Good vs. Evil High (6 page)

“This place doesn’t offer what we want to
do,” Harmony said. “I want to take care of animals and I love to
sing. There’s no place for either of those professions here.”

“And there’s no waves or sandy seashores this
far up north,” Nadine added. “You wouldn’t believe how much I miss
Cali and waking up every morning to go surfing.”

I noticed the shiny blue surfboard standing
against the wall next to the wardrobe at the head of their beds and
the poster of a guy surfing inside the swell of a house-sized wave
next to that.

Turning around to look at the bunk beds on
the other side of the room, I saw bars with music notes painted
beside the one up top. In this room with three personalized spaces,
the fourth bed space seemed empty. That would be mine. It would be
fun to figure out how to decorate it, I thought.

“What happens when we’re eighteen, then? We
never see each other again?” I asked. That didn’t sound like a
family at all. Just when I’d found one and gotten ready to let
myself get really close to these girls, which was something I’d
never done before, it felt like it was all getting taken away.

“Absolutely not!” Harmony said from beside
me. All three girls reached out for each other’s hands, but Sassy
and Harmony reached for mine. “We’re sisters and best friends
forever, no matter what. We’ve made a promise to each other to keep
in touch and make time to get together every single Christmas for
the rest of our lives, no matter what. Even if we all live in
different parts of the world, we stick together.”

“Harmony’s moving to So Cal with me when we
turn eighteen,” Nadine said. “Sassy’s heart’s set on Paris, but you
could come with us. We could begin adult life together.”

“So Cal?” I asked, since I’d never heard of
it before.

“Southern California.”

“Oh...” It sounded perfect, and I was
relieved to know I was being accepted into their lifelong circle,
but I still didn’t want to leave North Haven. In a way, I felt more
attached to it than them, at least for now. “Thanks, but I really
want to stay here.”

“That’s what I thought when I got here,”
Harmony said. “But you might grow out of the idea after a couple of
semesters. Don’t get me wrong. I love North Haven. But spending
forever here would get old eventually.”

“It’s okay,” Nadine said. “She’s got three
years to decide. And the offer will always stand.”

“Thanks, Nadine. I’m glad you guys want me
for a sister.”

“Us, too,” Sassy said. She and Nadine stood
up so all three of them could wrap me and each other in a hug.

My three forever sisters...I could truly feel
their love, and it was the best thing I’d felt so far.

* * * *

Half an hour later, the four of us were
walking out of our room. “You have six classes every day,” Harmony
was telling me. “Each one lasts for forty-five minutes, beginning
at seven-thirty. Then you have fifteen minutes to get to the next
one. Lunch is at ten-thirty, but you’ll be with me through the last
three days of this semester. You don’t need to worry about getting
mixed up.”

“Girls,” someone called. We turned around and
saw Miss McCree walking up the hallway toward us. “Headmaster
wanted me to let you know that Kristine should go to art class with
Sassy for third period. Since lunch comes after that, you can give
her back to Harmony then.”

“Is that just for today, or the rest of the
week?” Sassy asked.

“The rest of the week, I think. He wants
Kristine to meet Miss Rivers since he’ll be enrolling her in one of
her classes next semester.”

“Okay, see you later.”

We crossed the main room and got in an
elevator, which took us up to the fourth floor where all fitness
and sports classes were held. We walked into the biggest gymnasium
I’d ever seen. It was sectioned off by colored tape into courts and
field areas with different sports equipment and adults in each one.
There were a lot more kids than I’d been expecting, with girls on
the left side of the room and boys to the right.

“See ya, guys,” Nadine said before she ran
off toward a group in the soccer area.

“Everyone has fitness training second
period,” Harmony said as we moved through the open space between
sectioned areas. “Headmaster figures it’s good to do it early in
the morning, but not right after you eat breakfast. Sometimes
everyone trains together and sometimes kids split up into their
sports and do their own thing. Nadine plays soccer, but Sassy and I
always do general fitness.”

“Unfortunately, we don’t have any real
athletic talent,” Sassy said. “Our talents lie elsewhere.”

