Avalon High - Мэг Кэбот

MEG CABOT AVALON HIGH 

CHAPTER ONE

 You are so lucky.

 Trust my best friend Nancy to see things that way. Nancy is what you would call an

optimist.

 Not that Im a pessimist, or anything. Im just

 Apparently, Im also lucky.

 Lucky? I echoed into the phone. In what way am I lucky?

 Oh, you know, Nancy said. You get to start over. In a whole new school. Where no

one knows you. You can be whoever you want to be. You can give yourself a total

personality makeover, and there wont be anyone around to be all, Who do you think

youre kidding, Ellie Harrison? I remember when you ate paste in first grade.

 I never thought of it that way, I said. Because I hadnt. Anyway, you were the one

who ate paste.

 You know what I mean. Nancy sighed. Well. Good luck. With school and everything.

practical. At least according to Nancy.

 Yeah, I said, sensing even over the thousand-mile difference between us, that, it was

time to hang up. Bye.

 Bye, Nancy said. Then added, Youre so lucky.

 Really, up until Nancy said this, I hadnt thought there was anything lucky about my

situation at all. Except maybe the fact that theres a pool in the backyard of our new

house. We never had a pool of our own. Before, if Nancy and I wanted to go to the pool,

we had to get on our bikes and ride five milesmostly uphillto Como Park.

 I have to say, when my parents broke the news about the sabbatical, the fact that they

were quick to add, And were renting a house with a pool! was the only thing that kept

down the vomit that started coming up in my throat. If you are a child of

professors,sabbatical is probably about the dirtiest word in your own personal vocabulary.

Every seven years, most professors get offered onebasically a yearlong vacation, so they

can recharge and try to write and publish a book.

 Professors love sabbaticals.

 Their kids hate them.

 Because would you really want to uproot and leave all your friends, make all new friends

at a whole new school and just be getting to think, Okay, this isnt so bad, only to have

to uproot yourself again a year later and go back where you came from?

 No. Not if youre sane, anyway.

 At least this sabbatical isnt as bad as the last one, which was in Germany. Not that

theres anything wrong with Germany. I still exchange e-mails with Anne-Katrin, the girl

I shared a desk with in the weird German school I went to there.

 But come on. I had to learn a whole other language!

 At least with this one, were still in America. And okay, were outside Washington, D.C.,

which isnt like the rest of America. But everyone here speaks English. So far.

 And theres a pool.

 Having your own pool is a lot of responsibility, it turns out. I mean, every morning you

have to check the filters and make sure they arent all jammed up with leaves or dead

moles. Theres almost always a frog or two in ours. Usually, if I get out there early

enough, theyre still alive. So then I have to conduct a frog rescue expedition.

 The only way you can rescue the frogs is to reach down into the water to pull the filter

basket out, so Ive ended up touching all sorts of really gross stuff that floats in there, like

dead beetles and newts and, a few times, drowned mice. Once there was a snake. It was

still alive. I pretty much draw the line at touching anything that is capable of sending

paralyzing streams of poison into my veins, so I yelled to my parents that there was a

snake in the filter basket.

 My dad is the one who yelled back, So? What do you want me to do about it?

 Get it out, I said.

 No way, my dad said. Im not touching any snake.

 My parents arent like other parents. For one thing, other peoples parents actually leave

the house to go to work. Some of them are gone for as many as forty-five hours a week,

Ive heard.

 Not mine. Mine are homeall the time . They never leave! Theyre always in their at-

home offices, writing or reading. Practically the only time they come out of their offices

is to watchJeopardy! and then they yell out the answers at each other.

 No one elses parents know all the answers toJeopardy! or yell them out if they do. I

know, Ive been to Nancys house and seen the evidence for myself. Her parents

watchEntertainment Tonight after dinner, like normal people.

 I dont knowany of the answers onJeopardy! Thats why I sort of hate that show.

 My dad grew up in the Bronx, where there arent any snakes. He completely hates

nature. He totally ignores our cat, Tig. Which of course means that Tig is crazy about

him.

 And if my dad sees a spider, he screams like a girl. Then my mom, who grew up on a

ranch in Montana and has no patience for spidersor my dads screaming, will come in and

kill it, even though Ive told her a million times that spiders are extremely beneficial to

the environment.

