my eye a flash of purple hair. It was Violet. She waved a mittened hand, and I waved back, but our gaze was broken by a shuddering crunch just feet above us.
Marius had flung himself head first into a defender to clear the way for one of our offensive men and the sound of his cheekbone pulping itself was audible.
“Ugh,” I said, and my eyes went to Violet. She had her mittens pressed against her lips, nervous. Marius wobbled a bit in midair, sinking a few feet and not flapping strongly enough, but threw his head back and looked up. Except he was looking at me. Then at Violet. Then he was back in the air.
It all happened so quickly. I wasn't sure what was happening. But it felt like Marius looked...worried. About me.
Play after play zinged in front of us, with Steve screaming until he was hoarse and Lucy gasping and also taking notes on a tiny scrap of parchment she'd found in her coat. I, for my part, wished I could write some of this down. It really was incredible. I wasn't here to have fun, but...I was having a little bit of fun. I was getting to see something that I never would have seen otherwise. I didn't want to enjoy it, because I knew I couldn't lose focus. But at the same time, if there was going to be any small, good thing coming out of everything with Scott, then...
“My brother would have loved this.” I said it without thinking. Lucy glanced at me, surprised. There was a pause in the gameplay, some argument over a call, and Steve was practically foaming at the mouth, calling the umpire or referee or whatever all kinds of names.
“I didn't know you had a brother,” Lucy said. “Older or younger?
“Dead,” I said. “But older.”
“Oh.” Lucy gave me a look that wasn't like the other pitying looks. It was a look that knew.
“I don't want to talk about it,” I said.
“Of course,” she said. Because she really did understand.
But she grabbed my hand and squeezed it. And it was honestly the nicest, most genuine gesture that I had felt in weeks.
Only Marius healing my bloody forehead had been more powerful.
All this human connection was really starting to fry my circuits. Except it wasn't human connection. I was the human. They were the guardians. And I didn’t belong here.
My mind flashed back to the stern gray eyes. What was Marius worried about just now?
Finally, out in the air, whatever dispute had arisen was resolved and play was started again.
“Oh man,” Steve said. “They're going to blitz. Hold onto your butts.”
“What's blitzing?” I asked. “Like in football?”
“I don't know how football works,” Steve said. “So, sure. Let's say yes.”
“I think it's more like...” Lucy squinted. “A power play? Oh my Gods!” She jumped to her feet. I turned my attention to the field and saw why.
Two of the opposite team’s offensive men were winging forward, flinging the disc back and forth at each other at record speed, a tag team move that flew so fast they were a blur.
But then the rhythm stopped. One of them flew too far ahead and the disc flew free.
“Wild ball!” I heard Steve call. And then my field of vision went slow and focused. The disc was headed for me, right for my chest. And at the speed it was traveling, it could probably knock me out.
“No!” I cried and flung my hands forward.
I waited for the impact.
I waited to break my wrist or fingers or arms or collarbone.
But I felt nothing.
Then I felt everything.
A humming, vibration, something warm and fizzing poured itself around me. My eyes had been shut, so I opened them, but it was blinding. Something was firing all around me, energy, magic, I had no idea what. And when it dissipated, the disc that had been just moments ago slinging itself toward me crumbled into black ashes and fell onto the seats in front of us.
“Holy smokes,” Steve said. “How did you do that?”
“I...” My throat felt thick and choked. Around us, the crowd was murmuring in shock. The other team was yelling about interference and cheating, and our team was yelling back that they were just being sore losers and they needed to step up their game and actually score.
Everyone's eyes in the crowd were darting from me, to the players, to me, and then back to the field permanently as a fight broke out over whose possession it was.
Stunned, my ears ringing. I sat down and stared at my palms.
What had just happened?
Chapter Thirteen
“That. Was. Epic,” Steve said. “You're the man, Quinn.”
“I'm a girl,” I said. Steve responded by pouring my glass full of ambrosia, which slopped over my fingers.