“Do you play any sports?” Harmony asked
me.

“I play volleyball okay. Nothing special,
though.”

“Then you can stick with us. We always train
with Coach Beckham, and all the new kids get put with him
anyway.”

“Besides, everyone who’s competing has to
practice every night after class and on weekends until the Winter
Competition. So we’re kind of lucky,” Sassy told me.

“Nadine likes it, though,” Harmony said.

I noticed Hunter in a group of four kids
stretching beside a wall. “What’s Hunter doing?” I asked.

“He’s one of the smartest kids here, so he’s
in the academic competition. It’s kind of like Jeopardy with two
teams, four players on each one.” Harmony lowered her voice. “It’s
the most boring part of the competition.” We laughed together.

“What about Roman?”

“He’s the captain of the North Haven Snow
Riders.” She turned to walk through two basketball courts. “See,
there’s Snow Racers - they race on snowmobiles through obstacles
for a couple of miles to be the first to get to the finish line,
and then there’s Snow Riders - they ride on snowmobiles too, but
their goal is to be the last one standing. They start in different
places, so no one knows where anyone else is, and they use whatever
they find in the terrain to knock the others off. As soon as your
body leaves the snowmobile, you’re out. We have the advantage in
this game, because we always wear white. The Cinders wear black, so
they stick out pretty badly against the snow.”

We stopped beside a window and Harmony
pointed outside. A few stories below, I saw people in padded white
suits and helmets riding around on white snowmobiles. I could
barely see the tail of one sticking out from under a thick tree and
a girl moving toward it, completely unaware. It looked like she
would be knocked off easily.

“I think that’s him,” Sassy said, pointing to
a third rider with a long branch in one hand, who was moving toward
the tree from a different direction a lot faster than the other
rider.

Right before the girl reached the tree, Roman
disappeared under the branches and a different body flew out from
under them. When he shot through the other end of the undergrowth,
the girl reached out to high five him and then they were going in
opposite directions.

“Wait. How’s he supposed to go to that
volcano thing tonight if he has practice?” I asked.

“His coach’ll probably give him the night off
to show around a new student,” Sassy said. “He’ll be paying for it
for days, though.”

I flinched when a brassy voice said, “You
must be Kristine,” right in my ear. A man with meaty arms that
looked strange compared to his scrawny legs now stood beside
me.

I nodded.

“Hey, Coach Beckham,” Sassy said. “What are
we doing today?”

“That depends on Kristine. Do you want to run
through some tests to see if you have any physical abilities we can
use in the competitions?” he asked me.

“Not really. It would be a waste of time,” I
said, hoping he would let it go. “I don’t have any abilities like
that.”

“Then we’ll stretch and run some laps.” We
followed him to a group of ten girls who were standing in an open
field area.

After stretching, Coach had us line up
against the wall at the starting point of a three-man racetrack.
Two of the walls were lined with a series of tracks on the floor.
Three groups went ahead of us, and then it was Sassy, Harmony, and
me. We lined up with Harmony in the middle and me closest to the
wall.

“Just run to the fifty mark and back, girls,”
Coach said before he blew his whistle.

We smiled at each other as we took off, none
of us really trying very hard. Harmony leaned forward and ran
faster. Sassy and I did the same. And then we were racing.

My feet pounded against the ground as I
pushed myself as hard as I could. Both girls disappeared behind me.
I was winning! And we weren’t even halfway to the fifty mark. When
I reached it and let my feet slide as I turned on the spot, I
realized how far ahead I was. I might even reach the starting line
before they got to the fifty. I felt a surge of satisfaction.

But what if they’re not even trying?
That had to be it. I felt silly. So I let myself slow down and
jogged the rest of the way. Everyone was staring at me, which made
me extremely self-conscious.

“You’re really fast,” a girl said in a
British accent when I got to the end.

“Thanks.”

When Sassy and Harmony reached us, Coach
said, “Twenty leg lifts, twenty squats, twenty crunches. Kristine,
come with me.”

