Starling
Authors: Lesley Livingston
Tags: #Young Adult Fiction, #Legends; Myths; Fables, #General, #Romance, #Lifestyles, #City & Town Life, #Juvenile Fiction, #Love & Romance
DEDICATIONFor librarians. Everywhere.
“C
’mon, Mase! Where’s that killer instinct?”
Calum Aristarchos bounced lightly on the balls of his feet, the tip of his fencing saber tracing tiny, taunting spirals in the air.
“En garde …”
Mason Starling’s gaze narrowed behind the wire mesh of her cage mask, and she sank lower into her stance, thigh muscles searing with fatigue. She shook her head sharply to clear her mind as the sweat dripped, blinding, into her eyes.
Concentrate …
The blade in her hand wavered, dipping as if in uncertainty.
She retreated a half step....
And Calum Aristarchos made his move. Feet crossing over each other in a blur, he ran at her and thrust for her heart, his left arm flung back, spine arching like a dancer’s, only
slightly
overextending himself....
Mason dropped into a deep, leg-punishing lunge, scooped her blade back up and—
“A hit!”
“No!”
Toby Fortier—fencing coach drill sergeant, and
not
someone to argue that kind of point with—snorted and marked the practice score sheet. “She tagged you good, Aristarchos. Which also means she wins, again. Whining about it just makes you look like a girl.” He glanced up at Mason as she pulled off her headgear and grinned. “A girl who can’t fight like Mason.”
Calum took off his own mask and flipped his practice foil around in the air, catching it by the blade, just under the guard. He sauntered back over to where Mason stood, his green eyes flashing and a wry smile bending his mouth up at one corner. Mason noticed that his face still glowed with the remnants of a deep summer tan. Part of what made him look like a magazine model.
“Okay,” Calum said, nudging her with his elbow. “I guess you found that killer instinct.”
“Sure,” she agreed. “Or you just got cocky. That lunge left you wide-open.”
“Not for everybody, Mase.” He winked and plucked the sword out of Mason’s hand. “Just for you.”
Mason felt her heart flutter for an instant. “Does that mean you’re gonna help me prepare for the Nationals qualifiers?”
“You bet.” Cal wrapped one arm loosely around Mason’s waist and whispered in her ear, “I always back a winner.”
Mason’s cheeks grew warm as she blushed fiercely. Then she felt another kind of heat—like a laser beam focused on the back of her head—and she glanced over her shoulder to find Heather Palmerston staring at her from across the gym. The tall blonde turned away when Mason’s eyes met hers, and she slapped her fencing glove into the palm of one hand, the sound of the leather cracking like a whip. Mason was reasonably certain that Heather had only taken up fencing to stay close to Cal, even though the two of them had recently broken up.
Heather was an indifferent fighter—not bad, just not committed—and she really didn’t seem to enjoy it all that much. Unlike Mason, for whom fencing wasn’t a pursuit so much as a passion.
She
was shooting for a spot on the national team. And after that? Maybe even the Olympics. Heather … not so much. Even less so after she and Cal had broken up. Mason wondered why Heather hadn’t dropped out of the fencing club then, but for Heather, everything was about appearances. And quitting would have made it look like she’d lost something. The thing she
did
seem to enjoy about it, though, was the way all the guys looked at her as she walked by dressed in her tight fencing whites.
Like Rory Starling, the younger of Mason’s two older brothers, who was gawking at Heather that very moment. As she sashayed past where he was working out, punching the heavy bag in the far corner of the gym, Rory’s jaw went so slack he was almost drooling. Mason rolled her eyes.
“She’d be a decent fighter if she gave a damn,” Toby rumbled from right beside her. Mason hadn’t realized he was standing there. “Couldn’t hold a candle to you, of course, but she’d certainly hold her own.” He grunted and ran a hand over his face, smoothing his finely trimmed goatee.
“D’you want her on the competition’s team?” Mason asked. She’d meant the question to be a neutral one, but that wasn’t how it came out sounding. Across the gym, Heather said something that made Calum laugh … and Mason felt an envious twinge in her chest.
