by Diana Tyler
What are you doing, Hector asked himself. What if the pain—the burning, the cramping and tingling—had all been imagined, nothing more than some imbecilic delusion of grandeur manufactured by his subconscious? If so, then not only was he going to lose miserably to Gino for the umpteenth time and be forced to uphold his end of the bargain, but he wouldn’t be able to blame anyone but himself.
Coach Contos raised the pistol over his head and paused. Hector glanced at him. Could the coach see the trepidation in Hector’s eyes? Was he devising a way to intervene and stop this insanity without making Hector look like a toddler in need of his daddy’s protection?
“On your mark…”
This is happening.
“Get set…”
Hector’s heart was beating so loudly he was sure Gino could hear it. He lifted his hips and shifted back into the starting position, pressing his feet against the blocks. It took every ounce of self-control he had to simply stay put and stare down at the track. Every fiber of his being wanted to run away and keep his distance, not just from Gino but the whole team. They wouldn’t miss him. They didn’t need him.
He felt a sharp pain like an electric shock prick the center of either calf, followed by another in the front and back of both thighs. He winced, but didn’t move. You can do this.
BANG!
His legs didn’t feel like they belonged to him. Rather, the sensation was like being in a dream, the kind where he was observing himself from outside his body, doing and saying things he would never dare do or say in waking life. But even in his dreams, Hector had never felt as great as he did in this moment. He pushed explosively off the starting blocks, a true runner at last.
His back leg swung forward. His fists punched furiously toward his forehead. His legs pumped hard and his head stayed low, eyes glued to the track as it sped beneath his body in a mindboggling blur. He was already moving faster in these first few seconds than he ever had before.
After the first twenty meters, he lifted his head, lengthened his stride, and pulled his torso upright as he zoomed down the track, accelerating to his maximum speed. He felt weightless, free, like a comet coasting through the galaxy without care or fear or rival. He was untouchable now.
His arms hammered even harder as the white finish line beckoned to him like bait on the end of a fishing hook. He relaxed the muscles in his face and neck, letting their tension flow out through the balls of his feet as he hurtled over the line.
His breathing had normalized by the time Gino finished, an unsettling look of rage and disgrace like a sinister mask on the other boy’s face.
“Good job,” Hector said, holding out his hand.
Gino cursed under his breath and stalked off toward the field house.
Don’t forget the tutu, Hector wanted to shout. But he held his tongue and turned back toward the team. All of them, even the coach, were staring at him like he was a ghost. Their jaws hung open. Half awe, half shock had washed their faces white.
“Congratulations, kid,” the coach said finally. He shook Hector’s hand then placed a water bottle in it. “Looks like you’ve got yourself a doma.”
CHAPTER TEN
DESTINY
Mom! Dad!” Hector burst through the front door and slung his backpack onto the hardwood floor.
“Honey?” his mother called from the kitchen. “I thought I heard you pulling in. What are you doing home? School starts in fifteen minutes.”
Hector rounded the corner into the kitchen where Charissa Zacharias was washing their dog Poseidon in the sink. The dog wagged his tail so hard he managed to squirm out of Charissa’s hands and hop onto the counter, soaking it with his soapy paws.
“I know, but this won’t take long.” Hector plucked a biscuit from the dog-treat jar. The terrier sat up on his haunches and waited patiently for his reward. Hector laughed and dropped the treat into Poseidon’s mouth.
“Lovely,” said Charissa. “Now he’ll think jumping out of the bath is what he’s supposed to do.” She pulled the dog back into the sink and lathered shampoo into his matted gray hair. “Philip,” she called, “Hector’s home.”
She toweled off the counter as she turned to her son, brow wrinkled with worry as she searched his face. “Is everything okay?”
“More than okay.” He kissed her on the cheek then paced restlessly around the room until his father emerged from the bedroom, straightening his tie.
“What’s the matter?” his father asked.
