Part 3: Chapter 9: In Which You May Recognize Folks
Chapter 9: Fifteen Minutes
The news that Kristen Hawke had won the election was reported next morning in homeroom over the PA system. A few juniors, mainly the ones who had worn the controversial T-shirts, high-fived each other and said, “Whoo!” or “Woot!” Then they snickered, as if they were embarrassed. Everyone else continued to read screens or play handheld games or stare straight ahead without blinking, making it clear they were straining just to keep their eyes open.
It took a full five hours for the TV news to show up.
Principal Jack knocked on the door of Mr. Blanding’s classroom and came in, nodding and smiling at everyone and no one in particular. Principal Jack was a six-and-a-half-foot ex-Marine who wore T-shirts under his suit jackets to show his still-impressive muscles, and he got called “Principal Jack” because of his habit of telling students to use his first name.
Principal Jack wanted everyone to think he was friendly, even when he did things a friend would never do. As he leaned on Mr. Blanding’s desk in a friendly way, bending to say something low in the teacher’s ear, Imogen saw Mr. Blanding stiffen.
“I won’t let it disrupt your class for more than two or three minutes, Tony,” said Principal Jack, slapping Mr. Blanding on the back.
“I suppose it’s for the best,” said Mr. Blanding, inching away, as if Principal Jack’s very presence was distasteful to him. “We weren’t getting that far with Churchill and the labor unions, were we?”
That was an understatement, Imogen thought. Not only was the postwar economic crisis in Britain painfully boring, but even Mr. Blanding seemed not to understand it. Lately he appeared to have trouble keeping track of his own thoughts. He sat on the edge of his desk and jiggled his knee and ran a hand through his wild hair; he took off his jacket and bunched up his sleeves and wiped sweat off his brow and said things like “OK, so this Archduke? He started World War I, sort of, but it was confusing. This was a war about fat guys with medals who couldn’t agree, and I’m guessing none of them could win a fair fight.”
But Mr. Blanding looked much more interested when Principal Jack ushered his guests into the room. He loped across the room to shake the hand of the TV reporter, a short, stout young woman with perfect hair and makeup who wore a suit with a ruffly blouse and a string of pearls.
“Tony, this is Monique Ambler from KYAX,” said Principal Jack. “Monique, Tony Blanding, history.”
Monique beamed. Though she did not have the figure of a spokesmodel, she clearly knew how to smile like one. “So nice to meet you, Tony. And everybody else. This is Jerry Nieder, my cameraman.”
The cameraman, who wore ripped jeans and barely seemed older than Jeremy or Stephen, waved at everybody from behind the tripod where he was setting up a shot. “Heya.”
“Er, I should explain,” said Mr. Blanding. “Monique and Jerry are here to shoot a news segment on Kristen Hawke, because she was elected class president.” He glanced at Principal Jack, then at Monique, his eyes lingering on her pretty face. “And why do you care about that, again?”
Several students giggled. Monique started to explain. Principal Jack swooped in to rescue her, though she didn’t seem to need rescuing. “Because of the YouTube,” he said.
People looked at each other. A girl behind Imogen whispered, “The video, stupid. It got, like, a million hits or something.”
“I have dial-up, OK?” said the boy beside her.
“It was a video they put up. Kristen’s speech in the gym - remember? Somebody taped it and put it on the web. People are watching it all over the world.”
“I heard it was just a hundred thousand hits,” said someone else.
Most people in Cray’s Defile still lacked broadband service, and the school’s browsers blocked non-educational video-sharing websites, so almost everybody was confused. Principal Jack had to explain, red-faced, that he had seen the video. It was three minutes long, and it starred Kristen telling other students that they didn’t have to do anything, including go to college. Somehow it had become popular.
Now the classroom fizzed with laughter and skepticism. Billy Corcoran’s friends were slapping him on the back in a very unsubtle way, making it clear who had shot the video or at least orchestrated it. Billy was trying to keep a straight face, but obviously itching to high-five himself. Kristen and Jeremy Bliss, by contrast, kept their faces blank with no apparent effort.
“Folks!” said Principal Jack. He pounded one massive fist on Mr. Blanding’s desk. “Kids! Simmer down!”
Monique the reporter cleared her throat, and people did simmer down. From the muttering around her, Imogen gathered that most of them recognized Monique from TV. She glanced over at Stephen. He was sitting with his arms crossed on the desk, staring straight ahead with as much interest as if Mr. Blanding were still lecturing.
While the cameraman fussed with his controls, sweeping the camera’s dead eye slowly across the class, Principal Jack announced that everyone would be given a permission slip to take home. If their parents had an objection to their appearing on the news, even in a background shot, they should call the school office this afternoon. Furthermore, he added ominously, it should be noted that shooting video of any kind on school property without school permission was against school rules. They would learn more about those rules at a special assembly next week.
