Again? I fisted my hands and fought the urge to cry out an expletive.
Seriously? Again?
Instead of staring up to the sky, I glanced at Flynn and Lorcan. We’d split, so Flynn stood between us.
The sunset almost set Lorcan’s auburn hair on fire, the golden highlights so bright they seemed coppery. He looked ahead with the widest smile of awe on his lips. Flynn, he was frowning. Also gazing in the same general direction as Lorcan was, he nearly glowered.
“Now, is that a sight or what?” Lorcan asked, ending his rhetorical statement with a single laugh. He shook his head, still grinning, and propped his fists to his hips.
I chanced a peek at Flynn as he met my gaze too.
He licked his lips and faced forward again. Always the serious guy. Did he ever lighten up?
“I mean, have you ever seen a sunset that…beautiful?” Lorcan sighed.
The sunset? That was all he saw? I wanted to close my eyes and groan. Of course, that was all they saw!
One of the winged horses faced us and neighed. He was near enough to just barely be heard. I inhaled a deep breath through my nose and concentrated on not freaking out.
It’s not real.
It’s not there.
It’s not real.
Only, it so was there. Or, it was there, and now, it was here. Glossy brown fur glistened as he soared through the air and approached us. It flew unnaturally fast until it hovered right in front of us, mere feet over our heads. Hooves jabbed at the sky too close to us. A jagged stripe of white spread up the fur on its chest, like a lightning bolt.
Dear God.
Its nostrils flared, and it shook its mane as its wings kept it in midair. Large, bold dark eyes blazed at us. With deep thrusts, it raised and lowered its front legs, almost as though it was pawing at the ground if it were on land. Muscles bundled and flexed, proving this was no dainty thing floating overhead.
I didn’t even have time to appreciate its majestic strength and silky hide.
Why is it so pissed? Are we trespassing?
I cleared my throat and took a step back. Flynn did as well, even though his face remained the same as before. The flying horse pushed forward on the air, keeping in pace with me as I retreated. When I lifted my foot, preparing to sprint backward, it flapped its wings furiously. Flynn clutched my forearm.
“Man. What a breeze.” Lorcan brushed his mussed-up hair from his forehead. “Must be from being so close to the water.”
“Uh-huh.” Flynn’s reply was careful and simple. Like he was unsure of what to do.
The horse threw his head up and tossed its mane again. Then, it pooped.
My jaw dropped as I watched the crap plop down to the ground, maybe three feet in front of and to the right of Lorcan.
Are you…shitting me? I shook my head and blinked. Uh, I mean, are you kidding me? It just…pooped! Right there, while it was in the sky. Like a bird. I kept my lips open and curled them into a gag.
It just…pooped!
It could have landed on our heads for all this beast cared. Panic and disbelief had given way to fear. And now that fright had slipped away, I wanted to smirk right back at the flying horse. Taking a dump over us? Come on. If that wasn’t a message, I didn’t know—
“I wonder how far that cliff wall goes around the hill…” Lorcan moved to step forward, right in line of the air-delivered dung. Flynn let go of my arm and reached out to grab Lorcan’s sleeve, halting him just in time. If he hadn’t gripped him, Lorcan would’ve stomped his foot right into manure-de-aire.
“What—” Lorcan sniffed, disgust turning his nose down, and he finally glanced to the ground. “Oh, man. Good eye!”
Good eye? Good eye? Flynn’s eyes could see that? That the flying horse just crapped right in our faces from five feet above, and he saw it?
I stared at his profile. Was he— Could he— Am I—
He cleared his throat. “I, uh, I think we should head back.”
Lorcan glanced at him and then me. “What do you think, Layla? Seen enough for one night? Even from a distance?”
Or…not from a distance.
All I really could think about and be grateful for was the fact that Lorcan assumed I was simply gazing at a pretty sunset with them. My face must still be locked in the I-can’t-see-fictional-creatures mask. I’d had years of practice, after all.
And Flynn had done the same? Pretended not to see it, when he had to have?
I rubbed at my earlobe and eventually nodded. “Yeah. It’s, uh…a sight to behold and whatnot, but maybe we shouldn’t risk staying out so late.”