Hector couldn’t blame his parents for expecting bad news from him. Over the course of his eighteen years, he knew they’d grown accustomed to his whiny complaints and pity parties, as well as his chronic bad attitude. But all of that was about to change.
“Dad, my doma came today.” The words sounded foolish to him, as if he was declaring the appearance of his first permanent tooth or sprig of chest hair. But he didn’t know how else to phrase it.
His dad paused by the refrigerator, his face almost as stunned as those of Hector’s track team. Apparently even he had thought his son unworthy of receiving a doma.
“That’s…that’s great news, Hector,” his mother said, rushing to rinse off Poseidon. She glanced over her shoulder at Philip, silently urging him to say something.
Philip looked down at Hector’s new shoes. They were covered with grass and dried flecks of mud. He grinned so widely that both dimples showed. Hector couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen his father so happy. “You can run!”
Hector nodded. “I beat Gino in the hundred-yard dash.” He was grinning, too, and bouncing up and down on his toes, itching to run again. “Can I show you?”
Philip checked the time on his watch and gave his son a mischievous smirk. “Work can wait. It’s my son’s eighteenth birthday.” He shook Hector’s hand hard, and then pulled him into a hug. “I knew this day would come, Hector.”
Charissa patted Poseidon dry with an old towel and set him on the tiles. The dog jumped up against Hector’s legs, his paws barely reaching his kneecaps. “Looks like Poseidon’s excited to have a new running partner.”
Hector picked up Poseidon, and carried him out the back door and down the porch steps. He had mowed over the weekend, so the grass was perfect for running on. Granted, his legs would have to work a bit harder, but he was up for the challenge.
He set Poseidon down and retied his shoelaces. “Dad, are you sure you don’t want to change out of your suit so you can race me?” He was only half joking. What good was his doma if it didn’t make him faster than his predecessor?
Philip gave a good-natured laugh as he shook his head. “I wouldn’t want to rain on your parade, son. It’d be a little demoralizing to lose to your old man.”
Charissa sat on the porch swing and called Poseidon onto her lap. “Let’s take the testosterone level down a notch, boys. You two have places to be and I have errands to run.”
“Yes, ma’am,” they answered together.
Philip joined his wife on the porch and leaned over the railing. Hector could see in his father’s eyes that he’d rather be down there in his gym shorts and running shoes than up there suffocating in his sport coat and slacks.
“Do some drill first, Hector,” Philip said. “You could pull a muscle if you don’t.”
Hector sighed and jogged along the fence a few times, the fence he must have run up and down a million times. And every time, it had felt like an exercise in futility. He never improved, and only dreaded running more and more.
When his body felt warm, he indulged his father further with a hurdler’s stretch on both legs, and then threw in a few lateral lunges for good measure. “You going to time me?” he asked his dad.
Philip lifted his wrist and tapped on the watch face. “I’ll count you down in fifteen seconds.”
Hector jogged to the end of the fence where a piece of red tape marked the starting line. He got set, lifting his hips slightly above his shoulders, and focused his eyes on the grass two yards ahead. There was no heat in hi
s legs. No tingling or electric sensation.
“Come on,” he whispered, pounding the side of his thigh, but nothing stirred inside it.
“Ready…set…go!”
Hector’s reaction time was slow, as it had always been. He nearly stumbled on his second stride, the grass seeming to suck on the soles of his shoes, pulling him down. His arms felt leaden as they swung at his sides. His right hamstring tightened up, then began to ball in protest as he kept on running—or trying to.
His lungs were on fire when he reached the end of the sixty-yard fence, a distance his dad could easily run in five seconds while singing the Petrodian anthem. Hector bent over and gripped his hamstring, digging his knuckles into it as if to beat it into submission.
“Looks like it cramped up on you again.” Philip started down the stairs. “Charissa, would you mind bringing out a banana?”
His mother nodded and hurried inside, but not before Hector glimpsed the sadness on her face. Even Poseidon looked wistful as his eyes followed a butterfly through the air.