Everybody groaned, but without much force. Monique Ambler stood on tiptoe - she wore sensible shoes, not high heels, Imogen noted - to whisper something in Principal Jack’s ear.
“All righty, then,” said Principal Jack. “Kristen, how would you feel about talking with these folks privately out in the hall?”
Kristen stood up without a word and made her way to the front. She looked very pretty today, with her hair curled and a short, flippy skirt, and Imogen wondered if she had planned for something like this.
Monique smiled her model-smile at Kristen, and Kristen shook her hand without smiling back. Monique murmured something that sounded like I love your hair!, as if she thought Kristen might be nervous and need setting at ease. Then they disappeared into the hallway, trailed by the cameraman, who rolled the cord of his lighting equipment deftly as he went, and by Principal Jack.
Mr. Blanding, who had held the door for them, shut it and returned to his desk. “Tough act to follow, isn’t that?” he said. His cheeks were flushed, and he looked happy but, Imogen thought, rather sly, as if he had just thought of a nasty joke to play on Principal Jack. “I guess Kristen’s telling them why she’s famous on the YouTube,” he went on. “Now, can anybody tell me what that means?”
Several people tried to explain at once, including the girl behind Imogen who had broadband at her house. Mr. Blanding asked questions that made him sound not just ignorant about the web, but computer illiterate.
“So this is a picture of Kristen you see in a tiny box, but it isn’t real,” he said, using his hands to form an imaginary screen, his wild golden hair standing up around his face like sunbeams in a solar eclipse. “And you’re telling me people all over the world see this, even in places like China and Africa. Don’t they have better things to do there? Building temples and pyramids, maybe?”
People whinnied with laughter, slightly forced, because they assumed Mr. Blanding was doing an impersonation of a moron and wanted them to laugh. He had done stranger things before. They kept on explaining to find out what he would say next. When they told him they would see Kristen on the news that night in another “tiny box,” or maybe a big one, Mr. Blanding actually put his head in his hands.
“Go home at night and sit in front of another box?” he said. “I don’t know how you kids stand it. It’s all I can manage just to stay in this room all day, looking at this chalkboard - and I’ve been in some very tight spots, let me tell you. I can’t understand why your legs don’t fall apart from not being used.”
As everybody giggled again, Imogen felt someone’s eyes on her. She looked over to see Stephen. He cocked his head toward Mr. Blanding and gave her a meaningful gaze, popping his eyes as if to say, See?
Imogen shrugged and glanced away. She kept staring sternly at the open textbook on her desk, even when Kristen and Principal Jack returned, and Principal Jack said the news crew was looking for a couple of students who were willing to talk about their reactions to Kristen’s election. “Britta Golp?” he said in a hopeful voice. “Jeremy Bliss? Karin Lind?”
From the dead silence, Imogen could tell no one was volunteering - not the honor students Principal Jack wanted and not even Billy Corcoran, who was too smart to draw attention to himself. After what felt like fifteen minutes, she sighed and - as she had done so many times in class - raised her hand. “I’ll talk to them.”
“Imogen Cray,” said Principal Jack, as if just realizing that he knew virtually nothing about the girl with the scary stare or how she would represent the school. Then he seemed to decide that a descendant of the town’s founder could do nothing too wrong, because he rubbed his large hands and said, “Imogen Cray!” again, as if Imogen had just won a prize.
Imogen didn’t glance at Stephen or Aslaug as she rose from her seat and went to the door. But she did look up and grin at Mr. Blanding, whose bright blue eyes were following her with interest. “I’m going to get trapped inside a tiny box,” she said. “Back soon!”
When the last bell rang, the hallways echoed with more chaos than usual. News of KYAX’s arrival had spread even to the middle school. Anyone who looked out the southeast windows could see the station’s van still parked in the visitors’ lot, tucked out of the way of the panting buses. Now people were passing around a new rumor: Sam Gann the Weather Man was inside!
By the time she had fought her way outside, Imogen had heard four people say that Kristen Hawke was going to help Sam Gann deliver the weather forecast; and two more people say she was already giving the forecast right now, right outside; and one person say that an MTV producer was coming to interview Kristen for a possible spot on a reality show. She set her jaw and headed for the students’ lot, hoping she’d find Stephen. Riding the bus today would be an unpleasant experience, especially if people knew she’d talked to the news team.
But, as she hurried past the last bus in line, she ran straight into confirmation of the rumors - or some of them, anyway.
