17 #5
Asta was stopped in the doorway by a large man in a greenish uniform. It was one of the Pillar janitors – a middle-aged man with a bad hip that made him limp.
‘What are you kids doing up here?’ he snapped. ‘How did you get in here?’
‘I’m so sorry,’ Felix said, putting on a voice that Asta recognized as one he used with his parents. ‘We were just . . .’ But his excuse died on his lips.
‘We’ll leave,’ Asta said. ‘We didn’t do any harm, I swear. Please, just let us leave.’ Her voice trembled, and she was afraid that she would burst out crying again at any moment.
The janitor frowned, clearly uncomfortable with the threat of Asta’s tears. ‘Well, get out of here, then! Before I tell someone you were up here.’
‘Thank you, sir,’ Asta said. She moved to the door, and the janitor stepped aside to let her pass.
‘You, too,’ the man said.
Asta looked back. Felix was frozen in the middle of the room. He looked terrified, as if he was afraid that the whole room full of desks and cabinets would collapse on him if he moved.
Asta hurried down the hallway to the stairwell, pausing only long enough to shove her feet into her sneakers but not to tie them. She clumped down into the darkness, feeling her way.
‘Asta,’ Felix called behind her. But she ignored him.
He caught up with her as she was cutting through a stand of trees between the admin building and the dorms. The sun had sunk to the horizon now, and the sky was blazing with sunset colors – fuchsia and marigold and indigo. He carried his boots and the sharp twigs under the trees slowed him.
‘Asta, please! Stop!’
She finally took pity on him and stopped. ‘What? I don’t have any more dreams for you to ruin, Felix. That was it. So what do you want?’
‘I’m sorry, okay?’
He really did look sorry, and Asta thought about what it would be like to forgive him, to hug him, to figure out how to get back up from this fall together. But he wasn’t done.
‘It’s just . . . you know you’re overreacting, right? It’s all going to be fine.’
Asta set her jaw. ‘Don’t tell me how to react.’
‘You have to trust me, Asta. It’s going to be okay.’
‘I do not. I do not trust you.’ She threw back her head and looked up at the darkening branches overhead. ‘You hid the truth from me. And you told Pikki instead.’ Above them, a pair of mourning doves chased each other through the gloom, hunting for a roost. Asta’s tears were flowing again.
‘You’re not the victim here, Asta,’ Felix said, his voice as tight and hard as the acorns at their feet. ‘Everything I did, I did for you.’
Asta glared at him, her teeth on edge. ‘I don’t owe you anything, Felix, and I sure as hell don’t need anything from you.’
‘You can’t do everything by yourself, Asta,’ Felix said. The condescension in his voice made Asta’s blood boil.
‘I’ll tell you what I will do “all by myself”. I will win. Tomorrow and every day after that. I’ll leave you in my fucking dust, and I won’t look back. See you at the race.’ She took off at a run for her dorm, and she did not stop, no matter how many times he called her name.
For the whole race, Felix and Pikki rode in tight formation, as if they’d made a plan specifically to box Asta out from the lead. It made her so mad she could hardly see straight, and she was racing hot and reckless.
Asta had almost wiped out coming out of the fire hedge by pivoting Carmine before he had more than one foot on the ground.
They had stumbled into the path of a green-and-gray dragon named Sever and his rider, Isaac.
Isaac had sworn at Asta as he veered off to the side, missing the false ladder and needing to circle back around to trigger the beacon.
But Asta and Carmine had recovered quickly and cleared the false ladder on Felix and Pikki’s heels.
Carmine was testy again. Roberta Lopez, the grooming instructor, had assured Asta that there was nothing wrong with him besides a little rash.
It might put him on edge, but he was fine to race.
His bad attitude was making itself known on the track, however.
Between his nips at other dragons and Asta’s sudden, unpredictable moves, they had more or less ticked off the entire field by the time they reached the top of the mountain scramble.
The airwork included long periods of sustained flight that circled the buoys, touching down only briefly on the towers in the middle of the terrain. Asta tried everything she could think of to cut between Pikki and Felix and break up whatever unholy pact they had made.
But nothing Asta was doing was working. Pikki kept her head turned over her shoulder and countered everything Asta tried. Up, down, right, left.
Of all the times for Pikki to learn how to improvise.
There were two buoys left. Pikki dropped back from Felix’s side to guard the inside turns against Asta’s encroachment, but she was drifting out, hedging her bets in case Asta tried to cut around the outside instead.
It left just enough room next to the buoy for Carmine to nose his way in.
Asta urged him forward. He beat his massive wings and advanced, snapping at Pikki’s dragon for good measure.