 Of course, I knew better than to tell my mom about the snake in the pool filter, because

shed probably have come out and snapped its head clean off right in front of me. In the

end, I found a forked branch, and pulled it out that way. I let it go in the woodsy area

behind the house were renting. Even though the snake didnt turn out to be that scary

once I finally got the guts to save it, I kind of hope it doesnt come back.

 Theres other stuff you have to do if you have your own pool, besides clean out the filter

baskets. You have to vacuum the pool floorthis is kind of funand you have to test the

water all the time, for chlorine and pH. I like testing the water. I do it a few times a day.

You put the water in these little test tubes, and then add a couple drops of this stuff, and

then if the water in the test tubes turns the wrong color, you have to drop some powder

into the filter baskets. Its a lot like chemistry, only better, because when youre done,

instead of a stinky mess like the kind I always ended up with last year in chem class, you

get beautiful clear blue water.

 I spent most of the summer that we moved to Annapolis messing around with the pool. I

say messing around with. My brother Geoffhe left for his first year of college the

second week in Augustput it a different way. He said I was acting like a freak about it.

 Ellie, he said to me so many times I lost count, relax. You dont need to be doing this.

Weve got a contract with a pool company. They come every week. Let them do it.

 But the pool guy doesnt reallycare about the pool. I mean, hes just doing it for the

money. He doesnt see the beauty of it. Im pretty sure.

 But I guess I can see where Geoff was coming from. I mean, the pool did sort of start

taking up a lot of my time. When I wasnt cleaning it, I was floating on top of the water,

on one of these inflatable rafts I made my mom and dad buy for us over at the Wawa.

Thats the name of the gas stations here in Maryland. Wawas. They dont have any

Wawas back home in Minnesota. Just, like, Mobils and Exxons or whatever.

 Anyway, we filled them up at the Wawa, toothe raftswith the air hose meant for people

to use on their tires, even though you arent supposed to use an air hose to fill a raft. It

says so right on the raft.

 But when Geoff pointed this out to my dad, he just went, Who cares? and filled them

up anyway.

 And nothing bad happened.

 I tried to keep the same routine going for the whole summer. Every day I got up and put

on my bikini. Then I grabbed a Nutri-Grain bar and headed down to the pool to check the

filter baskets for frogs or whatever. Then when the pool was all clean, I got onto one of

the rafts with a book and started floating.

 By the time Geoff left for school, I was so good at floating that I could do it without

even getting my hair wet or anything. I could go all morning without a break, right up

until my mom or dad would come out onto the deck and say, Lunch.

 Then Id go inside and Mom and Dad and I would have peanut butter and jelly, if I was

the one cooking that day, or ribs from Red Hot and Blue down the road if it was one of

my parents turn, on account of them both being too busy writing books to cook.

 Then Id go back out to the pool until my mom or dad came out and said, Dinner.

 I didnt think this was a bad way to pass the last few weeks of summer.

 But my mom did.

 I dont know why she had to go and make it her business how I spend my time. I mean,

shes the one who let Dad drag us out here in the first place, on account of the book hes

researching. She could have written her own bookon my namesake, Elaine of Astolat,

the Lady of Shalottback home in St. Paul.

 Oh yeah. Thats the other thing about having professors as parents: They name you after

totally random authorslike poor Geoff, after Geoffrey Chauceror characters from

literature, such as the Lady of Shalott, aka Lady Elaine, who killed herself because Sir

Lancelot liked Queen Guinevereyou know, the one Keira Knightley played in that King

Arthur moviebetter than he liked her.

 I dont care how beautiful the poem is about her. Its not exactly cool to be named after

someone who killed herself over a guy. I have mentioned this several times to my

parents, but they still dont get it.

 The name things not the only thing they dont get, either.

 Dont you want to go to the mall? my mom started asking me every single day, before I

could escape to the pool. Dont you want to go to the movies?

 But now that Geoff had left for college, I had no one to go to the mall or the movies

withno one except my parents. And no way was I going with them. Been there, done

that. Nothing like going to the movies with two people who have to dissect the film to

within an inch of its life. I mean, its Vin Diesel, okay? What do theyexpect ?

 Schools going to start soon enough, Id say to my mom. Why cant I just float until

then?

 Because its not normal, my mom would say, when Id ask her this.

 To which I would reply, Oh, and you would know what normal is, because, lets face it,

she and my dad are both freaks.