At the building’s formal entrance, in the little grassy oval that held flowerbeds and a plaque with the school’s name and a bronze statue of its mascot, the Lancer (who looked like a corny Renaissance Faire knight), Kristen Hawke was standing beside Sam Gann the Weather Man. Jerry filmed them both with his boxy camera bearing the KYAX logo, his jaw working on a piece of gum. Monique was nowhere to be seen.
A crowd had gathered to see Sam Gann the Weather Man. Imogen had never really understood the fuss about him, but there was no denying it. People who didn’t even own television sets knew Sam Gann’s name. He was as tall as Principal Jack, but skinny, with a small face and rabbity teeth and white-blond hair. He smiled so hard you thought his face might break from it, making Monique and Principal Jack look like scowlers by comparison. He radiated happiness - along with the light glinting off his dorky glasses - when he told people to look for the end to a cold spell or more sunshine. He found ways to make mud and ice storms less awful. People loved him.
Except Kristen, apparently. She stood beside Sam Gann, dwarfed by him, and stared straight ahead with an expression of vague annoyance on her face. Sam Gann talked about seeing the first flakes of snow tomorrow.
Then he said, “I’m here in the mountains today, where those fluffy flakes are always welcome, even this time of year, because they mean - what do they mean, Kristen?”
“Skiing,” said Kristen. She managed a lockjawed beauty-pageant smile.
“And do you ski, Kristen?”
“Uh. Couple times.”
Sam Gann put an uncle-ish arm around Kristen’s shoulder, as if he sensed her coldness and was trying to fight it with his own ridiculously warm persona. He told the camera, “This lovely young lady is Kristen Hawke, who was just elected president of the Skorrie Union High junior class, up here in Cray’s Defile. She’s also an Internet celebrity - just search ‘high school election speech’ on YouTube. Very well-spoken young woman. Tell me, Kristen, once that snow starts, when are we next going to see the sun?”
The question wasn’t a real question, obviously, because Kristen was not a meteorologist, but she seemed to ponder it as if it were. “Maybe any time,” she said. “Or not.”
Sam Gann’s enormous smile faltered, but only for an instant. “That pretty much covers everything,” he said. “Lots of sunshine and lots of powder - that’s what we’re looking for this winter, eh, folks? This is Sam Gann at Skorrie Union High - back to you, Bebe!”
Jerry fiddled with his camera again, playing the footage back. The watching students and teachers clapped, as if they were at a play. Sam Gann disentangled himself from Kristen, left her without a backward glance, and went to sign autographs. Imogen noticed that his smile decreased by several watts once he was off camera. It looked more like a grimace.
Someone tugged the hood of her sweatshirt from behind, and she turned to find Stephen and Aslaug. For the first time ever, she was annoyed to see both of them. (Usually it was just one of them at a time.) They had a new way of standing she didn’t like: close together, with Aslaug sort of leaning (the way she always did), and Stephen looming protectively as if to catch her when she fell. Also, they were both wearing bright knitted wool hats with little tassels over their blond hair, which was a stupid thing to be annoyed by. But it made them look too alike, like wannabe twins.
“Did you get your hats at the same Funny Hat Sale?” she asked.
They both looked puzzled. Aslaug said, “I knitted mine.”
“Mine’s from Alaska,” said Stephen. “My mom made it. I guess.”
That reminded Imogen of the very strange conversation they’d had in her room. Maybe she was just annoyed because Stephen had never asked her not to tell Aslaug about the runes on his back. This meant one of two things. One: he had already shown Aslaug the other tattoos, and Imogen was the last to know. Or two: he didn’t want Aslaug to know, and he trusted Imogen not to say anything because…
Because what? This took her mind to places she didn’t like. He knows, said a scolding voice in her mind, which sounded like Fiona. He knows you like him, and you’re a tiny bit jealous, and you don’t mind keeping a secret from her at all.
Shut up, Fiona! What do you think I am, some typical boy-obsessed girl? But it was true that she liked keeping a secret with Stephen, knowing things about him Aslaug did not. Knowing him better. That was true.
As she turned to go with her friends, she could hear Kristen Hawke and a boy - probably Jeremy - chatting with Sam Gann. With the camera off, Kristen seemed to have regained some of her old confidence. “We should totally take you to Weiner’s Diner,” she was saying. “I can’t believe you’ve never been.”
“It’s the only decent thing in this town,” said Jeremy.
“They have better burgers than the grill at Cray Peak, and the milkshakes are pure ice cream.”
“That might not be good for my figure,” said skinny Sam Gann, and laughed at his own joke.
“We’ll have to roll you out the door afterwards,” said Kristen, giggling. Imogen turned and saw that the class president-elect was standing a little too close to Sam Gann, her head tilted to one side. The smile on her face looked like a doll’s.