“Not for the first time, at least,” Flynn told me and Lorcan punched his arm good-naturedly.
“Next time, we’ll have to plan it better and see what’s around the hill and into the cliff.” He strode away from the flying horse still hovering just above us.
“Yeah…” I refused to tear my gaze from the general scene of the sun setting at the lake until the horse flew back to its herd in the air by the stables. “Next time.”
Chapter Thirteen
Mr. Chan blabbed on and on about the expectations for our first Biology quarterly exam. Honestly, if anyone just read the syllabus and even skimmed the list of lectures we’d had so far, it wouldn’t be a mystery. I might have been too confident as I tuned out his droning voice, but heck, it couldn’t be an impossible feat. Besides, the man had a thing for multiple-choice questions. With none of that all of the above or none of the above options. Surely, I couldn’t be the only freshman in the room who was aware of this little concept known as deductive reasoning.
Instead of paying attention, I applied that process to the boy four seats to my left and one row ahead. Flynn sat there, and from the slouched position he scrunched his tall frame into the chair and desk space, he wasn’t attentive to our teacher either.
Did he see the flying horse?
If he hadn’t, he wouldn’t have known that fresh pile of manure had been deposited over our heads.
If he had seen it…
He can see them? I sat up straighter at this thought. A notion that excited and scared me. Could it be possible I wasn’t alone—that another person saw what I did?
For the eleven and a half weeks since breaking the curfew and spotting the meadow of landlocked and airborne horses, I’d avoided him. Yes, I counted how long. Mentally, I obsessed about him and his reactions to that night. Physically, I deterred any chance of having to speak to him or run into him. Hundo p ghosting. Well, as much as I could. We had classes together, but I went out of my way to stay out of his. It was a funky see-saw of thinking about him nonstop and eliminating all contact.
During my Flynn-cott, because boycotting the guy was exactly my goal, I asked Paige about him. She clearly had insider connection via her mom, so what was the harm? I’d be helping her…unload all that information bogging down her brain. Of course, the first question out of my mouth about him sent some mixed signal to her that I was interested in him.
Interested in Flynn? Heck yeah, I was. He might be a hallucinogenic freak of nature like me. Despite my denials of attraction, Paige was determined to forever assume he was my crush. Don’t ask me what she calculated from these so-called ways Flynn “looked at me.” She wanted to play a mental game of matchmaker, whatever. And if that was how it had to be, okay. She didn’t hold back with the gossip after I let her think whatever she wanted about my love—ha, ha, ha—life.
Flynn was chosen to attend Olde Earth from the enrollment committee’s curiosity about a video posted about him. I’d been right all along. He had been singled out for a random viral Happy Vibes video. Instead of assisting animal control officers calm down furious and abused dogs like I had, Flynn saved a little boy from a three-hundred-pound gorilla at the zoo. Why and how a mother could sit on a bench and stare at her phone, completely missing the fact that her child was climbing the fifteen-feet-tall security fence surrounding the ape exhibit, was beyond me. I never babysat. I didn’t have kids or yo
unger siblings. Maybe things like that just…happened? Perhaps she was brokering world peace with emoji-riddled text messages and couldn’t look away?
Anyway, when Flynn had noticed the wailing kid in the enclosure and the gorilla charging toward the boy, something short of magic followed. Flynn went to the fence and called out to the animal, and with calm phrases, he distracted the gorilla, simply coaxing him to come to him instead. The boy was rescued, the mom was trolled and shamed by everyone for not keeping an eye on her kid, and Flynn was dubbed a good Samaritan.
“Mr. Madsen!”
I jolted upright at Mr. Chan’s accented yell and glanced at Flynn. I’d been zoning out, looking at the back of his chair when I realized he’d been caught staring back…
No, he had no reason to have been staring at me.
Flynn’s so-called looks just for me. Was Paige on to something?
I shifted in my seat and willed the blush to skip this moment. As if I’d ever have such luck. Heat blossomed on my neck and spread upward.
Why would he be looking at me? All throughout my Flynn-cott, he’d enacted a Layla-cott too. Well, except for emailing me a simple and short note wishing me a happy birthday—which surprised and excited me. I’d told them I didn’t like being the center of attention and he’d risked going against that to email me. At least an email was private.
