Oh. My. Gods.

  “What exactly did he tell you?” I ask, furious.

  “Everything, of course.”

  We continue in silence, Adara doing bench presses and me thinking of how many ways I could destroy Griffin without getting caught, until Coach Lenny blows the whistle twice and we change stations. Up next on our circuit is the butterfly press. This allows Adara to stand facing me—and blocking my view—the whole time.

  “Back off from my boyfriend,” she snarls as I start my presses.

  “Don’t worry,” I reply, concentrating on the burn in my pecs so I don’t think about Griffin. The betrayer. “I want nothing to do with your boyfriend.”

  “Oh, I’m not worried.” She glances over her shoulder to where Griffin and Vesna are working on triceps curls. “I just want to save you the embarrassment of being the laughingstock of the school.”

  “Gee,” I say, just as the whistle blows. I release the weights with a thud. “Thanks for your concern.”

  Adara smoothly begins her presses as she talks. “If you don’t believe me, ask your friend Nutty Nic. She knows all about being the laughingstock.”

  “Watch what you say about my friends,” I warn. She is dangerously close to crossing a line.

  “And if I recall,” Adara snickers, “that was Griffin’s doing, as well.”

  My fury should be directed at Griffin, but Adara is right in front of me and all my rage focuses on her.

  I’m just about to tell her what she can do with her concern and friendly advice when suddenly her arms snap back, the weights slamming down with an echoing crash. Adara looks stunned, her eyes wide open like they’re stuck that way.

  Everything in the weight room stops.

  “Castro!”

  Why is Coach Z yelling at me? “I didn’t do anything.”

  “Precisely,” he says. “As the spotter, when your partner is in trouble it is your job to assist her.”

  “But she wasn’t—”

  “I begged for help,” Adara coos, apparently recovering from her shock. “My arms were all quivery and shaky, like they were going to give out. But she refused. She said she wouldn’t lift a finger to help anyone on this team.”

  “That’s a lie,” I shout. “I never—”

  “In my office,” Coach Z says, his voice low and serious. “Now.”

  Great, there goes cross-country. I’m about to get kicked off the team, and lose any chance at getting that scholarship.

  “I saw it happen, Coach.”

  Everyone turns to look at Griffin. He’s looking right at Coach Z—not at me, not at Adara.

  “Adara didn’t ask for help,” he continues. “She just let the weight drop.”

  I dare a glance at Adara, who is turning an unflattering shade of red.

  “Right then,” Coach Z stammers. “Everyone back to work.”

  The weight room returns to the bustle of the workout. Except for Adara, who is glaring at me, me, staring at Griffin, and Griffin, staring at the floor.

  “Oh, and Blake,” Coach Z says. “Switch places with Spencer.”

  Stomping across the weight room, Adara takes her place with Vesna—who is now bench-pressing a small car. I walk slowly to the biceps curls station and pick up a pair of dumbbells. Without saying a word, Griffin takes his place at my side, holding his hand beneath mine to spot my movement.

  He doesn’t say a single word to me the entire workout, and by the time practice is over I’m more confused than ever.

  “This Plato is kicking my ass,” I grumble, staring blankly at the pages full of philosophical words.

  Mr. Dorcas wants us to read The Republic and write a ten-page response paper when I don’t even understand what the book is about. Like I don’t have enough going on in my life.

  “You’ll get through it,” Nicole promises.

  “I’m not so sure.” I flip the book over to the back cover—something I can actually understand—and read the two sentence bio on Plato. “Too bad he died twenty-three hundred years ago.”

  She laughs, then goes back to reading.

  “You’ve got powers, Nic.” I sigh, slamming the book down on our table. “Can’t you summon him back to life so I can ask him to clarify?”

  “We can’t bring people back from the dead,” she says. “Big no-no. In the sixties someone tried to bring back Clytemnestra to star in the school’s production of Agamemnon. Everyone in the cast aged fifty years in a day.” Then, pursing her lips and looking thoughtful, adds, “But hey, Hades is my great-uncle. We could take a field trip to the underworld to find Plato.”

  “Really?” I ask, brightening.

  Maybe there are benefits to going to school with the relatives of Greek gods. Something to offset all the unfortunate zapping.

  “Sure.” She frowns. “Of course, there’s always the chance we won’t come back. People get lost down there all the time. And it smells like rotten eggs.”

  “Great.” I flop back in my chair. “My options are: fail the class or spend eternity in the stinky underworld. I’m not sure which one is worse.”

  Nicole leans across the table and places a hand on my arm. “Don’t worry,” she says. “You won’t fail.”

  I am just about to let her know what I think of her reassurance by snorting when Mr. Dorcas walks up to our table.