Stephen rolled his eyes as grumpily as Fiona. “C’mon.”
Imogen watched herself on the news at six. She hoped no one else would. This hope was fulfilled in the case of Stephen, who, if he’d seen her, didn’t say so.
Aslaug was another matter. On the way up the mountain, she couldn’t stop talking about it, panting and scampering to keep up with Stephen’s long strides. “I just barely managed to catch you while I was getting ready to come here,” she said. “You were great, Imogen! I could never have done it. You sounded tons smarter than Kristen.”
“That might not be hard,” Stephen muttered.
“Seriously, though!” said Aslaug. But when Imogen didn’t respond, she stopped talking about it, and they climbed the rest of the way in silence.
It was pitch-dark and freezing. They stood at the cave entrance with their flashlights off, just as they had done the night before. Imogen tried to distract herself from thoughts of the cave by gazing at the stars, which were brighter than she was used to, and picking out the few constellations she recognized. Still, she flinched every time something skittered in the dry leaves on the rock face.
“Seriously, you should be the famous one!” said Aslaug, picking up the subject again. She sounded almost as gushy as Karin Lind. “You didn’t watch it, did you, Stephen? They asked her what it says about teenagers today, that Kristen Hawke got elected president when she - Kristen - says nobody has to do anything, and Imogen said it didn’t mean anything. She said, ‘People will always think what they want.’ Then she said, ‘Maybe now being class president will start to actually mean something, since there are people who are pro-Kristen and people who hate her.’”
“The way they cut it up, I didn’t even make sense,” said Imogen. “I was trying to explain that some people will always want to shock everybody, no matter what.”
“Kristen doesn’t want to shock people,” said Stephen. “The things she says, she believes.”
“The things about not caring?”
He shrugged. “It’s the Jotun in her. You can feel she’s not happy, Aslaug.”
There was a throb in Stephen’s voice that made Imogen think he was going to start telling Aslaug she should burn people again. Aslaug must have heard it, too, because she nudged the conversation in another direction. “Kristen barely said anything when they interviewed her. When the news girl asked if she knew who made the video, she just shook her head. She kept fiddling with the tie on her sweater. They asked her if she meant what she said in the assembly, and she said, ‘Mmm, I guess.’ Like a ten-year-old!”
“Kristen isn’t a very good spokeswoman for the Jotun cause,” said Imogen. She was in her usual position, crouched beside Stephen, and her feet were going numb. She considered sitting down cross-legged, but the ground was damp. Besides, it would take longer to get up and run that way. So she rose, shook out both feet, and backed herself slowly against the rock wall. It felt dry, at least, unlike the ground, and it had a strong, salty smell of minerals and earth.
“You should stay down,” Stephen said. “If they come out, things are gonna be happening fast. I might not be able to guard you.”
Imogen yawned. “What would I do without you, strong and brawny guard? A poor frail maiden like me would be at the mercy of -”
“I have runes,” said Stephen sharply.
“That’s right - you do, don’t you? Or you have a rune, anyway. On your hand. A rune that protects you from big, bad Jotuns. I wonder what might happen if that rune disappeared?”
“It can’t disappear,” said Aslaug. “It’s a tattoo.”
“But what if it just did? Magically?” said Imogen devilishly. She wasn’t sure why she was baiting Stephen, but she still thought he deserved it. “How do you know which part of the runes protect you from Jotuns, and which doesn’t?”
“It’s just one rune,” said Aslaug. “And it’s still there. I just saw it, when we were passing under the Biedermeyers’ floodlight.”
“Lucky thing,” said Imogen. “That almost puts my mind at rest.”
Stephen glared at her - his face was only a fuzzy white oval, but she could feel the anger pouring off him in waves. And something else - fear. “I know enough about runes,” he said. “Not everything. But enough.”
“As much as Loki?”
He took a deep breath and let it out. “I thought you still didn’t believe in Loki.”
From the mountain came an almost dainty sound of pebbles showering on stone. Without thinking, Imogen sank to her knees behind Stephen and hugged her arms to her chest, smelling the dirt. Stephen took a step into the clearing, covering her.
They waited, eyes fixed on the dark smudge of the hole in the rock. Nothing.
“It’s OK,” said Aslaug after a minute. She had stuck the point of her sword in the dirt and was pecking restlessly with it. “It was just a bird taking off from higher up. I heard its wings. Probably an owl.”
Stephen stepped back against the wall, and Imogen stood up so fast she almost lost her balance. The two of them exchanged a look that could communicate nothing in the gloom, yet they both knew what it meant. We need to stop. This is too big for us. And too scary, if we don’t work together.