 But she wouldnt even get mad. Shed just shake her head and say, I know what normal

behavior for a teenage girl is. And floating in that pool by yourself all day is not it.

 I thought this was unnecessarily harsh. Theres nothing wrong with floating. Its actually

pretty fun. You can lie there and read, or, if your book gets boring or you finish it and are

too lazy to go inside and get a new one or whatever, you can watch the way the sunlight

reflects off the water onto the backs of the leaves of the trees above you. And you can

listen to the birds and cicadas and, off in the distance, the rat-tat-boom of gunnery

practice down at the Naval Academy.

 We saw them, sometimes. The middies, I mean, or midshipmen as they preferred to be

called, the student officers. In their spotless white uniforms, walking in pairs downtown,

whenever my parents and I went to buy a new book for me to read and coffee for them at

Hard Bean Coffee and Booksellers. My dad would point and say, Look, Ellie. Sailors.

 Which isnt that weird, really. I guess he was trying to make girl talk. You know, because

I cant get any of that from my mom, the spider killer.

 I guess I was supposed to think the middies were cute, or something. But I wasnt going

to talk about cute guys with mydad . I mean, I appreciated the effort, and all, but in a way

it was just as bad as Moms Why dont you let me take you to the mall? thing.

 And its not like my dad spenthis days doing anything all that exciting. The book hes

writing is even worse than Moms, on the boredom barometer. Because his is about a

sword. A sword! It isnt even a pretty sword, with jewels or gold or anything. Its all old

and has these rust spots and isnt worth a dime. I know because the National Gallery over

in D.C. let my dad bring it home so he could study it closer. Thats why we moved here

so he can look at this sword up close. Its sitting in his officewell, the office of the

professor whose house were renting while hes in England on his own sabbatical,

probably studying something even more worthless than Dads sword.

 Museums let you borrow stuff and bring it home if its of academic interest (in other

words, not worth anything) and if youre a professor.

 I dont know why my parents had to choose medieval times as their field of study. Its

the most boring era of all, except possibly prehistoric times. I know Im in the minority in

thinking this, but thats because most people have this really messed up idea about what

things were like in the Middle Ages. Most people think it was like what they show in the

movies and on TV. You know, women floating around in pointy hats and pretty dresses

saying thee and thou, and knights thundering up to save the day.

 But when your parents are medievalists, you learn at a pretty early age that things

werent like that at all. The truth is, everyone back in the Middle Ages had totally bad

B.O. and no teeth and died of old age at, like, twenty, and the women were all oppressed

and had to marry people they didnt even like and everybody blamed them for every little

thing that went wrong.

 I mean, look at Guinevere. Everyone thinks its all her fault Camelot doesnt exist

anymore. Im so sure.

 Except that I discovered at an early age that sharing information like this can make you

kind of unpopular at Sleeping Beauty birthday parties. Or at that Medieval Times

restaurant. Or during games of Dungeons & Dragons.

 But what am I supposed to do, remain silent on the subject? I genuinely cant help it.

Like Im really going to sit there and go, Oh yeah, things were all really great back then.

I wish I could find a time portal and go back to, like, the year 900 and visit and get lice

and have all my hair frizz out because there was no conditioner, and oh, by the way, if

you got strep throat or bronchitis you died because there werent any antibiotics.

 Um, not. As a consequence, Im not at the top of anybodys list when it comes time to

send out invites to the Renaissance Fayre.

 But whatever. I ended up giving in to my mom in the end. Not about the mall. About

running with my dad.

 I didnt want to go, or anything.

 But this was different than going to the movies or the mall. I mean, exercise is

supposedly very good for middle-aged men, and my dad hadnt gotten any in a long time.

Id won the districts womens two hundred meter back home just last May, but Dad

hadnt exercised since his annual physical, which was last year, when the doctor told him

he needed to lose ten pounds. So hed gone to the gym with my mom twice, then gave up,

because he says all the testosterone at the gym makes him crazy.

 My mom was the one who was all, If you take him running, Ellie, Ill get off your back

about the floating thing.

 Which pretty much clinched it for me. Well, that and the fact that it would give Dad a

chance to get his heart rate upsomething I knew from what theyre always saying on

theToday show that old people badly need.

 Like a good academic, Mom had done her research. She sent us to a park about two

miles from the house we were renting. It was a very fancy park that had everything:

tennis courts, baseball diamond, lacrosse field, nice, clean public restrooms, two dog

runsone for big dogs and one for little onesand, of course, a running path. No pool, like

back home in Como Park, but I guess people in our new upscale neighborhood dont need

a community pool. Everyone has their own in their backyard.

