Wildefire by Karsten Knight

Author:Karsten Knight
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2011-07-26T18:59:56+00:00

PART III: SPRING WEEK

MATCH POINT

Wednesda

y

Ashline had never been so grateful for game-day jitters.

Her match against Patricia Orleans was technically scheduled for five p.m., but the whole school had started referring to it as “sundown,” as though she were headed to a gunfight at the OK Corral. Just strap two six-shooters to my hips and call me Wyatt, she thought as she high-fived what felt like the hundredth hallway passerby.

Bobby Jones, bless his warped and immature heart, decided the best way to win points with Ashline was to start a chant for her in the lunchroom when she emerged from the stir-fry line. He mounted a lunch table and wielded a megaphone, which whinnied mechanically as he powered it on. “Come on, everybody,” he ordered the cafeteria in his best impression of a professional cheerleader. “Let’s show Ashline some Owl spirit!”

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The audience hooted in unison.

With the help of his fellow soccer hooligans, he started a rousing chant of “Go, Wilde! Go, Wilde! Go, Wilde!” which, fueled by Bobby’s charisma and mass hysteria, caught fire across the dining hall. By the time she reached the table with the rest of the women’s tennis team—where Bobby and his teammates had ceremoniously decorated her plastic seat with streamers—she was grinning, an impressive feat, considering that she was still standing in the shadow of what had quickly become the worst Tuesday of her life.

She had somehow burned her handprint into the chest of her would-be boyfriend, and they’d parted on such awkward terms—a few uncertain words, a friendly kiss on the cheek—that Ashline wasn’t sure she’d ever see him again. She had a little sister that until this week she had known nothing about, the lab rat of some experiment gone awry, who was now terrorizing villages in Central America. And her psychotic older sister was off lurking in the shadows.

For a few hours at least, she could just be Ashline Wilde, the number one tennis player at Blackwood and the only hope her school had to reach the top of Coastal Conference Athletics. Forget championing the school, she decided; she was going to win this one for herself. God only knew she needed a victory now more than ever.

When the final school bell chimed in F-block British Literature, she knew she should head to the locker room and suit up, take some warm-up shots, maybe convince 296

the trainer to put some heat on her knee, which had felt stiff and swollen since Monday’s practice. But she had one detour to make first.

After she forged through the sea of last-minute well-wishers and shouts of “good luck,” she navigated a course up the stairwell to the third-floor room where she had fifth-period history every day. Fortunately, Mr.

Carpenter was still there, erasing some final notes off the chalkboard. His freshman class must have been covering the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, because he was just polishing away the words “Hanging Gardens of Babylon” when Ash sidestepped a few stragglers who were heading out the door.

“Ms. Wilde.” Mr.

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