The news that Kristen Hawke had won the election was reported next morning in homeroom over the PA system. A few juniors, mainly the ones who had worn the controversial T-shirts, high-fived each other and said, “Whoo!” or “Woot!” Then they snickered, as if they were embarrassed. Everyone else continued to read screens or play handheld games or stare straight ahead without blinking, making it clear they were straining just to keep their eyes open.
It took a full five hours for the TV news to show up.
Principal Jack knocked on the door of Mr. Blanding’s classroom and came in, nodding and smiling at everyone and no one in particular. Principal Jack was a six-and-a-half-foot ex-Marine who wore T-shirts under his suit jackets to show his still-impressive muscles, and he got called “Principal Jack” because of his habit of telling students to use his first name.
Principal Jack wanted everyone to think he was friendly, even when he did things a friend would never do. As he leaned on Mr. Blanding’s desk in a friendly way, bending to say something low in the teacher’s ear, Imogen saw Mr. Blanding stiffen.
“I won’t let it disrupt your class for more than two or three minutes, Tony,” said Principal Jack, slapping Mr. Blanding on the back.
“I suppose it’s for the best,” said Mr. Blanding, inching away, as if Principal Jack’s very presence was distasteful to him. “We weren’t getting that far with Churchill and the labor unions, were we?”
That was an understatement, Imogen thought. Not only was the postwar economic crisis in Britain painfully boring, but even Mr. Blanding seemed not to understand it. Lately he appeared to have trouble keeping track of his own thoughts. He sat on the edge of his desk and jiggled his knee and ran a hand through his wild hair; he took off his jacket and bunched up his sleeves and wiped sweat off his brow and said things like “OK, so this Archduke? He started World War I, sort of, but it was confusing. This was a war about fat guys with medals who couldn’t agree, and I’m guessing none of them could win a fair fight.”
But Mr. Blanding looked much more interested when Principal Jack ushered his guests into the room. He loped across the room to shake the hand of the TV reporter, a short, stout young woman with perfect hair and makeup who wore a suit with a ruffly blouse and a string of pearls.
“Tony, this is Monique Ambler from KYAX,” said Principal Jack. “Monique, Tony Blanding, history.”
Monique beamed. Though she did not have the figure of a spokesmodel, she clearly knew how to smile like one. “So nice to meet you, Tony. And everybody else. This is Jerry Nieder, my cameraman.”
The cameraman, who wore ripped jeans and barely seemed older than Jeremy or Stephen, waved at everybody from behind the tripod where he was setting up a shot. “Heya.”
“Er, I should explain,” said Mr. Blanding. “Monique and Jerry are here to shoot a news segment on Kristen Hawke, because she was elected class president.” He glanced at Principal Jack, then at Monique, his eyes lingering on her pretty face. “And why do you care about that, again?”
Several students giggled. Monique started to explain. Principal Jack swooped in to rescue her, though she didn’t seem to need rescuing. “Because of the YouTube,” he said.
People looked at each other. A girl behind Imogen whispered, “The video, stupid. It got, like, a million hits or something.”
“I have dial-up, OK?” said the boy beside her.
“It was a video they put up. Kristen’s speech in the gym - remember? Somebody taped it and put it on the web. People are watching it all over the world.”
“I heard it was just a hundred thousand hits,” said someone else.
Most people in Cray’s Defile still lacked broadband service, and the school’s browsers blocked non-educational video-sharing websites, so almost everybody was confused. Principal Jack had to explain, red-faced, that he had seen the video. It was three minutes long, and it starred Kristen telling other students that they didn’t have to do anything, including go to college. Somehow it had become popular.
Now the classroom fizzed with laughter and skepticism. Billy Corcoran’s friends were slapping him on the back in a very unsubtle way, making it clear who had shot the video or at least orchestrated it. Billy was trying to keep a straight face, but obviously itching to high-five himself. Kristen and Jeremy Bliss, by contrast, kept their faces blank with no apparent effort.
“Folks!” said Principal Jack. He pounded one massive fist on Mr. Blanding’s desk. “Kids! Simmer down!”
Monique the reporter cleared her throat, and people did simmer down. From the muttering around her, Imogen gathered that most of them recognized Monique from TV. She glanced over at Stephen. He was sitting with his arms crossed on the desk, staring straight ahead with as much interest as if Mr. Blanding were still lecturing.
While the cameraman fussed with his controls, sweeping the camera’s dead eye slowly across the class, Principal Jack announced that everyone would be given a permission slip to take home. If their parents had an objection to their appearing on the news, even in a background shot, they should call the school office this afternoon. Furthermore, he added ominously, it should be noted that shooting video of any kind on school property without school permission was against school rules. They would learn more about those rules at a special assembly next week.