Honestly, I was probably overthinking it all. He was likely just swamped and stressed about the upcoming exams like everyone else was. Even Paige, an Olde Earth regular, was frantically studying every night. No one had time for anything but cramming for the first quarterly tests.
“That is all, ladies and gentlemen,” Mr. Chan announced at the end of his period. “Have a good night and come prepared to discuss the differences between mitosis and meiosis tomorrow.”
Easy peasy.
We left the room, and in the mass of exiting students, I was able to dodge Flynn in the hallways. On the trip to the Green House, I did bump into another of my Green schoolmates. Lorcan jogged to catch up with me on the paved path taking us to our dorms.
“Hey,” he said as he slowed to walk with me.
“Hi, yourself. How’d tutoring go last night?” I slung my bag over the opposite shoulder so it wouldn’t smack into his hip as we continued on side by side. For as much as I was evading Flynn, I’d gotten closer to his roommate in the interim. Lorcan was a fun, nice, and seemingly uncomplicated guy to hang out with. Of course, none of us were truly hanging out this close to exams, but I had taken some chances of getting to know him here and there. I hadn’t been surprised when, two weeks ago, he’d said Sabine had asked him to tutor her. What I didn’t expect was that he was still helping her out. Either she had the hots for him, or she was seriously, desperately worried about her Latin grades.
“So so. Aura was in the room, too, and she’s just as much of a mess.” He ran his hand through his hair. “She’s, like…totally lost with conjugating any of the verbs. I told them I’d come back tonight after dinner.”
I patted his back. “Good luck.”
He shrugged. “It’s all right. May as well pay it forward, right?”
How sweet of him. God, I hoped Sabine wasn’t just using him and wasting his pre-exam time. Her self-centeredness ruined the beauty of good people in the world.
“Hey, I saw you this morning.” He turned to face me.
“Uh, yeah. I saw you too?” In line at the cafeteria for breakfast. I got an egg white and turkey bacon sandwich, and he’d chosen pancakes with bananas on top.
“No. Before. You run?”
“Oh.”
“I saw you coming back to the dorms like you’d been jogging.” He pointed to the right half of the Green dorms, indicating his room, perhaps. “Our window looks out toward some of the bike trails.”
Jogging? I held back a scoff. I was freaking flying. About to keel over at the end of an interval thing I’d added to switch up my runs. But I sure as heck wasn’t doing some measly jog. Gimme some credit. “Yeah. Every morning. Helps me clear my head.”
“That’s cool. How come running, though? Isn’t that…lonely?”
I smiled to myself. Exactly. Because it’s lonely. Honestly, I only started running a year ago. A chicken with dinosaur legs had shown up near the Stop-N-Go mart in Coltin and gave me chase when I was walking home from work. Seemed like running might be a good thing to practice for life in general.
“I like the peace and quiet.”
“And you don’t have an issue with curfew? Getting in and out of the building when no one else is?”
It was the first time any of us had spoken about disobeying curfew. Sore subject, maybe? Awkward? Definitely weird for me. Every morning as I headed out for my exercise, I surveyed the foyer for the guard dogs. They were never there. I wondered when they were permitted “off duty.” And where they went.
“Uh, no. Marcy says the curfew is lifted in the morning.” I shrugged the shoulder without the strap of my messenger bag. “She knows Mrs. Possolo said I could run.”
He nodded as a reply and gestured to the door we approached. “Well, wish me luck tonight.” His shy chuckle was so cute. “You already did. Wish Sabine luck then. She’s running out of time to prepare.”
I wasn’t sure my twin sister would ever be ready for quarterly exams, even with all the time in the world. She simply wasn’t a book-smart kind of gal. I hadn’t spoken to her much after that day in the lunchroom, but since no one teased me in the hallways and no one ever seemed to notice me, I assumed she hadn’t spread the stories about me like she’d intended before Ethel stopped them with a short-skirt lecture.
Or maybe she’d learned some smidgen of consideration for others.
“Yeah. Right.” I shook my head as I headed inside for more studying. What else?
