She drops to the floor in a silent heap.
I watch, unemotional, as she struggles to regain her breath. Guess the wall knocked the air out of her. I’m so sad. Then, as she scrambles to her feet and dusts off her track shorts, I casually pluck my pants out of the puddle and pull them on.
My hands are shaking with adrenaline. For a minute there I felt invincible, like I could do anything. I guess I didn’t know my own strength. My weight training is usually low weights and high reps so I don’t build bulky muscles. Maybe I’d better drop down to lower weights.
Her cheerleader groupie friends rush to her aid, but she just shrugs them off. “You’ll wish you hadn’t done that.”
“You know, Adara,” I say, sauntering toward the door, “I don’t think I will.”
“I’ll make your life miserable.”
“Take a number,” I throw over my shoulder as I hurry into a jog, heading for the track. I am so ready for the exhaustion two hours of running brings.
“Can we call a truce?” Stella walks into my room and sits on my bed
like she owns it.
Ew, now I have to wash my sheets.
I eye her skeptically. “What’s the catch?”
“No catch,” she assures me. “I just think we should try getting along like sisters. After all, it’s going to be a long year if we fight the whole time.”
I agree. But I don’t believe her.
Stella doesn’t have a let’s-get-along bone in her body. And her eyes still have a little rim of ice around the edges.
“I’m not buying,” I say before returning my attention to conjugating Greek verbs—and they’re kicking my tail. Can’t they use the regular alphabet? “Just pull whatever prank you want to pull so I can get back to my homework.”
“So untrusting, Phoebe.” She stands and starts to leave. “I speak fluent Greek, you know. I was going to offer my help. . . .”
I want to ignore her, really I do. But just then I’m trying to figure out the aorist tense of to be, which is just one of the like forty tenses I have to conjugate.
“Wait!” I blurt.
“Yes?” I can tell from her tone of voice that she knows I’m desperate. She pauses in the doorway, but doesn’t turn back around. Like she’s waiting for me to beg. That’s never going to happen, but I am open to negotiations.
“What do you want?” I ask. “Honestly.”
Her shoulders lift beneath the pink polo shirt she’s wearing. “Nothing significant.”
“Stella—”
“Three things.” She whips around and shuts the door sharply behind her. “In exchange for Greek tutoring I want three things from you.”
I narrow my eyes at her scheming demand. “I’m listening.”
“First, you never speak to me at school.”
Like that’s a hard one to uphold. I’m always having to stop myself from finding Stella to tell her every detail of my day—not!
She’s waiting for me to answer, so I nod.
“Second, I want you to tell Daddy you want a subscription to Vogue and Cosmo.”
“But I don’t read—”
“It’s not for you, kako.” She rolls her eyes at my ignorance. “He won’t let me read them because he thinks they’re ‘useless social trash’ that give women ‘a distorted view of physical perfection’ or something like that.”
“What makes you think he’ll let me—”
“He wants to win your affection,” she interrupts—again. “He’ll give you anything you want.”
“Fine,” I say. “Vogue and Cosmo.” Though I have to say I pretty much agree with Damian. I’d rather get a useful magazine, like Her Sports.
“And third—” She drops her voice to a near whisper, so low I have to step closer to hear her. “I want you to break up Griffin and Adara.”
My jaw drops open.
Of all the things I might have imagined she was going to ask for, that was nowhere near the list. That wasn’t even in the same universe as the list.
What about that boy I saw her sitting with at lunch? I got the definite impression there was something going on between them. In any case, I’m not about to get in the middle of that social mess.
“No way,” I say, thinking the pair already hates me enough. Even a perfect 4.0 isn’t worth getting in the middle of that relationship. “Besides, everyone says they always break up after the first week of school.”
“Not this year,” Stella says with a sadness in her voice I didn’t think she was capable of. She must be faking.
“Why do you care if they’re together?”
She looks away for a second and when she looks at me again her eyes are lined with tears. They look real, but with Stella who can tell? “I want Griffin for myself. This is my last year, my last chance.”
“Then why don’t you just ask him—”
“Because Adara is my friend,” she snaps. “I don’t want to ruin that, I just want to—”
“Steal her boyfriend?” Sure sounds like a friend to me.
“Do we have a deal or not?”
“Sorry,” I find myself saying. “I’m not getting involved.”
“Oh, I think you will,” she says, her jaw firm.
Walking to the door to usher her out, I start to explain, “No—” “You will if you want to get back to America next year.”