As we walked, I wondered if it was possible
to get in trouble for making such a fool of myself. We kept close
to the wall until we reached three girls who were jumping from one
foot to the other, picking up their knees as high as they could
each time.

Coach went up to the Japanese woman watching
them nearby and whispered with her for a few seconds. She blew her
earsplitting whistle, which was even worse than Coach Beckham’s,
and waved the girls over.

“Rose, you’re racing against Kristine,” the
woman told the tallest girl, who had shiny red hair pulled back
into a bun. Then she turned to me. “Rose is our fastest runner. If
you can beat her, you’re on the track team. We desperately need
another sprinter. No offense, Adora, but you’re really built for
the long runs.”

“Is okay, Coach Ling. I know I am bad
sprinter,” one of the other girls said in another accent.

“I’m sorry,” I began. “I don’t really want to
join a team. I just got here.”

“We can talk about that after you race with
Rose. Join her at the starting line, please.”

I really didn’t want to do it, but I followed
the super-thin redhead to the nearest starting line.

“It would be pretty crazy if you beat me,”
Rose said. “I don’t want to sound like I have a big head or
anything, but I’ve never been beaten.”

“Then it’s probably not going to happen
today. I was just racing with my roommates and I’m pretty sure they
were going really slow so it looked like I was going fast.”

“Maybe, but Coach Beckham’s trained to weed
out fresh talent. He knows what he’s doing.”

We turned at the finish line and waited.

“All right, girls, to the fifty line,” her
coach called out. Then her terrible whistle was ringing in my ears
and I was pushing myself as hard as I could. I didn’t want to join
the team, but I did want to win. Rose pulled ahead of me for a
second and then I pulled ahead of her.

Instead of focusing on where she was, I zoned
in on the fifty mark and concentrated on pushing every part of my
body to carry me to it as fast as it could. Everything else bled
together until all I saw or thought of was the big white fifty up
ahead. All I could hear was my own heart beating.

And then I was there. I slowed down and
looked back as Rose reached it second. I couldn’t believe it. I
beat the fastest girl in North Haven, and I’d never even been in a
race. It felt great, exhilarating, like I’d just won an Olympic
gold medal.

“You beat me.” Rose stopped and stared at me
in amazement.

I shrugged, feeling totally out of breath.
“Weird.”

Both coaches were running toward us, looking
way too excited. Maybe I should have let her win. “That was
amazing,” Coach Ling said. “You have to join the North Haven
Tracers. We
need
you.”

I glanced at Rose to make sure she wasn’t
angry about the praise I was getting, but she smiled and nodded.
“But if Rose has never been beaten, what do you need me for?”

“Something could happen to her, Heaven
forbid. She could twist an ankle or come down with the flu. And if
you haven’t even been training for this...imagine what you could do
once you’ve had a little training.”

The other track girls were just reaching us
and everyone was watching me expectantly.

I didn’t want to let them down, but I also
didn’t want to spend every night and weekend day training to go
race in front of two schools, which was enough to make me cringe
inside. “I just got here this morning...Maybe next year?” I hated
how disappointed everyone looked, but I really didn’t want to do
it.

“Are you sure? These girls are a lot of fun
and you could help guarantee this school the point awarded to the
fastest sprinter in the Winter Competitions.”

“It’s a big deal to compete,” Rose said. “Not
every student gets that opportunity.”

“Sorry,” I said.

“Please, I’d love the competition.”

“Let’s not pressure her,” Coach Ling said.
“If she doesn’t want to join our team, no one’s going to make her.
But if something does happen, could we count on you to step in for
Rose?” she asked me.

“Sure.” But that wouldn’t happen, because
what could go wrong?

“Let’s get back to our group then,” Coach
Beckham said to me.

We rejoined the others and Harmony grabbed my
arm. “You beat Rose Jennings. You beat her. I can’t believe it. Are
you running track?”

“No, I don’t really want to join a team, at
least not yet.”

“But you beat Rose Jennings. She’s the
fastest girl there is. You’re a track star, Kristine.”

I couldn’t help but laugh. “Thanks, but I
don’t know about all that.”