Everybody groaned, but without much force. Monique Ambler stood on tiptoe - she wore sensible shoes, not high heels, Imogen noted - to whisper something in Principal Jack’s ear.
“All righty, then,” said Principal Jack. “Kristen, how would you feel about talking with these folks privately out in the hall?”
Kristen stood up without a word and made her way to the front. She looked very pretty today, with her hair curled and a short, flippy skirt, and Imogen wondered if she had planned for something like this.
Monique smiled her model-smile at Kristen, and Kristen shook her hand without smiling back. Monique murmured something that sounded like I love your hair!, as if she thought Kristen might be nervous and need setting at ease. Then they disappeared into the hallway, trailed by the cameraman, who rolled the cord of his lighting equipment deftly as he went, and by Principal Jack.
Mr. Blanding, who had held the door for them, shut it and returned to his desk. “Tough act to follow, isn’t that?” he said. His cheeks were flushed, and he looked happy but, Imogen thought, rather sly, as if he had just thought of a nasty joke to play on Principal Jack. “I guess Kristen’s telling them why she’s famous on the YouTube,” he went on. “Now, can anybody tell me what that means?”
Several people tried to explain at once, including the girl behind Imogen who had broadband at her house. Mr. Blanding asked questions that made him sound not just ignorant about the web, but computer illiterate.
“So this is a picture of Kristen you see in a tiny box, but it isn’t real,” he said, using his hands to form an imaginary screen, his wild golden hair standing up around his face like sunbeams in a solar eclipse. “And you’re telling me people all over the world see this, even in places like China and Africa. Don’t they have better things to do there? Building temples and pyramids, maybe?”
People whinnied with laughter, slightly forced, because they assumed Mr. Blanding was doing an impersonation of a moron and wanted them to laugh. He had done stranger things before. They kept on explaining to find out what he would say next. When they told him they would see Kristen on the news that night in another “tiny box,” or maybe a big one, Mr. Blanding actually put his head in his hands.
“Go home at night and sit in front of another box?” he said. “I don’t know how you kids stand it. It’s all I can manage just to stay in this room all day, looking at this chalkboard - and I’ve been in some very tight spots, let me tell you. I can’t understand why your legs don’t fall apart from not being used.”
As everybody giggled again, Imogen felt someone’s eyes on her. She looked over to see Stephen. He cocked his head toward Mr. Blanding and gave her a meaningful gaze, popping his eyes as if to say, See?
Imogen shrugged and glanced away. She kept staring sternly at the open textbook on her desk, even when Kristen and Principal Jack returned, and Principal Jack said the news crew was looking for a couple of students who were willing to talk about their reactions to Kristen’s election. “Britta Golp?” he said in a hopeful voice. “Jeremy Bliss? Karin Lind?”
From the dead silence, Imogen could tell no one was volunteering - not the honor students Principal Jack wanted and not even Billy Corcoran, who was too smart to draw attention to himself. After what felt like fifteen minutes, she sighed and - as she had done so many times in class - raised her hand. “I’ll talk to them.”
“Imogen Cray,” said Principal Jack, as if just realizing that he knew virtually nothing about the girl with the scary stare or how she would represent the school. Then he seemed to decide that a descendant of the town’s founder could do nothing too wrong, because he rubbed his large hands and said, “Imogen Cray!” again, as if Imogen had just won a prize.
Imogen didn’t glance at Stephen or Aslaug as she rose from her seat and went to the door. But she did look up and grin at Mr. Blanding, whose bright blue eyes were following her with interest. “I’m going to get trapped inside a tiny box,” she said. “Back soon!”
When the last bell rang, the hallways echoed with more chaos than usual. News of KYAX’s arrival had spread even to the middle school. Anyone who looked out the southeast windows could see the station’s van still parked in the visitors’ lot, tucked out of the way of the panting buses. Now people were passing around a new rumor: Sam Gann the Weather Man was inside!
By the time she had fought her way outside, Imogen had heard four people say that Kristen Hawke was going to help Sam Gann deliver the weather forecast; and two more people say she was already giving the forecast right now, right outside; and one person say that an MTV producer was coming to interview Kristen for a possible spot on a reality show. She set her jaw and headed for the students’ lot, hoping she’d find Stephen. Riding the bus today would be an unpleasant experience, especially if people knew she’d talked to the news team.
But, as she hurried past the last bus in line, she ran straight into confirmation of the rumors - or some of them, anyway.
