the winner is," Coach Diante said with a stunned expression, "Joel Bland." The skinny kid with braces from the next lane over hopped out of the pool and started raising the roof to celebrate his victory.
In the next lane, Penn kicked to a stop. "What happened?" she asked Luce. "You were totally killing him."
Luce shrugged. Gabbe was what had happened, but when she looked over at the bleachers, Gabbe was gone, and Arriane and Molly were gone with her. Roland alone remained where the crowd had been, and he was immersed in a book.
Luce's adrenaline had been building while she swam, but now she'd crashed so hard, Penn had to help her out of the pool.
Luce watched Roland hop down from the bleachers. "You were pretty good out there," he said, tossing her a towel and the locker room key she'd lost track of. "For a little while."
Luce caught the key in midair and wrapped the towel around her. But before she could say something normal, like
"Thanks for the towel," or "Guess I'm just out of shape," this weird new hotheaded side of her instead blurted out,
"Are Daniel and Gabbe together or what?"
Big mistake. Huge. She could tell from the look in his eye that her question was headed right to Daniel.
"Oh, I see," Roland said, and laughed. "Well, I couldn't really ..." He looked down at her and scratched his nose and gave her what seemed like a sympathetic smile. Then he pointed toward the open hallway door, and when Luce followed his finger she saw Daniel's trim, blond silhouette pass by. "Why don't you just ask him yourself?"
Luce's hair was still dripping wet and her feet were still bare when she found herself hovering at the door to a large weight room. She'd intended to go straight into the locker room to change and dry off. She didn't know why this Gabbe thing was shaking her up so much. Daniel could be with whomever he wanted, right? Maybe Gabbe liked guys who flipped her off.
Or, more likely, that kind of thing didn't happen to Gabbe.
But Luce's body got the better of her mind when she caught another glimpse of Daniel. His back was to her and he was standing in a corner picking out a jump rope from a tangled pile. She watched as he selected a thin navy rope with wooden handles, then moved to an open space in the center of the room. His golden skin was almost radiant, and every movement he made, whether he was rolling out his long neck in a stretch or bending over to scratch his sculpted knee, had Luce completely rapt. She stood pressed against the doorway, unaware that her teeth were chattering and her towel was soaked.
When he brought the rope behind his ankles just before he began to jump, Luce was slammed with a wave of d泄j邪
vu. It wasn't exactly that she felt like she'd seen Daniel jump rope before, but more that the stance he took seemed entirely familiar. He stood with his feet hip-width apart, unlocked his knees, and pressed his shoulders down as he filled his chest with air. Luce could almost have drawn it.
It was only when Daniel began twirling the rope that Luce snapped out of that trance ... and right into another. Never in her life had she seen anyone move like him. It was almost like Daniel was flying. The rope whipped up and over his tall frame so quickly that it disappeared, and his feet - his graceful, narrow feet - were they even touching the ground? He was moving so swiftly, even he must not have been counting.
A loud grunt and a thud on the other side of the weight room tore Luce's attention away. Todd was in a heap at the base of one of those knotted climbing ropes. She felt momentarily sorry for Todd, who was looking down at his blistered hands. Before she could look back at Daniel to see whether he'd even noticed, a cold black rush at the edge of her skin made Luce shiver. The shadow swept up on her slowly at first, icy, tenebrous, its limits indiscernible.
Then, suddenly rough, it crashed into her body and forced her back. The door to the weight room slammed in her face and Luce was alone in the hallway.
"Ow!" she cried, not because she was hurt exactly, but because she had never been touched by the shadows before.