Normally, I don’t mind hiking—the house I grew up in is on the top of a mountain. There’s nothing but trees around it in any direction. But this feels so much worse, like it’s never-ending. And I’m so tired. I just want to be done.
Maybe I don’t belong here after all.
The thought sneaks into the back of my mind out of nowhere, and for a moment I’m tempted to listen to it. To just give up and go home, where things make sense.
But then the streak of stubbornness my dad says is three miles wide kicks in. I straighten my spine, blink the tears away yet again, and tell myself it’s almost over. Ten more minutes and I’ll be back in the amphitheater being assigned to Athena Hall. All I have to do to get there is just complete one more task.
Besides, the only thing Athena girls like less than failing is quitting. I’ve never quit anything in my life, and I’m not about to quit this, either. Not now that I’m so close. Not now that I’m finally at the place where I know I belong.
Anaximander himself told me to go get the coin. How can I let holographic him down? How can I let myself down?
I can’t.
I brush a hand over my face, shoving away a couple stray tears and a whole bunch of strands of wild, curly hair that have escaped the braid I put them into this morning. And then I take off running, straight into the forest.
If I was a coin, that’s where I’d go to hide. And yes, I’m absolutely aware of how bizarre and ridiculous it is to assign thinking capabilities to a small piece of gold. But everything that’s happened to me since I left my parents at that donut stand has been bizarre and ridiculous. What’s one more thing to add to the list?
As I run deeper into the forest, looking everywhere for some tiny glint of gold, the sound of rushing water becomes impossible to ignore. Whitewater rapids, I wonder, out here in the middle of nowhere? Or something else?
I know I should search through the trees—again, if I was a coin, that’s where I’d try to hide. But something deep inside me tells me to keep walking. To find the water. And while I might have ignored the hunch, or whatever you want to call it, now that I’m in the dark of the forest, I can see something else.
Those awful, ridiculous sparkles are back, and they are definitely pushing me toward the sound of running water.
And so I go against my better judgment and continue running toward the water. I veer off the path, get slapped in the thighs and arms by thorned bushes and hit in the face by low-hanging branches, and still I keep going. The closer I get to the water sound, the faster my blood starts pumping.
By the time I break through the tree line, my heart is pounding like a metronome on high. But I don’t know ifthat’s because of how fast I’m running or because I suddenly realize I’m not chasing a river at all.
I’m chasing awaterfall. And not just any waterfall. One that appears to beupside down, the water running from the ground upward to the top of the cliff I’m standing on instead of the other way around.
Even worse, hanging right over the top—or in this case, the bottom—of the waterfall, just out of reach, is my terrible, impossible, determined-to-ruin-my-life coin.
I blink my eyes a couple times, just to make sure I’m not hallucinating.
But no, the more I blink, the clearer the coin becomes. It really is just hanging there in the open air, several feet above the top of an upside-down waterfall. Like that’s a thing.
Which it absolutely isn’t. Water doesn’t flow up. It flows down. Gravity demands that it happens that way.
But I don’t have time to worry about the laws of physics right now. Not when I’ve got to figure out how to get my darn coin.
I look around for something to hit it with that will knock it back toward me so I can grab it. Most of the branches on the ground are much too big for me to lift, but after wasting two precious minutes looking, I finally find a baby branch that I can not only lift but actually swing around.
However, no matter how hard I swing it, or how high on my tippy-toes I go, I can’t quite reach the coin. It hasn’t moved farther out, hasn’t lifted itself the way it did when I was on the back of the bench. No, this time, it’s stayingperfectly still, gleaming in the sunlight and hanging just out of reach, almost like it’s taunting me.
Have I mentioned yet how much I hate this awful coin? If not, let this be my standing reminder: I hate the thing. I hate it, I hate it, I hate it. And if there was any other way to get into Athena Hall, I can assure you I would be taking it.
Still, as I stand there glaring at the rotten thing, an idea comes to me. It’s a wild idea, dangerous, impractical, and almost certainly completely unachievable. But it’s also the only idea I’ve got left, and desperate times call for desperate measures.
I’m definitely desperate. Very, very, very desperate.
Besides, the waterfall isn’t that big. And it’s flowing upward. What’s the worst that could happen? I mean, besides being crushed to death against the rocky side of the cliff? Or getting pulled under the pounding current and drowning?
Neither sounds like a good way to go, but walking back into that amphitheater without a coin—wherever the amphitheater is at this point—feels like an even worse idea.
So I do the only thing I can do right now, the only thing that might have a chance of getting me that coin. I walk back to the edge of the forest and then, refusing to let myself think too much about it, I run straight for the edge of the cliff.
Straight for my coin.
Heart pounding, brain racing, body pretty much screaming in terror, I wait until the last second and then I jump upward as I throw myself off the cliff, arms and fingers straining as I try desperately to grab on to the coin for the second time today.