“Let's hear it for Quinn!” he cried. And, to my shock, everyone assembled in the Casablanca party room actually did give it up somewhat.
“Thanks,” I muttered, and took a sip. Around us, the walls were pulsing with music, the light low, and everyone feeling good. We'd crushed it in the game. Not that I could take any credit for it.
I was still a little freaked out now, a few hours later, and my sips of ambrosia weren't doing much to quell my nerves.
“Your reflexes are incredible,” Lucy said, pink cheeked from her own drink. “I mean, seriously, at this rate, you're going to be at the top of the class.”
“I didn't do it on purpose,” I said. “I'm pretty sure someone else did.” This was the only explanation I could figure out. That someone had seen it was going for me and fired some kind of protective missile right at me. It sounded crazy. But then again, what wasn’t?
There was one person on campus who knew I was a human who needed protecting, and whose reflexes would be good enough to save me if I was about to get decapitated by a disc. And I’d seen that look on his face—the look of worry.
But I hadn't seen Marius since we'd gotten to the party.
“Man, I hope the team gets back here soon,” Steve said, as if reading my thoughts. He chugged down some ambrosia and loosened his tie. “Can't wait to give the guys some high fives. Victory is ours!”
Lucy tittered. She swiveled her head around. “Hey, where's Violet?”
I looked too. She wasn't in the assembled crowd, despite being a fixture at Casablanca parties.
“I don't know,” I said. Then I dimly recalled something. “She has a test,” I said. “Something about Canon Law of the Medieval Period. It sounded complicated. She was pretty stressed out.”
“She's studying instead of coming to a party?” Lucy sounded incredulous.
“I guess so,” I said. “She's pretty intense about it. But she's really ambitious, so...”
“Oh no, totally,” Lucy said. “She's always the best in Attic Greek poetry. I'd have her pegged to be like Professor Kennedy one day or something.”
Any response I would have had was drowned out by a series of cheers. The team had arrived back and was pouring in through the front door, their hair freshly washed, all of them smiling and slapping hands with whoever was nearby. Steve started a chant, but no one was really listening, so he chanted by himself and rushed over to give them refreshments and offer them
anything else they would want.
“Do you think he'll make the team?” I asked, studying him from across the room.
Lucy set her jaw and didn't respond.
“Don't jinx it,” I said. “I know what you think.”
“I think it would be great if I could get an exclusive with the team,” she said, rubbing her chin. “I know that would be something everyone would want to read about.”
I sank back into the cushions of the settee where we were perched. “It shouldn't be difficult to get an exclusive if you're the only publication on campus.”
Lucy's face got even pinker. “It's the principle of the thing, Quinn.”
I “know. I'm sorry.” It felt like I had genuinely hurt her feelings.
“Maybe I need an exclusive with you,” she said. “The girl who almost got slammed, but has lightning quick reflexes.” She wiggled her eyebrows up and down.
“Ha,” I said. I knew we were drinking, so I didn't want to seem like I was taking it too seriously, but I was still freaked out. And now that the team was here, I could ask Marius. Could confirm with Marius, anyway, that he was the one who had saved me.
“Hey, Lucy, right?”
We turned to see a blonde, smiling, Aidan scratching the back of his neck a bit sheepishly.
It turned out Lucy could go an even darker shade of pink. “Eep,” she said. “I mean, yes.”
“Hi, how's it going? Aidan, remember? I used to know...” he trailed off.
She nodded eagerly. “Greatjobinthegame,” she said, all the syllables rushing out like a single word.
“Thanks,” he said. “I'm pretty lucky to have made striker as a second year. To be honest, Marius is pretty tough, but I feel like I'm giving him decent support.” He shrugged. “I don't know.”
No“, you were great,” Lucy said. She scooted over on the settee, and whether it was subconscious or not, I took the cue and got up so that there was space for him to sit. I muttered something about getting another drink and wound my way across the room.