At the building’s formal entrance, in the little grassy oval that held flowerbeds and a plaque with the school’s name and a bronze statue of its mascot, the Lancer (who looked like a corny Renaissance Faire knight), Kristen Hawke was standing beside Sam Gann the Weather Man. Jerry filmed them both with his boxy camera bearing the KYAX logo, his jaw working on a piece of gum. Monique was nowhere to be seen.
A crowd had gathered to see Sam Gann the Weather Man. Imogen had never really understood the fuss about him, but there was no denying it. People who didn’t even own television sets knew Sam Gann’s name. He was as tall as Principal Jack, but skinny, with a small face and rabbity teeth and white-blond hair. He smiled so hard you thought his face might break from it, making Monique and Principal Jack look like scowlers by comparison. He radiated happiness - along with the light glinting off his dorky glasses - when he told people to look for the end to a cold spell or more sunshine. He found ways to make mud and ice storms less awful. People loved him.
Except Kristen, apparently. She stood beside Sam Gann, dwarfed by him, and stared straight ahead with an expression of vague annoyance on her face. Sam Gann talked about seeing the first flakes of snow tomorrow.
Then he said, “I’m here in the mountains today, where those fluffy flakes are always welcome, even this time of year, because they mean - what do they mean, Kristen?”
“Skiing,” said Kristen. She managed a lockjawed beauty-pageant smile.
“And do you ski, Kristen?”
“Uh. Couple times.”
Sam Gann put an uncle-ish arm around Kristen’s shoulder, as if he sensed her coldness and was trying to fight it with his own ridiculously warm persona. He told the camera, “This lovely young lady is Kristen Hawke, who was just elected president of the Skorrie Union High junior class, up here in Cray’s Defile. She’s also an Internet celebrity - just search ‘high school election speech’ on YouTube. Very well-spoken young woman. Tell me, Kristen, once that snow starts, when are we next going to see the sun?”
The question wasn’t a real question, obviously, because Kristen was not a meteorologist, but she seemed to ponder it as if it were. “Maybe any time,” she said. “Or not.”
Sam Gann’s enormous smile faltered, but only for an instant. “That pretty much covers everything,” he said. “Lots of sunshine and lots of powder - that’s what we’re looking for this winter, eh, folks? This is Sam Gann at Skorrie Union High - back to you, Bebe!”
Jerry fiddled with his camera again, playing the footage back. The watching students and teachers clapped, as if they were at a play. Sam Gann disentangled himself from Kristen, left her without a backward glance, and went to sign autographs. Imogen noticed that his smile decreased by several watts once he was off camera. It looked more like a grimace.
Someone tugged the hood of her sweatshirt from behind, and she turned to find Stephen and Aslaug. For the first time ever, she was annoyed to see both of them. (Usually it was just one of them at a time.) They had a new way of standing she didn’t like: close together, with Aslaug sort of leaning (the way she always did), and Stephen looming protectively as if to catch her when she fell. Also, they were both wearing bright knitted wool hats with little tassels over their blond hair, which was a stupid thing to be annoyed by. But it made them look too alike, like wannabe twins.
“Did you get your hats at the same Funny Hat Sale?” she asked.
They both looked puzzled. Aslaug said, “I knitted mine.”
“Mine’s from Alaska,” said Stephen. “My mom made it. I guess.”
That reminded Imogen of the very strange conversation they’d had in her room. Maybe she was just annoyed because Stephen had never asked her not to tell Aslaug about the runes on his back. This meant one of two things. One: he had already shown Aslaug the other tattoos, and Imogen was the last to know. Or two: he didn’t want Aslaug to know, and he trusted Imogen not to say anything because…
Because what? This took her mind to places she didn’t like. He knows, said a scolding voice in her mind, which sounded like Fiona. He knows you like him, and you’re a tiny bit jealous, and you don’t mind keeping a secret from her at all.
Shut up, Fiona! What do you think I am, some typical boy-obsessed girl? But it was true that she liked keeping a secret with Stephen, knowing things about him Aslaug did not. Knowing him better. That was true.
As she turned to go with her friends, she could hear Kristen Hawke and a boy - probably Jeremy - chatting with Sam Gann. With the camera off, Kristen seemed to have regained some of her old confidence. “We should totally take you to Weiner’s Diner,” she was saying. “I can’t believe you’ve never been.”
“It’s the only decent thing in this town,” said Jeremy.
“They have better burgers than the grill at Cray Peak, and the milkshakes are pure ice cream.”
“That might not be good for my figure,” said skinny Sam Gann, and laughed at his own joke.
“We’ll have to roll you out the door afterwards,” said Kristen, giggling. Imogen turned and saw that the class president-elect was standing a little too close to Sam Gann, her head tilted to one side. The smile on her face looked like a doll’s.