A wave of nausea swelled in Hector’s stomach, but he wasn’t sure if it was from pain or fear. Probably both. “What’d I get?”
Philip sighed. “You’re hurt, Hector. It doesn’t matter what your time was.”
“Yes, it does.” Hector’s hamstring had relaxed enough for him to stand up straight and look his father in the eye. “Tell me. What did I get?”
“Nine seconds.”
It was Hector’s average.
His eyes stung as tears pricked beneath them. He wanted to feel anger, to yell, to scream, to kick through the fence and throw his shoes over it. But instead he buried his face in his hands and cried.
“Hector,” said his mother, “you know there are rules for every doma. Damian’s invisibility fades after—”
“I only ran once,” Hector shouted. He twisted off his shoes and threw them on the ground. “It isn’t fair.”
“Not everything in life is,” Philip said. “Thousands of people would do anything to have a doma, Hector, even if it only lasted for a few hours or seconds each day.”
Charissa peeled the banana and handed it to Hector; he knew better than to refuse it. “Chin up, Hector. We’ll try it again after school, okay?”
Hector wiped his eyes and took a bite, then gathered his shoes from the grass. “If the doma doesn’t work tonight, I’m quitting,” he said, surprising even himself by the sharp edge in his voice.
Charissa and Philip looked at each other, communicating and agreeing in silence.
“All right,” said Philip. “You’re old enough now to make that call.”
Hector expected to feel relief at those words. Finally, he’d been given permission to quit the sport he’d loathed for over a decade. Finally, he could sleep in and have Saturdays to do whatever he wished instead of practicing, or driving six hours to meets.
But he didn’t feel relieved. He wanted the speed. He wanted the ability to beat Gino again, and to see the dumbfounded look on his teammates’ faces. But more than that, he wanted the opportunity to see his father’s grin, to see unfeigned pride beaming out of him over what his son could do.
One more try.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
ARES
It was the longest day of Hector’s life. From first period he was swarmed by people, many of whom he’d never talked to before, congratulating him on his win against Gino. Some wanted to know when the rematch was, while others joked that Gino had already transferred to Ourania High School and changed his name. Despite the attention, Hector kept quiet. He refrained from making disparaging remarks against his new rival or tooting his own horn. After all, he reasoned, his victory might have been nothing more than a fluke.
Hector’s classes were his only respite from his newfound fans. But he couldn’t concentrate on the lessons, nor was he tempted to doodle in biology like he normally did. He just watched the second hand tick around the clock, counting down to three-thirty when he could go home, put on his shoes, and establish his destiny, or rather, see what destiny Duna had established for him.
Sure, he was an only child, but that didn’t automatically qualify him to receive speed as his doma. It could be anything, although anything less than the security speed gave him would be unsatisfactory. Surely Duna knew that. Surely Duna cared enough to grant Hector a gift that would ensure he’d never be made fun of again.
When school finally got out, Hector darted out of the building as quickly as he could, pretending not to hear when people, even his best friend Andrew, called his name. He was ready to see how the day would end, and stopping to talk would only delay him, not to mention probably give away the fact that he was hiding something. He couldn’t stomach hearing that he was a great runner until he knew for a fact that it was true, and not some psychosomatic phenomenon.
Hector got into his car and blasted the stereo as he pulled out of the school parking lot, ignoring the dirty look from the security guard.
He was just half a mile from his house on the two-lane country road when he heard a loud boom. The car started to shake.
“What the…” Hector pressed the hazard switch and pulled onto the shoulder beside an open field.
He walked around the car and saw that the right rear tire was completely flat. But there was something—something wooden and the size of a broomstick—protruding from the bottom of the tire. He bent down and struggled to pull it out. It might have looked like a broomstick, but it felt like a tree.
“Its appearance is deceiving, isn’t it?”
