Chapter 39

I’m smiling like an idiot when I turn a quick corner and almost run into the half-evian girl from calculus with her shirt off.

“Oh,” I say as I avert my eyes. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize the lockers are right through the doorway.”

I glance up at her face and see she’s smiling when she says, “It’s no problem.” She pulls a t-shirt over her head and sits down on a bench to tie her shoes. “Do you know what locker was assigned to you? If you need to borrow a shirt, I have a spare.”

“Mrs. Nelson told me my number and combination, but I’m not sure what may be in there.” I walk a few lockers down and spin the combination lock until it opens. I pull out a shirt and a pair of shorts. Alora must have told the school my size. I glance around the small cube of space. No sneakers or socks.

I glance up to see the half-evian with dark curls and chocolate eyes looking down at me. “You must have a good memory. You didn’t even look up your number.”

“Photographic,” I say before it occurs to me I might not want to walk around broadcasting how perfect I am.

She frowns. “Me too. There are a few other kids with that kind of memory here at Trinity, but I think it’s pretty rare.”

Does she know about her heritage? I don’t dare ask. I change quickly into my Trinity t-shirt and shorts, but I’m a little stymied when other girls start to filter out. The girl with dark curls turns back as if to ascertain why I’m lagging behind. “You coming?”

“Uh, I guess I don’t have any sneakers.”

“You should have told me. What’s your shoe size?” she asks.

“Size seven. Do you have a spare pair?”

“Not running shoes, but I have a pair I use for tennis. They’ll be better than boots. I’m a seven and a half, but I bet they’re okay. I’m Raven, by the way.”

“That’s a perfect name for your hair. Your parents got lucky. My name’s Rebecca.”

“It was jet black when I was born, so they gambled.” She smiles. “I heard your name earlier. Nice to meet you. You could’ve been named Raven too, you know. You don’t see many people with completely black hair.”

“No,” I say. “You don’t.”

“Big change from Hawaii to here.” She frowns. “The weather sucks, for one thing.”

I follow Raven out the door and walk into the gym. Noah and Logan are leaning against the side wall, backs against one of the huge windows surrounding the black asphalt track. Three guards are stationed around the track, but no one seems to be paying them any attention. Raven introduces me to a few of the other girls. Madison, Faith, Alyssa and Isabelle. The last two were the ones debating the authenticity of my chest. I can’t quite help myself.

“Nice to meet you,” I say. “And Isabelle was right. They’re real.”

I spin on my heel and walk across the room to where Noah and Logan are stretching. I lean down and flex my calves because they’re doing it. I don’t really need to stretch my muscles because, evian. We don’t get tight tendons or strained muscles or pulled ligaments. I doubt Logan needs to stretch either, but if he can pretend, so can I. When I glance over my shoulder, I notice Raven’s also stretching.

Our PE class is larger than calculus, but still no Lark. I listen for a moment and other than the guards, Raven and Logan, I don’t make out any evian heartbeats.

I’m listening closely enough that I immediately notice when the heart rates of nearly every female in the room elevate and Raven’s group bursts into giggles. I turn toward the back of the room to see what’s causing it, and I groan.

“Good morning,” a gorgeous man in a white shirt and blue gym shorts says. He has long, slightly curly blonde hair pulled back into a low ponytail. They’re obviously tittering over his chiseled features and piercing cerulean eyes. “I’m your new physical education coach, and I’m delighted to be here. I’m told we’re about to start a new section on running.”

“Come on.” Noah rolls his eyes. “Coach Fimmel hooks up with Courtney Vanderbilt and gets fired, so they replace him with Adonis, here? Who’s their consultant on these decisions? Homer Simpson?”

“Adonis?” the new coach says. “Hardly. Call me Coach Renfro. I can’t wait to mold young minds and teach you all how to be physically fit for life.”

I really wish I could punch our new PE coach. Luckily, I’ll be able to later when we’re training. I have half a mind to slug Alora too, because Edam as a PE coach is an absolute joke. He grins at me and I glare right back.

“That’s the spirit,” Noah says to me. “Don’t let the other girls pressure you into flirting with the hunky new PE coach. Buck the trend.”

Logan laughs.

Edam ignores them. “Today we’ll start by working on proper breathing. We’ll cover more of the general techniques and posture as well as pacing later this week, but breathing is often overlooked. You need to be breathing in and out of your mouth in short, shallow breaths if you’re going to run effectively.”

Edam walks up to me and says. “What’s your name?”

I frown harder. “Rebecca Adair.”

“Would you mind helping me demonstrate, Rebecca?” He smirks.

“I guess not.”

Edam is standing less than a foot away from me when he says, “Thanks. We need to learn to breathe into our bellies and not our chests. Now, breathe in and out for me, Rebecca.”

I take a deep breath.