Toby looked down at her and shook his head. “No, Mason,” he said. “And you
know
your spot on the team is locked up.”
“That’s not what I meant—”
“I know. Just understand that it’s not something you have to worry about. Not if you keep fighting the way you have been.” Toby’s gaze drifted back to where Heather stood shaking out her wheat-gold hair from its ponytail. It fell across her shoulders like spun honey. Lookswise, she was the exact opposite of Mason, with her black hair, winter-pale skin, and blue eyes. “Anyway,” Toby was saying, “Palmerston’s too high maintenance. I just hate wasted potential, that’s all.”
Mason nodded silently as Toby wandered over to where a couple of boys from the wrestling club were seeing just how hard they could peg each other in the head with a volleyball. Mason fished her aluminum water bottle out of her gear bag and took a long swallow to quench her thirst brought on by the long practice. She was tired, but not exhausted, and that was a good sign. Cal was a tough opponent—the toughest, in fact. He was still better than her, in spite of what Toby had said, and Mason was inwardly thrilled that not only had she been able to hold her own against him, but he’d actually seemed to appreciate it. She liked the idea of being appreciated by Calum Aristarchos. A lot.
Trying not to glance over to see if he was still chatting with Heather, Mason stuffed her water bottle back in her bag and gathered up the rest of her gear. As she did so, she became aware of a subtle shift in the quality of the light streaming in through the high, arched windows. Mason peered up through the construction scaffolding that had been erected all along the south wall of the hall that housed Gosforth Academy’s new athletic center, startled to see that the previously clear blue vault of the sky had descended like a dark, heavy blanket, blotting out the sun.
Through the windows, Mason saw thick, bruise-black clouds boiling over one another, moving with a swiftness that was almost frightening. She glanced at her watch. It was only early evening—just before dinner—but it suddenly seemed much, much later. The light outside dimmed to an ominous purplish wash.
If the sky was going to open up, Mason thought, at least it wasn’t anywhere near as far to get back to her dorm as it had been when the fencing club had had to use the Columbia University gym. That was a good six blocks away. Now she just had to run the length of Gosforth’s quad in order to get home. It was one of the perks of the new facility. The building used to be the academy headmaster’s residence, but the old gothic structure had recently been gutted and redesigned, turning it into a multipurpose center to be used by the gymnastics club and for dance classes and wrestling and—most importantly, as far as Mason was concerned—the fencing team. The sprung wooden floors had been installed only the week before, and the whole place smelled of lumber, varnish, and paint.
It was a gorgeous facility, with state-of-the-art equipment wrapped in the antique charm of the building’s gothic architecture. There was even a little raised stage at one end for dance recitals and presentations, and the old stone walls had been left exposed along one side. Midway down the long north wall, double doors set into a high glass partition led to a soaring vestibule. It was an oddly extravagant feature for an athletics facility, but it was triple-glazed safety glass and probably could have withstood even a hard-flung basketball. It was there to showcase the high stone arch that had once housed a plain leaded-pane window, which Mason’s father, as a benefactor to the school, had ordered replaced with a magnificent stained-glass masterpiece. Even on the dullest day the window caught the sun and shattered it into a million shards of rainbow-brilliant light, casting it across the dark wood-paneled foyer of the new gym, where glass cases stood displaying an abundance of sports championship trophies.
Mason smiled as she stared up at the stained glass. She was proud of her father and his commitment to the school, but sometimes she wished he would choose
slightly
less ostentatious ways to commit.
Outside, she saw that the shadows cast by the branches of the old oak tree in the school’s quad had begun to wave wildly in the gathering storm. The tree was enormous—it had been planted when the school’s original buildings had been constructed in the late 1700s on Manhattan’s Upper West Side—and the gusting wind sent showers of leaves, twigs, and acorns clattering against the window and the old slate roof. The overhead fluorescents hanging from the hall’s exposed beams flickered and dimmed. When they returned to their normal brightness, the gymnasium seemed to have taken on a slightly sepulchral air.