Balance Keepers #1: The Fires of Calderon by Lindsay Cummings

Author:Lindsay Cummings [Cummings, Lindsay]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2014-09-23T00:00:00+00:00

The next morning was Saturday—the only day off in the Core. Albert met Birdie and Leroy in the Main Chamber.

“It’s totally humiliating,” Birdie was saying to Leroy, as Albert approached. “Hoyt’s out of control.”

“He’s just a bully,” Leroy said. “The best thing we can do is ignore him.”

“No, the best thing we can do is kick him in his smug little face,” Birdie growled.

“What happened?” Albert asked.

“Hoyt got a little creative last night, apparently.” She sighed, and pointed at Leroy’s Hydra shirt. Someone had taken a pen to it and written the word stinks right below Hydra.

Albert gritted his teeth. “Did you do anything about it?”

Birdie nodded. “I told Leroy I wanted to give the guy a piece of my mind. A piece of my fist, actually, but . . .”

“It will only make it worse,” Leroy said. “I’ve dealt with lots of bullies before. Back home.” He looked down at his toes, embarrassed. Albert couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to pick on a guy as nice as Leroy.

Hoyt’s bullying had just been with words until now. This was something different. He was crossing the line. Albert forced himself to stay calm. “Tomorrow we’ll prove Hoyt wrong about us.”

They walked farther into the Main Chamber. There were some kids playing diving games in the river. Core Creators, the adults who made all sorts of goodies that could be purchased in the Core Canteen, were letting other kids test out some sort of new paper airplane that shot little balls of fire. An orange-and-black CoreFish swam past in the river, letting everyone take rides on its back. There was a lot to do here, but Albert had heard the Library was the place to be in the off-hours, so they moved on.

The Library was three stories high, with rows and rows of dusty, old books. A rocky tower stood in the center, where kids and adults climbed up and down, challenging one another to reach different platforms first. Off to the left, there were two zip lines where some of the Balance Keepers were lined up to race one another. Albert waved to the Ecco boy, James, and was pleased to see that he looked like he had recovered from his run-in with the Jackalope. Maybe that meant they’d go up against Ecco instead of Argon in the next simulation.

“I’m calculating fifty-seven things to do, in this room alone,” Leroy said. He wandered off toward the rows of bookshelves, but Albert’s mind was still on his conversation with his dad from last night.

“Come on.” He waved Birdie along with him, across the library.

The Core Phone Booth was nothing more than a hole carved into the wall. An antique device hung in the corner, larger than Albert’s torso. “What happened to cell phones?” Albert asked.

“I saw this in a museum once. It’s, like, an original phone,” Birdie said.

Albert pulled the Medallion Hoyt had thrown away out of his pocket and pressed it into a little slot in the cave wall, right beside the copper phone.

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