 I got out of the car and did a few stretches while I surreptitiously watched my dad

prepare for his run. Hed put away his wire rimshes blind as a bat without them. In fact,

in medieval times, hed probably have been dead by the age of three or four from falling

down a well or whatever; Id inherited my moms twenty-twenty vision, so most likely

Id have lived a bit longerand put on these thick plastic-rimmed glasses that have an

elastic band he can snap behind his head to keep them from sliding off while he runs.

Mom calls this his Dork Strap.

 This is a nice running path, my dad was saying, as he adjusted his Dork Strap. Unlike

me, whod spent hours in the pool, Dad wasnt a bit tan. His legs were the color of

notebook paper. Only with hair. Its exactly one mile per lap. It goes through some

woodsa kind of arboretumover there. See? So its not all in the hot sun. Theres some

shade.

 I slid my headphones on. I cant run without music, except during meets, when they

wont let you. I find that rap is ideal for running. The angrier the rapper, the better.

Eminem is ideal to listen to while running, because hes so mad at everyone. Except his

daughter.

 Two laps? I asked my dad.

 Sure, he said.

 And so I turned on my iPod miniI keep it on an arm strap when I run, which is different

than a Dork Strapand started running.

 It was hard at first. Its more humid in Maryland than it is back home, I guess on account

of the sea. The air is actually heavy. Its like running through soup.

 But after a while, my joints seemed to loosen up. I started remembering how much Id

liked to run back home. Its hard and everything. Dont get me wrong. But I like how

strong and powerful my legs feel underneath me while I run

Anything at all.

 There was hardly anyone else on the pathjust old ladies, mostly, power-walking with

their dogsbut I tore past them, leaving them in my wake. I didnt smile as I ran by. Back

home, everybody smiles at strangers. Here, the only time people smile is if you smile

first. It didnt take my parents very long to catch on to this. Now they make me smileand

even waveat everyone we pass. Especially our new neighbors, when theyre out in their

yards mowing their lawns or whatever. Image, my mom calls it. Its important to keep up

a good image, she says. So people wont think were snobs.

 Except that Im not really sure I care what people around here think about me.

 The running path started out like a normal track, with closely cut grass on either side of

it, snaking between the baseball diamond and the lacrosse field, then curving past the dog

runs and around the parking lot.

 Then it left the grass behind, and disappeared into a surprisingly thick forest. Yeah, a real

forest, right in the middle of nowhere, with a discreet little brown sign that

saidWELCOME TO THE ANNE ARUNDEL COUNTY ARBORETUM by the side of

the path.

 I was a little shocked, as I ran past the sign, at how wild the undergrowth on either side

of the trail had been allowed to get. Plunging into the deep shade of the arboretum, I

noticed that the leaves overhead were so thick, hardly any sunlight at all was allowed to

get through.

 Still, the vegetation on either side of me was lush and prickly looking. I was sure there

was also a ton of poison ivy in there, too

enough back in medieval times, could probably have killed you, since there wasnt any

cortisone.

like I can do anything.

something that, if you contracted it badly

 You could barely see two feet beyond the path, the brambles and trees were so close

together. But it was at least ten degrees cooler in the arboretum than it was in the rest of

the park. The shade cooled the sweat that was dripping down my face and chest. It was

hard to believe, running through that thick wood, that I was still near civilization. But

when I pulled out my headphones to listen, I could hear cars going by on the highway

beyond the thick growth of trees.

 Which was kind of a relief. You know, that I hadnt accidentally gotten lost in Jurassic

Park, or whatever.

 I plopped my earphones back into place and kept going. I was breathing really hard now,

but I still felt good. I couldnt hear my feet striking the pathI could only hear the music

in my earsbut it seemed to me for a minute that I was the only person in these woods

maybe the only person in the whole world.

 Which was ridiculous, since I knew my dad wasnt that far behind meprobably not

going much faster than the power-walking ladies, but behind me nonetheless.

 Still, I had seen too many TV movies where the heroine was jogging innocently along

and some random psychopath comes popping out of thick growth, just like the stuff on

either side of me, and attacks her. I wasnt taking any chances. Who knew what kind of

freaks were lurking? I mean, it was Annapolis, home of the U.S. Naval Academy and the

capital of Maryland, and allhardly an area known for harboring violent criminals.

