Page 33

Chapter 33

THE THREE MUSKETEERS

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 6

“Charlie! ” Xavier lunges for the machine bar slipping out of my fingers, and I jolt. He snatches and slaps the bar back into place above my head with a clang. “Where were you, man? You just kept going and going after your reps.”

Did I?

I sit up from the machine, glancing around the workout room. All I remember is thinking about all the study guides I have to finish after this. “Sorry. Zoned out.”

“Last month, you couldn’t get through one power lift without passing out, so good work. But overdoing it can strain your muscles. We don’t want that one week before testing day.”

As if I could forget.

“COMRADES,” echoes from the workout room doors.

I look over. Robby waves at us in a tracksuit uniform. Blaze poses behind him, fluttering his hands like a butterfly. They weave through the rows of machines toward our side.

Before I can ask why, Xavier says, “I mentioned we’d be here today. They said they might join.”

Blaze shows another innovative pose—a finger gun. The Ring of Ancestral Darkness on his thumb sparkles not from magic but from the fluorescent lights. “It is but my curse to push my body to its breaking point.”

“Hope we’re not intruding,” Robby says, adjusting his tracksuit collar.

“Not at all,” I say, but my pulse speeds at the lie. With Xavier comparing us three side by side, I’ll look weaker than I already am.

We follow Xavier’s lead toward three pull-up bars. Robby and Blaze take the first and third, leaving only the second available. Great. Xavier will literally compare us side by side.

Xavier raises his stopwatch. “One minute. As many pull-ups as you can.”

I place my feet firmly on the floor. This will be a tough match against Robby and Blaze—maybe an impossible one—but I have to give this my all. I can’t let Xavier down.

“Go!”

Flexing our muscles, we all pull ourselves up.

Instantly, Blaze drops to the floor.

I freeze halfway up the bar, staring at his tangled limbs.

“I will not be defeated by those eight-legs,” Blaze mumbles face down, lifting the Ancestral Ring of Darkness on his thumb.

Xavier wiggles his stopwatch. “Keep going!”

To my left, Robby pulls himself up again. He’s going fast. Too fast.

I focus on channeling the correct amount of power. Xavier taught me how to conserve. By the time I hit three, Robby’s arms are shaking, and his forehead is drenched in sweat.

“Stop!”

I jump down. Blaze is still wheezing on the floor. Robby also doesn’t look good with how much he’s wiping his wet face with his shirt. I only feel warm.

Xavier points at Robby and Blaze, then the dumbbell shelves by the long mirror. “Collect your breath over there. I’ll start you guys with something easier.”

Robby helps Blaze off the floor. They wander off in their downfall.

Xavier high-fives me. “Knew you’d crush them.”

I did crush them. “I’m surprised.”

“Why? You’ve been training for months.”

I want to be thrilled. But. “I thought they’d also reach three easily.”

“Robby’s been struggling to pull an A in his PE class. And Blaze rarely shows up to his, but he’s a Dixon. His family owns half the buildings on this campus. Must be why Ms. Nallos conveniently keeps him at an A-plus.”

All this time, I thought everyone else was stronger, and I had to work out every hour of every day to catch up.

“Something up, man?” Xavier asks. He must’ve noticed my inner spiral.

Ever since we started training, Xavier has never asked why I’ve been obsessed with my PE grade. I’ve appreciated that. But we know each other better now. Delilah even called us friends. “I never asked,” I say, disappointed in myself for not doing it sooner. “Why do you train so much?”

“Always have, I guess. In middle school, I was the lacrosse team captain.”

“Why’d you go to Valentine if there are no sports?”

Xavier bends over to grab his sports drink on the floor. It feels like a distraction. “My dad’s an ambassador for the UN. Needed to move to the UAE for the next four years. I could go with or enroll in a boarding school. This is the only one in New York that my parents ‘approved’ of.”

“You had to stay here?”

“Nah, but I can take a train into the city to see my old team this way. I’m doing that during winter break. Miss them mad bad.”

“That’s cool.”

“Yeah. Don’t really hear from the parents anymore. But sometimes you gotta choose.” He shakes his drink, watches the off-orange liquid swirl inside.

Even if Mom is sometimes disorganized and a bundle of nerves, at least she would never do this. Suddenly, her never mailing my single room fee check doesn’t sound as bad as it did a month ago. “Sorry.”

“It’s cool. I’ve talked to Ms. Nallos about getting a team going here. She’s down, at least. Just wish I could make it coed, but the guidelines are too uptight to let that happen. The fact that everyone has to be split up is so cringe. I mean, what year is it?”

So, Xavier also chafes against the guidelines. The first time I met him, all I could see was how tall and strong and giant he was. I assumed he was like the other students who encapsulated the definition of tradition and could never relate to someone like me.

If even he feels this way, do others?

“You wanna join the team?” Xavier adds, showing a playful smirk. “I know you’re only here for your PE grade, but you got potential beyond that.”

It’s a compliment I never thought I’d get from anyone, let alone another guy.

And it pushes me enough to want to take a risk. “To be honest, I haven’t been training just to improve my grade,” I say. “I want to keep up with the other guys. I’m sort of scared about the academy finding out who I used to be.”

“Who you used to be?”

My logic tells me to turn back, but I don’t. “I had a different name before surgery. And hormones.”

Xavier nods gradually.

I’m not sure how to read it. “If the admin finds out, then they could make me leave campus and you all behind, you know—?”

“No.”

“No?”

Xavier’s expression is taut. “Don’t get me wrong, I get being concerned. I hope they wouldn’t do that, man. But if they do, I swear, I’ll punch them in the throat.”

“Oh.”

“The rest of STRIP would do the same. We’ll aim straight for the board of trustees.”

My chest warms. STRIP would have my back. Lately, there’s no denying that. But everyone else at this academy?

Even Jasper?

A bitter ache strikes me—I can’t believe that even now, despite everything, there’s a part of me that wonders if I could trust him. “Thanks.”

Xavier points at Blaze and Robby digging through a bucket full of latex resistance bands. Blaze straps one around his head and stretches it too far, and it slaps into his eyes. “Go help those losers. They need an expert like you.”