“Place your hand here.” Edam reaches over and places his hand over mine and guides my hand to my stomach before he lets go. “Now, watch her stomach when she breathes.” I breathe again. My hand rises and falls. “See?” he says. “Her stomach goes in and out because she’s breathing in and out from her belly. Most of you probably breathe through your chest. Don’t. I don’t care what you do when you’re not in PE, but if you’re running in here, I want you breathing in and out of your belly. Now I want you to all run at least four laps. Walk along the outside of the track until time is up after you run your laps, or you can keep running if you’d like.”

“Very motivational lecture, Coach,” I mutter. I lean over and pretend to stretch my hamstrings. Then I squat down and stretch my thighs. Edam stares at me the entire time.

“What?” I ask.

“You’ll never be normal, no matter how hard you pretend,” he whispers, his breath brushing my ear. A shiver slides up my spine.

“Do you two know each other?” Noah asks.

I glare at Edam. “I’ve never met Coach Renfro in my life.” I turn to Noah. “You ready to run?”

Noah shrugs. “Sure.”

Noah and I start our first lap and Logan tags along, too. Noah’s the first non-evian I’ve ever been around for more than a few minutes, excluding people like the President of the United States or Britain’s Prime Minister. He seems nice so far, and I should be trying to make friends if I want to figure out whether I could live with them. In fact, Logan should be better looking than Noah by all rights, and he kind of is. But Logan’s like a very watered-down version of Edam. Noah looks... different. Edam could have walked off the cover of any designer ad. His face is the perfect balance of beauty and masculinity.

Noah, on the other hand, looks less beautiful, but more broody. He has strong features, broad cheekbones, and an aquiline nose, but his eyes are almost too large for his face. If I had to compare him to something, it would be an anime character. Logan matches me, pace for pace, which doesn’t surprise me. There isn’t much difference between evians and half-evians until I push things beyond the limits of a school ordered jog. Logan’s heart rate and mine are both barely elevated. Twenty-five beats per minute for mine instead of the typical twenty. Noah’s heart has consistently hovered around sixty or sixty-five beats per minute. He’s wheezing and his face is starting to flush, but his heart hasn’t gone much over seventy-five or eighty beats per minute. That’s impressive for keeping up with two evans for more than a mile.

“You winded?” I ask Noah.

“I come from a family of runners,” Noah says after our fourth lap. None of us show signs of dropping back to a walk. “And Logan’s the captain of Trinity’s cross country team. My question is, why aren’t you dying trying to keep up with us?”

“I run a lot,” I say. “It’s kind of my thing.” True on several levels.

Edam joins us a moment later. “You three paid attention. You’re clearly my strongest runners.”

“I’ve been breathing from my stomach for years, pretty boy,” Logan says.

I notice that once Edam joins us, our pace accelerates. As we begin our sixth lap, Edam runs faster still.

After a few yards Logan says, “I don’t know what’s going on, but I am not a sprinter.” He waves Noah off and drops back to a walk.

By the seventh lap, Noah’s puffing hard and his heart’s beating about a gazillion beats a minute. I’m worried it’ll explode if we don’t slow soon. I glare at Edam and when that doesn’t work, I drop to a walk in protest. Noah slows down, too. Thank goodness.

“Can’t keep up?” Edam calls back.

I ignore him.

“He didn’t run the first four laps, that’s why he still has so much energy.” Noah wheezes. He scowls when Edam flies past us again. Noah’s face is red and his eyes look a little buggy, but his heart slowly decelerates and my fear it will burst fades. “I wonder if Coach is a former Olympic runner. The school board eats that junk up. That’s probably how he got the job.” His heartbeat has finally slowed down into the seventies again.

Logan waves to us and jogs over to where we’re walking. “So new girl, we have a big cross country meet tomorrow. It’s a five mile race. Normally I wouldn’t ask anyone to join the team on their first day, but you must have run cross country back home.”

“Something like that,” I say.

“Any interest? We’re short one girl,” Noah says.

“And you’re better than the two we already have without even training.” Logan lowers his voice. “We’re required to have two to compete and that’s exactly what we have. If anything happens to one of them, we’re disqualified.”

“Sure.” I smile. “Sounds fun.”

Edam jogs up to us. “Did you say there’s a cross country meet tomorrow?”

Noah sighs melodramatically. “We have a parent sponsor taking us, since we were without a coach until today. You don’t need to worry.”

“Oh it’s no worry. If you’ve done okay before, imagine how much you’ll improve with my help.” Edam’s cheesy smile is embarrassing, even though no one realizes we know each other. “Are you recruiting Rebecca? Because as coach, I think that should be my job.”

I glare at Edam, but he just smiles back at me.

“They asked me to go to the meet tomorrow, and I told them I would.”

“I can’t think of any better way to be spending your day.” I ignore Edam’s sarcastic disapproval and shove past him, heading toward the locker room to change before my next class.