 But you never know.

 Good thing my legs were so strong. If someone did jump out at me from the trees, I was

pretty confident that I could deliver a good kick to his head. And keep stomping on him

until help came.

 It was right as I was thinking this that I saw him.

CHAPTER TWO

  Or maybe I just thought I did.

 Still. I was pretty sure I saw something through the trees that wasnt green or brown or

any other color found in nature.

 And when I peered through the thick leaves around me, I saw that there was someone

standing at the bottom of a pretty deep ravine to one side of the path, near a large cluster

of boulders. How he could have gotten through all that vegetation without a machete, I

couldnt imagine. Maybe there was a path Id missed.

 But he was there all right. Doing what, I went by too quickly to tell.

 Then I was out of the woods, out into the blazing sunshine, and sprinting past the

parking lot. Some women were getting out of a minivan and heading toward the dog run

with their Border collies. There was a playground nearby, on which some tiny kids were

swinging and going down the slide, their parents watching them closely in case of

accidents.

 And I thought to myself: Had I really seen what I thought Id seen? A guy standing at the

bottom of that ravine?

 Or had I just imagined it?

 There was a park employee with a weed whacker by third base over at the baseball

diamond. I didnt say hi to him. I didnt smile, either.

 Nor did I mention the man at the bottom of the ravine. I probably should have. What

about those kids on the playground? What if he was a child molester?

 But I didnt say anything to the guy with the weed whacker. I blew past him without

making eye contact.

 So much for Image.

 I could see my dad, in his bright yellow shirt, way on the other side of the track. He was

three-quarters of a lap behind me. That was okay. Hes slow, but hes steady. Mom always

says Dad will never make it there fast, but at least hell always make it, in the end.

 Moms one to talk. She cant even stand running. She likes to do aerobics at the Y.

 Which, given the freak-out Id gotten from passing that guy in the woods, was starting to

sound like it wasnt such a bad idea.

 This time around, when I headed into the trees, I scanned the sides of the path for signs

of a trail, something the man could have used to make it down to that ravine without

getting all scratched up by the undergrowth. But I didnt see anything.

 And when I went past where Id seen him before, I saw that the ravine was empty. He

wasnt there anymore. There was nothing, in fact, to indicate that hed been there at all.

Maybe I really had imagined him. Maybe Mom was right, and I really should have spent

less time in the pool, and more at the mall this summer. Maybe, I worried, I was cracking

up from lack of contact with people my own age.

 Which is when I rounded a corner, and nearly ran into him.

 And realized I hadnt imagined him at all.

 He was with two other people. The first thing I noticed about themthe two people who

were with him, I meanwas that they were both blond and very attractive, a guy and a

girl, around my age. They were on either side of the man from the ravine

upon closer inspection, wasnt a man at all, really, but a boy, also my age, or maybe a

little older. He was tall and dark-haired, like me.

 But unlike me, he wasnt covered in sweat or gasping for breath.

 Oh, and he was really cute, too.

 All three of them looked up, startled, as I came running by. I saw the blond-haired boy

say something, and the blond-haired girl looked upset

them, even though I veered in time to avoid a collision.

 Only the dark-haired boy smiled at me. He looked right into my face and said something.

 Except that I dont know what it was since I had my earphones on and couldnt hear him.

 All I know is that for some reasonI dont know whyI smiled back. Not because of

Image, or anything. It was weird. It was like he smiled at me, and my lips automatically

smiled backmy brain had nothing to do with it. There was no conscious decision on my

part to smile back.

 I just did. Like it was a habit, or something. Like this was a smile I always smiled back

to.

 Except that I had never seen this guy before in my life. So how could my mouth even

have known this?

 Which was why it was kind of a relief to run past them. You know, to get away from that

smile that made me smile back, even when I didnt want to. Necessarily.

 My relief was short-lived, though. Because I saw them again as I leaned against the hood

of our car, panting heavily and polishing off one of the bottles of water my mom had

made Dad and me bring with us. They emerged from the woodsthe two boys and the

girland headed toward their own cars. The blond girl and boy were talking rapidly to the

dark-haired boy. I wasnt close enough to hear what they were saying, but judging from

their expressions, it didnt look like they were too happy with him. One thing I knew for