Stephen rolled his eyes as grumpily as Fiona. “C’mon.”
Imogen watched herself on the news at six. She hoped no one else would. This hope was fulfilled in the case of Stephen, who, if he’d seen her, didn’t say so.
Aslaug was another matter. On the way up the mountain, she couldn’t stop talking about it, panting and scampering to keep up with Stephen’s long strides. “I just barely managed to catch you while I was getting ready to come here,” she said. “You were great, Imogen! I could never have done it. You sounded tons smarter than Kristen.”
“That might not be hard,” Stephen muttered.
“Seriously, though!” said Aslaug. But when Imogen didn’t respond, she stopped talking about it, and they climbed the rest of the way in silence.
It was pitch-dark and freezing. They stood at the cave entrance with their flashlights off, just as they had done the night before. Imogen tried to distract herself from thoughts of the cave by gazing at the stars, which were brighter than she was used to, and picking out the few constellations she recognized. Still, she flinched every time something skittered in the dry leaves on the rock face.
“Seriously, you should be the famous one!” said Aslaug, picking up the subject again. She sounded almost as gushy as Karin Lind. “You didn’t watch it, did you, Stephen? They asked her what it says about teenagers today, that Kristen Hawke got elected president when she - Kristen - says nobody has to do anything, and Imogen said it didn’t mean anything. She said, ‘People will always think what they want.’ Then she said, ‘Maybe now being class president will start to actually mean something, since there are people who are pro-Kristen and people who hate her.’”
“The way they cut it up, I didn’t even make sense,” said Imogen. “I was trying to explain that some people will always want to shock everybody, no matter what.”
“Kristen doesn’t want to shock people,” said Stephen. “The things she says, she believes.”
“The things about not caring?”
He shrugged. “It’s the Jotun in her. You can feel she’s not happy, Aslaug.”
There was a throb in Stephen’s voice that made Imogen think he was going to start telling Aslaug she should burn people again. Aslaug must have heard it, too, because she nudged the conversation in another direction. “Kristen barely said anything when they interviewed her. When the news girl asked if she knew who made the video, she just shook her head. She kept fiddling with the tie on her sweater. They asked her if she meant what she said in the assembly, and she said, ‘Mmm, I guess.’ Like a ten-year-old!”
“Kristen isn’t a very good spokeswoman for the Jotun cause,” said Imogen. She was in her usual position, crouched beside Stephen, and her feet were going numb. She considered sitting down cross-legged, but the ground was damp. Besides, it would take longer to get up and run that way. So she rose, shook out both feet, and backed herself slowly against the rock wall. It felt dry, at least, unlike the ground, and it had a strong, salty smell of minerals and earth.
“You should stay down,” Stephen said. “If they come out, things are gonna be happening fast. I might not be able to guard you.”
Imogen yawned. “What would I do without you, strong and brawny guard? A poor frail maiden like me would be at the mercy of -”
“I have runes,” said Stephen sharply.
“That’s right - you do, don’t you? Or you have a rune, anyway. On your hand. A rune that protects you from big, bad Jotuns. I wonder what might happen if that rune disappeared?”
“It can’t disappear,” said Aslaug. “It’s a tattoo.”
“But what if it just did? Magically?” said Imogen devilishly. She wasn’t sure why she was baiting Stephen, but she still thought he deserved it. “How do you know which part of the runes protect you from Jotuns, and which doesn’t?”
“It’s just one rune,” said Aslaug. “And it’s still there. I just saw it, when we were passing under the Biedermeyers’ floodlight.”
“Lucky thing,” said Imogen. “That almost puts my mind at rest.”
Stephen glared at her - his face was only a fuzzy white oval, but she could feel the anger pouring off him in waves. And something else - fear. “I know enough about runes,” he said. “Not everything. But enough.”
“As much as Loki?”
He took a deep breath and let it out. “I thought you still didn’t believe in Loki.”
From the mountain came an almost dainty sound of pebbles showering on stone. Without thinking, Imogen sank to her knees behind Stephen and hugged her arms to her chest, smelling the dirt. Stephen took a step into the clearing, covering her.
They waited, eyes fixed on the dark smudge of the hole in the rock. Nothing.
“It’s OK,” said Aslaug after a minute. She had stuck the point of her sword in the dirt and was pecking restlessly with it. “It was just a bird taking off from higher up. I heard its wings. Probably an owl.”
Stephen stepped back against the wall, and Imogen stood up so fast she almost lost her balance. The two of them exchanged a look that could communicate nothing in the gloom, yet they both knew what it meant. We need to stop. This is too big for us. And too scary, if we don’t work together.