  “Miss Castro,” he says. “Headmaster Petrolas wants to see you in his office.”

  Everyone in the class starts oohing like I’m in big trouble.

  Considering recent history, maybe I am.

  “He asked you to bring your things.”

  Maybe I’ve been expelled?

  Hey, a girl can dream.

  I quickly gather my stuff and head for the big dog’s office.

  Damian is pacing behind his massive desk when I get there.

  “What’s u—”

  “Who have you told?” he roars.

  I jerk back a little at his harsh tone. “Told about what?”

  “The school. Who have you told about the school?”

  He’s speaking quickly, with an urgency he hasn’t shown before.

  “If you mean the Big Secret, I haven’t told anybody.”

  I may have let half a detail slip to Cesca the other night, but that in no way constitutes telling the secret.

  Damian runs a hand through his salt-and-pepper hair as he sinks into his chair. “Phoebe, please. This is no time for playing games. The safety of the school and everyone on the island is at stake.”

  If he sounded even a little melodramatic I might have dismissed this line of questioning as paranoid. But he doesn’t. So I don’t.

  “All right.” I take a seat across from him. “In an IM chat on Sunday night I accidentally sent my best friend a line about using supernatural powers. I meant to send it to Nicole—I got the windows confused is all. But Cesca won’t tell anyone. I’m one hundred percent certain.”

  Except for maybe Nola—but she wouldn’t tell anyone, either.

  Only, if Cesca didn’t tell anyone, how did Damian find out?

  “What happened?” I ask, afraid of the answer.

  Rubbing his eyes with one hand, Damian sighs. Loudly.

  “The island itself is safe, protected by the gods. The shield, however, only prevents nothos from accidentally witnessing something supernatural. If they know what they’re looking for the gods cannot stop them.” He runs his hand through his hair, messing it up. “If even one untrustworthy nothos knows the truth, we are vulnerable to discovery.”

  Suddenly I feel awful for even the accidental slip-up. Even though I didn’t mean to do it, it still had the same result. From the way Damian looks things must be really bad, too.

  “Our web scanners flagged a search from a southern California IP address.” He pushes a piece of paper across his desk.

  Search string: supernatural powers Serfopoula Greece

  Results: suppress

  Location: Los AngelesCounty

  “Oh.” It has to be Cesca. No one else would even have a clue
. But I know she did it with the best intentions. “She must have been worried after I told her I couldn’t tell her anything. We haven’t kept secrets. Ever. It probably freaked her out.”

  That makes me feel better about her not responding to the millions of e-mails and IMs I’ve been sending. Even though she’s hurt that I can’t confide she’s still trying to find out what’s going on with me.

  She’s a true friend.

  “We cannot undo your accident,” Damian says. He sounds resigned, which makes me feel worse. “There might not be anything to worry about. We shall wait and see if there are any more incidents.”

  “And if there are?”

  “We will have to take countermeasures.”

  “Countermeasures?” I picture Cesca, her feet encased in concrete blocks, sinking slowly to the floor of the Pacific. Maybe the Greek gods operate like the mafia.

  “Nothing so dramatic,” Damian says, smiling and proving once again that he can read emotions fluently, “I assure you.”

  I’m not fully appeased, but I guess I have to take his word for it at the moment. If the time comes to enact “countermeasures” I’ll warn Cesca ahead of time so she can flee the country or whatever.

  For now, I just smile and nod as I gather up my backpack to leave.

  “Oh, Phoebe,” Damian calls as I walk to the door. When I turn around, he adds, “Try not to accidentally reveal any more of our secrets. If you do, I just might have to try the concrete blocks method.”

  My jaw drops. “Hey, you said you could only read emotions!”

  Damian, cryptic as ever, just smiles and returns his attention to work. How like him.

  I’m lucky I don’t keep a diary for him to read.

  As I close the door behind me I hear, “Everything I need to know is stored in your hippocampus anyway.”

  Because I can’t think of any better response I slam his door.

  Believe it or not, I’m starting to feel sympathy for Stella. She’s had to live with him her whole life.

  I only have to endure him for nine months.

  “Damian and I have been talking, Phoebola,” Mom says. She’s sitting in my room, watching me try to do homework.

  “Yeah,” I answer absently, wondering what Plato meant when

  he said, We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light. “I would think you two do that a lot.”

  Sure, I used to be afraid of the dark, but who ever heard of someone being afraid of the light? Maybe he’s being metaphorical. Light must be a symbol for something else. How about success? That would be like being afraid to win a race. It would be beyond sad if someone was afraid of winning. I start scribbling down my answer.

  I can practically feel her giving me the Mom look.