In his periphery, Hector saw a man’s feet in leather sandals, and bronze greaves covering his shins. The slight accent was unidentifiable, but it definitely wasn’t from one of the other colonies. It sounded as if Petrodian was his second language, even though Petrodian was the only language, and had been for hundreds of years.
Hector ignored the man and pulled on the wooden shaft again, but it didn’t budge.
The man reached down, took the shaft with one hand and ripped it out as though it was a knife lodged in a pat of butter. That Hector could not ignore.
He stood up and saw that the man was dressed as an ancient soldier, in full armor replete with a crested helmet that exposed only his eyes and bearded chin. “Who in Zeus’ name are you?” he said, his eyes jumping to the object in the man’s hand. It was an eight-foot bronze-tipped spear. “Did you throw that thing at my tire?”
The man leaned the spear against the passenger door and slid the helmet off his face. His skin was golden, and seemed to glow with something far stronger than a suntan. Even covered in armor, it was evident by his forearms, legs, and muscular neck that he could take someone out with his bare hands as easily as he’d freed the spear from Hector’s tire.
“I am Zeus’ son,” the man said, his helmet like a decapitated head beneath his arm. He gestured to the flat tire. “I’m sorry for crippling your chariot, but I only did it so that you might see.”
Hector laughed and pulled his cell phone out of his pocket. “Gino put you up to this, didn’t he?” He found Andrew’s name on his favorites list and pressed call.
“I know no one by that name,” the man said. “Why are you holding an obsidian block to your ear? Is it a sorcerer’s stone?”
“That’s good.” Hector laughed again. “You do birthday parties or something? Did my parents hire you? They know I hate surprise parties.”
The man didn’t break character, not even for a second. He just stared, transfixed, at Hector’s phone.
“Andrew, hey. I need a favor.”
The so-called son of Zeus cocked his head sideways like a befuddled dog.
“I got a flat tire on Hodos 144,” Hector said. “Can you give me a ride?”
“Dude,” Andrew replied in Hector’s ear, “you’re right by your house and you have superhuman speed. You can get home faster than I can get there to take you.”
Hector hadn’t thought of that. “Oh, yeah. Good call. Okay, never mind then. Talk to you later.”<
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“Later man. Sorry about your car.”
“It’s okay. I think Gino just wanted a little payback.”
Hector hung up and popped the trunk, hoping he remembered how to change a tire. He’d rather do that than waste precious energy walking the half-mile hill to his house. He set the spare tire on the ground and scoured the backseat for the toolbox, half hoping his dad would drive by and help him.
“How clever,” said the man, “an extra wheel.”
Hector dropped the toolbox on the ground. “Tire.”
“I never tire. The gods only sleep when they’re in bed beside a mortal.”
“Ty-urrr.” Hector grabbed the wrench and rapped it against the flat. “You can drop the act now, buddy. I’m not in the mood.”
“Do you have a second extra ty-urrr?”
Hector removed a lug nut, then glared up at him. “No. Why do you ask?”
The man turned and marched off into the field.
“Weirdo,” Hector muttered, and turned back to the car.
A few seconds later, the front tire was struck by the spear. The air leaked out rapidly, causing the rim to sag toward the tread and the whole right side of the car to list.
“Seriously?” Hector threw down the wrench and stormed toward the man, anger blocking his good sense. Reason told him he wouldn’t stand a chance in a fight with this guy, but primal impulse told him: Retaliate!
The man smiled, waiting calmly as Hector stormed toward him.
“You’re paying for this,” Hector shouted. “And I’m suing.”
“Your chariot is pathetic,” the man said. “I’ve seen donkeys hold up better on the battlefield.”
Hector took one look at the man’s bulging biceps and relaxed his fists. He’d rather not get a black eye or a broken nose on his birthday.
The man stepped forward. “You want to hit me. I can see it in your eyes.”
Hector turned and started walking back to his car. “If you want your spear back, come get it. Then leave me alone or I’ll call the police.”