The next morning, I went through my usual routine of sneaking around the room to get dressed and exit soundlessly. Paige had yet another late night with her mom. Not another sleepover, but another…I didn’t even remember how she’d explained it. Or not explained it. Every other Wednesday night, she’d leave the dorm with the excuse of meeting up with her mom. For what, I couldn’t guess. We were in exam crunch time. Couldn’t Ethel ease up and let Paige simply focus and study like the rest of us?
Then again, maybe it was a mom-and-daughter thing. Like I’d know.
Outside, I inhaled deeply and smiled at the simple comfort of the two best gifts of all. Solitude and nature. I took off on a warmup jog to get my legs waking up and breathed in the wet morning air. Everyone was still in their dorms, likely just rising for the day. Maybe some were crunched over textbooks, squeezing in more daybreak study time. Others might be passed out still, with their tablets asleep and fallen down on their faces from trying to burn the midnight oil.
Once I reached the trail I preferred, I pumped my legs faster and eased into a decent pace. Even though I stuck to the same route every morning, I had yet to grow bored. Each time I ran through these woods, I found something new to treasure. The way sunlight beamed through a tree’s branches. A new woodpecker nest. A puddle that squirrels favored. My path was predictable, and I was fine with that. It also meant it was safe because since sneaking out with the boys, I stayed the hell away from that hill and what lay behind.
Chapter Fourteen
Sweat blurred my vision as I worked harder on the incline above me. I wasn’t running anywhere near that hill, the one that seemingly blocked many of Olde Earth’s secrets. Another foothill. Enough of a change in elevation to make me regret adding a sweatshirt so early in the season.
I wiped my eyes and stumbled over my feet. In the clumsiest fashion ever, I halted.
“Oh, Jesus.”
My whisper was already too loud. It heard me. Or it could have detected me thundering down along the path as I’d approached.
“Oh, holy freaking Je-sus God Almighty.”
The creature blocking the trail curled its upper lip into a snarl.
Whoa. Just, whoa. I held my trembling
hands up in surrender and skidded a couple of steps in retreat.
The abomination in front of me didn’t advance. Inky black scales rippled, almost like in a shudder as it lowered to the ground.
Don’t pounce. Don’t pounce. Stay right there.
It bared its teeth. Long, sharp, dripping wet swords of incisors.
“Please, please don’t eat me.”
With a snap, it locked its jaw shut and eyed me. Light green eyes zeroed in on me from above a shortened snout of a horse. Deer? Something equine. Fur wasn’t anywhere on this beast’s body. Cobalt-dark scales still showed the bunched muscles of the horse thing. Dragon? Lizard? Dinosaur? Yet it had hooves, like any horse or cow. About a dozen feet away, I could only assume it was simply large. Longer than a bicycle yet almost shoulder height to me.
In an adrenaline-fueled staring contest, I debated what to do. Its eyes remained focused on me, probably as it decided if I would be easy prey or not. Something liquid oozing out below it caught my attention, and I lowered my gaze for a nanosecond.
Was it peeing? Jeez. Just like the flying horse? They lose control of their bowels and bladder near me? I set my hands on my hips and huffed, an effort to catch my breath as well. If I was intimidating as a teeny little human, so much to make this thing pee itself, then nothing good would come from our little encounter. May as well go down laughing.
Almost like mimicking my hands on my hips, it drew back its shoulder blades and massive wings extended in the dark forest fog.
“Oh, my God.” I stumbled back, shocked. Even more shocked.
I hadn’t even seen the wings folded to its body—or what was left of them. Its right appendage was bent awkwardly with a rod of metal snagged toward the top of its foreleg.
“What is that?”
It opened its mouth to growl out a deep, pitiful wail.
“Okay, okay. Sorry I asked.” I held my hands out again.
Another minute passed as I watched it watching me. The suspenseful waiting game of facing my inevitable death gnawed on my nerves. Either it was going to kill me and have me as an early breakfast, or not. I was wise enough to know I couldn’t outrun a muscled creature like this. Even injured, it would beat me.
Secrecy: Olde Earth Academy: Year One Page 11