  “You know what I mean.” Mom clears her throat before continuing. Uh-oh. “This is all such a big change—for both of us. All of us. It’s going to get even harder when you go away to college.”

  I sit up straight in my chair, the hairs on the back of my neck standing up.

  “We think it might be better for you to stay on at the Academy for another year. Maybe even attend college in the U.K. after graduation. That will give you another year to adjust and—”

  “What!”

  I think my scream can be heard in Athens.

  “Now calm down, after everything that’s—”

  “Calm down? Are you crazy?” I jump up from my desk and start pacing. “You’re trying to ruin my entire future and you want me to calm down?”

  “We are not trying to ruin your future.” She sits on my bed, the picture of calm and collected. “You could really benefit from another year of challenging academics.”

  My pacing speeds up—if I had a rug I would probably burn a hole in it. I already know Damian wants this—Stella told me, after all—but my own mother?

  “Nola, Cesca, and I have been planning on going to USC together since junior high.” I stop pacing long enough to throw my hands in the air. “How can you ask me to just throw all those years of plan-ning—not to mention my friendships—away?”

  I resume pacing, my mind racing just as fast.

  “I’m not asking you to do anything more than think about it,” she says calmly.

  I hate it when she does the whole calm-Mom-therapy thing on me.

  It makes me so mad I do things I might regret.

  “It’s bad enough you marry a complete stranger,” I shout, “and you make me move halfway around the world without telling me I’ll be going to school with a bunch of kids with superpowers who can zap me whenever they want. But now, now after all this, you want me to stay even longer than absolutely necessary? This is all his idea, isn’t it?”

  “Of course not,” she says, sounding all defensive. “He may be my husband, but I am still your mother.”

  “Then why?” I demand. “Why this? Why now?”

  “Because if you are—” She stops mid-sentence. Standing up slowly, she says, “All I ask is that you think about it.”

  Aargh! She can’t even come up with a bogus excuse.

  “Fine,” I spit out as she walks to my door. “I’ll think about it—and every time I do I’ll think about how much I hate you.”

  Without another word she walks out, closing the door quietly behind her. Not satisfied, I march over to the door, pull it open wide, and sling it shut with a powerful slam.

  Somehow that’s more appropriate for the end of my relationship

  with my mother. Before the echo dies down I burst into tears. I don’t even have Cesca and Nola’s shoulders to cry on. How could my life possibly get any worse?

  Chapter 8

  “PLEASE PUT AWAY YOUR BOOKS and take out several sheets of blank paper.” Mr. Dorcas’s voice is monotone. “We are having a pop quiz on The Republic.”

  The whole class groans.

  Me? I just carry out his instructions with the resignation of a beaten dog. Since the moment I thought my life couldn’t get worse, the world, this school, and everyone on this island have conspired to prove me monumentally wrong.

  No one but Nicole and Troy are talking to me, though Troy hasn’t even been at lunch because he’s getting extra tutoring in Chemistry. I keep e-mailing and IMing Cesca and Nola every night in the hope that I’ll eventually wear them down. Mom is giving me my distance, not that I mind, and Damian has been so busy with school business that I haven’t even seen him in days. And, though I’m not mourning the fact that Stella’s stopped speaking to me, I’m starting to miss our sparring sessions. They’re better than no human contact at all.

  My running times have not improved, despite the millions of hours of extra practice. Coach Lenny assures me I’m just at a plateau and any day now I’m going to see major improvement. I don’t believe him.

  I still haven’t figured out Plato and have given up all hope of ever understanding his concept of justice. Ironically enough, Physics II and Art History—the classes Nicole switched me to—are the only classes I’m actually doing well in. Everything else will be lucky to see a passing grade.

  So, of course Mr. Dorcas is giving us a pop quiz on a Friday. It’s just the way my life is going.

  “Answer the following question.” He tugs on the projection screen, sending it rolling into its case and revealing the pop quiz.

  An essay question.

  Hardly shocking.

  Plato ends The Republic with the myth of Er, a story about the fate of men, both good and bad, in the afterlife. Why do you think he, a believer in reincarnation, chooses this tale with which to end his discourse on justice?

  The first thing that jumps out at me is the word myth. After what Troy told me, I don’t think some story Plato made up about a guy visiting the afterlife qualifies as “explaining the unexplainable.” This is more like a fairy tale, a story that Plato wanted to be true. He wanted to believe that good men would be rewarded and bad men punished because that would mean the world made sense.
r />   Clearly, he’d been burned by the success of some undeserving people.

  Half an hour later I turn in my “quiz,” my hand cramped from writing a mini-thesis in response. I sink back into my seat. I can’t even look forward to a mental break because I was the last person done.