Мэг Кэбот - Avalon High стр 2.

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