Goddess Boot Camp

  “Whatever,” Gillian says, reaching for the flag again.

  Tansy gasps. “I see it, too.”

  Gillian and Muriel stare at her like she’s betrayed them.

  She points at the flag. “Look.”

  They both turn and squint. Gillian’s mouth drops. Muriel huffs and stomps away. “Let’s go find our flags.” She ducks under a pine branch. “I am not losing to Tressa Boyd.”

  Gillian hurries after her. As Xander passes me, he says, “Nice catch, Castro.”

  I just keep blinking, not quite believing what I just did. When I looked at the flag, I saw the white mask or whatever. When I was thinking about something else, though, only catching sight in my peripheral vision, I could see the true color.

  “That was amazing,” Tansy says, her voice laced with a sense of awe. “You didn’t even have to concentrate or anything.”

  No, I didn’t. In fact, concentrating made it worse.

  Stella’s exercise the other night proved that my powers come from my mind. But how am I supposed to control them if focusing doesn’t help?

  “We’d better hurry up,” Tansy says. “I bet Gillian tries to grab the wrong flag again. If you’re not there to stop her, we’ll lose for sure.”

  I let Tansy lead me up the path, but my mind is still thinking about my powers. And how I only have less than two weeks to figure out how to control them when trying to control them sends them out of control.

  At this point, I really shouldn’t be surprised by being tossed into such a vicious circle. Try to control my powers, and they go berserk. Train more, control less. Stay on at the Academy to learn how to use my powers, but be forced to pass a powers test first. Lately, my whole life is one big exercise in contradiction.

  “Congratulations, Phoebe,” Stella says when camp breaks up for the day. “Xander says you found two of your team’s flags, and saved them from choosing three wrong ones.”

  I shrug. It’s not like I actually did something to succeed. “No big.”

  “It is a big,” she insists. “Most neos are lucky to find one. They almost never identify enemy flags. You’ve earned your second merit badge. ”

  She hands me another round patch. This one has a red outer ring, a black background, and the center picture looks like a magician’s wand with little sparks coming out the end. I guess it has something to do with masking appearances or making something invisible. Making the colored flags look white.

  Big whoop.

  I glance around to make sure everyone else is gone. I don’t want to get caught confessing to the evil stepsister.

  “But what good does it do me?” I ask when I’m sure we’re alone. “If I try to use my powers, they go wacky. It’s only when I’m not thinking about it that they come out right.”

  “Hmm.” Stella taps a French-manicured finger on her lips. “There has to be a way to reverse that. Or at least harness it.”

  I can see the gears turning, her mind working to figure out the solution.

  “Maybe you’re overthinking, overanalyzing,” she suggests. “There’s an exercise designed to—”

  “Forget it,” I say, walking away. I’m so not up for Stella’s full attention right now. After six hours of indirect powers usage in the company of ten-year-olds—except, as I found out, Tansy . . . she’s twelve—my mind is fried. “I can’t think about this anymore right now.”

  “We can try that exercise tonight,” she calls out.

  Following the path around the quad, I pass the girls’ dorm. I’m thankful I don’t have to live there. Sharing my bathroom with Stella is bad enough. I can’t imagine sharing with an entire floor full of girls. Like Adara. I feel sorry for Nicole—she is so not the slumber-party type, but she’s on the same floor as the cheer queen and three of her cheer minions.

  As Nicole puts it, she’s trapped in ch