The Search for Artemis - By P. D. Griffith Page 0,37
behind Riley. As he reached the cabinets, he realized he was standing beside Celia.
“So . . . I saw that picture of you this morning in the cafeteria,” Celia started.
Landon looked down and replied, “Oh.”
“No, don’t be modest, bus boy. You’ve won the first round of ‘Most Awesome New Student,’ but that won’t last for long,” she returned with a grin. “You just wait. I always win in the end.”
Landon smiled as he returned to his seat. He set up his equipment as he thought through his brief conversation with Celia. He was competitive and now he realized this whole situation might be fun. She laid down the gauntlet and he didn’t want to disappoint.
Determined to succeed, Landon pushed the stool back with his foot and stood in front of the table, pressing both hands on the edge of its surface. He leaned in over the three marbles that sat on the table in a random formation. Concentrating solely on the little glass balls, Landon stared at them, squinting slightly. I can do this, he told himself. Landon clenched his jaw, held his breath, and tightened all of the muscles in his face. Move you little marble. I need you to move.
Nothing happened. Landon stood there with his face scrunched, staring at a set of marbles on the table, but as he fought to use his abilities, the tingling pang on the back of his neck made him suddenly aware of the silence in the room. When he looked up, everyone was staring at him again. Riley had his eager face focused on Landon while his three marbles orbited an invisible center a few inches above his open hand. As he looked around, he started to hear the low whispers of people conversing with their desk partners.
Landon felt exposed, like a statue at a museum exhibit. That is, if a statue could be alive to overhear his audiences. Everyone was waiting with bated breath, anticipating Landon to effortlessly lift his marbles off the tabletop and set them on his thin stands.
“All right, everyone, focus on your own work,” Dr. Brighton commanded, breaking the silence and causing everyone to turn back to his or her own set of marbles.
The next hour passed slowly as Landon attempted to move a single marble to no avail. He tried everything. He stared at it, willed it to move, talked to it, waved his hand over it, and even attempted to use “magic” words. Nothing did the trick. With each failed attempt, he scanned the room, searching for some secret or special technique to unlocking the ability. He watched as Celia appeared to easily lift her marbles into the air and set them on their pedestals ten minutes into the exercise and couldn’t help but watch as Riley seemed to play with his, juggling them in the air, making them orbit his head, and causing them to collide with one another in flight.
“How do you do this?” Landon whispered inconspicuously to Riley, who at the moment was making his marbles chase each other across the table.
“You just have to feel it,” he replied. “It’s like when making a fist, you tell your hand to close. That’s what you do with the marbles; tell them to go where you want them to go.”
“But I have been telling them, and they don’t do anything.”
“You’re trying too hard. You need to relax and not think about it. Just do it.”
Landon nodded and began to stare at his marbles again.
“Don’t think about it. Relax. Just do it.” Landon spoke to himself as he concentrated. “Don’t think about it. Just do it.”
Landon continued to stare intently at his three tiny glass balls. With each passing minute, the frustration built up within him, making him more and more antsy, causing him to shift his weight from one side of his body to the other, and triggering every muscle in his body to get tenser and tenser. As it became more and more aggravating, the frustration overpowered his thoughts and he burst out, “Move!”
The entire class stopped dead and turned to look at him. His face was red with anger and his hands clutched the edge of the table so hard his knuckles had turned white. Then, all three marbles began to shake violently, clicking loudly as they began to dance on the table. Landon looked down at them, holding his breath. He was still fuming, but a tinge of hope flooded in. Suddenly, the marbles stopped, filling the room with palpable