“Of course Zeus benefited.” I roll my eyes. “He is king of the gods, which he totally wouldn’t be if he hadn’t fought the Titans.”
“And punished Prometheus?” Fifi adds.
“I don’t know about that. But you have to wonder why the punishment was so harsh for just giving us fire. And that’s without even talking about poor Pandora, who—”
I break off as lightning crackles across the sky, followedalmost instantly by a burst of thunder so loud it shakes the trees around us.
Fifi lets out a startled little scream and then all three of us are moving a lot more quickly. Fall storms are really common in the Berkshires, and while they aren’t necessarily dangerous, they do tend to be torrential.
I pick up my pace, determined to get to class before the rain kicks in. But I’ve barely taken two or three steps before the ground beneath me starts to tremble. It feels exactly like it did on my first day—like this whole block of the school is about to move—so I hit the ground, shouting over my shoulder for Fifi and Arjun to do the same.
Sure enough, a loud grinding sound fills the air and then we’re spinning, spinning, spinning. Which is strange, because the school usually rearranges itself overnight. Except for my first day here, I’ve never seen it do this while people are awake.
But it’s definitely doing it now, so I yell, “Hang on!” to my friends as I hug the ground and wait for the world around me to stop shaking and spinning.
At least I’m not alone in an unfamiliar place this time. Surely Fifi and her uncanny sense of direction can get us out of this when the school finally stops turning. I just hope our class isn’t all the way across campus when it does.
It seems like it takes forever, but it’s probably only a couple of minutes before the ground beneath us grinds to a halt. I stand up right away, brushing myself off and looking around, trying to figure out where we are.
But there’s no amphitheater, no classroom buildings, no cafeteria, no halls, no landmarks at all to give me any idea what part of the campus we’ve landed in. Just trees and more trees.
“I’m not sure even you can find our way out of this, Fifi,” I tell her as I peer through the trees in front of me.
But she doesn’t answer. And neither does Arjun, which is weird, because there are few things that boy hates more than the way this school moves around. Every morning he complains about it, so he should definitely be having some kind of fit right now.
Nerves start pinging in my stomach, and I whirl around to see if they got hurt in all the shaking. But it’s so much worse than that. Because when I turn around, they aren’t on the ground like I feared.
In fact, they’re nowhere around me. Wherever the school has decided to move me to, it’s left me there completely on my own.
42.My GPS Is a Mess
I BLINK A FEW TIMESas I look toward the trees, trying to make sure I didn’t just miss them. I know they were a few steps behind me as we passed the amphitheater, but that wasn’t enough distance to have them spinning in an entirely different direction. Was it?
Unease crawls through my stomach, bringing a hollow feeling with it. I know this isn’t a big deal, know that they’re fine even if they did spin off in another direction. And since I’m currently the one in the middle of nowhere, I’m probably going to have a much harder time getting to class than they are.
And yet, even as I head toward the huge tree line in front of me, I can’t help feeling like something weird is going on. I just wish I knew what it was.
My phone buzzes in my back pocket, and I pull it out to find a text from Fifi in our group chat.
Fifi: Where are you? You just disappeared!!!!
Me: I don’t know. The school started spinning and when it stopped you guys were gone
Fifi: What are you talking about?
Fifi: The school didn’t spin
Fifi: You know it only does that at night
The uneasiness inside me turns into full-blown confusion…and worry. How could she have not felt all that grinding and turning? Or, alternately, how did I feel it if no one else could?
Me: Is Arjun with you?
Arjun: Yeah. We’re outside the arts building. Where are you?
Me: Somewhere in the forest
Fifi: I don’t understand what’s going on
