Rather than point out that she doesn’t have to be late, even if I am—since when does she wait for me?—I ask, “What’s the rush? Why are you so excited about today?”
“No reason,” she says. But I see the twinkle in her eye.
She’s up to something.
“Be on the front porch in five,” she says. “Or I’m zapping you to camp, dressed or not.”
As if the butterflies in my stomach weren’t bad enough, now they’re swirling up a storm at the thought of what she has cooked up for today. I can only imagine it will end in my total embarrassment—as always.
But, since my getting zapped into the middle of camp in my smiley-face boxers would mean certain humiliation, I speed up my routine and beat Stella to the front porch by a good thirty seconds.
“Are you going to tell me what’s going on?” I ask as we descend the steps and head toward school.
“I don’t think so,” she says. “I like keeping you on your toes.”
When we pass by the turn for the front entrance, I ask, “I thought we were meeting in the courtyard today?”
“We were.” She smiles cryptically. “Plans change.”
We round the back of the school, where Adara and Xander are waiting. Adara looks annoyed. Xander looks . . . well, also annoyed, but that’s how he always looks.
There are no little campers around.
“What’s going on?” I ask nervously. One or two of the ten-year-olds are always early. “Where is everyone else?”
“They’ll be here later,” Stella explains. “At ten.”
“At ten?” I look for my watch, only to find my wrist empty. “I thought it was ten.”
“It’s eight,” Adara says, crossing her arms across her chest.
Spinning on Stella, I ask, “Why am I here two hours early?”
Xander, silent until now, steps forward. “This is my idea.”
“We think this might help you take your powers control to the next level,” Stella explains.
They are being intentionally vague and evasive. I’m immediately on guard. If this were some simple exercise, they’d just tell me without all the dramatic suspense. “What is ‘this’ exactly?”
No one answers.
Adara steps forward, carrying a black sash. “Trust me?”
It’s only half a question. Asking me and telling me to trust her at the same time. A week ago, I would have shouted, “No way!” But ever since she shared her darkest secret, we’ve had a kind of understanding. She hasn’t once threatened to smote me.
I turn my back, letting her secure the sash over my eyes.
“What am I supposed to do?” I ask. “Guess how many fingers you’re holding up?”
“Not exactly,” Xander says, moving closer and taking my elbow. He leads me . . . somewhere. All my senses are on high alert because I can’t see my surroundings. I can hear the crunch of our footsteps on the gravel path.
“So . . .” I say as the scent of pine fills my nostrils. “Are you going to tell me what’s going on?”
“You’re going to complete an obstacle course.”
“Blindfolded?” I stop in my tracks, only slightly pleased to feel Xander jerk to a stop next to me. “Are you crazy?”
I reach up to rip off the blindfold, but Xander’s hands clamp around my wrists.
“Listen to me,” he says, his voice low and close. “In order to tap into your powers, sometimes you have to stop relying on your senses. You don’t need to see the obstacles to overcome them.”
“But what if I get hurt?” An image of me sitting in the bleachers at the Pythian Games, my leg encased in a massive cast, sends a shiver through me. “The trials are tomorrow and I need to be in peak condition.”
“I placed a protection on you,” Stella says. “Nothing will happen to you while you’re on the course.”
I relax a little.
Until Adara adds, “But if you use the protection, you’ll fail that obstacle.”
“Fail?” My heart thumps. “Is this my test?”
“No,” Xander answers. “But treat it as if it were.”
I start to ask more questions, but he cuts me off. “Remember when I said I hoped you never found out the consequences of failing the test?” he asks, like I could forget. I’ve been stressing about it ever since. He continues, “Well, that’s not exactly the truth. What I meant was I knew you would never find out.”
“You knew?” That makes no sense. “What do you—”
“No one at school knows my heritage,” he says, his voice low and right next to my ear so the girls can’t hear. “Only Headmaster Petrolas knows I’m a descendant of Narcissus.” He pauses, and then adds, “His son.”
Whoa. That means he’s even farther up the tree than I am. He makes my three degrees of separation seem like a seventh cousin thrice removed.
I remember the myth about Narcissus. He was completely infatuated with his own reflection, in love with his own perfection to the exclusion of everything else. I’m surprised Xander confided in me, but now his feelings about superficiality make a lot more sense.
“Believing he had learned his lesson on self-absorption, the gods paroled him with a grant of temporary immortality.” Xander’s voice wavers a little. “He met my mother. And quickly proved he had learned nothing.”