The Search for Artemis - By P. D. Griffith Page 0,77

he was astounded by Brock’s skill and surprised at himself that he’d managed to last so long against the Gymnasium’s alpha dog. Then it happened. Landon tried to raise his arm to deflect another snowball, but he couldn’t react fast enough. The tennis-ball-sized sphere of snow broke through his defenses and hit him square in the chest. The blue team’s horn blared.

Landon looked over at Brock, who’d stopped throwing snowballs after he heard the horn, but he wasn’t really looking at his enemy. He was watching to see if his plan would come to fruition. Brock was so focused on defeating Landon, he hadn’t noticed the shadow above him that’d been growing and growing throughout their duel. So Brock had no warning when a snowball about the size of a small car fell from the sky, right onto his head. The sound of the red team’s horn rang out through the valley. Brock was covered in a dense layer of snow and eliminated.

Landon might have been knocked out first, but throughout the last minutes of their battle, he’d sent every snowball he deflected to a place about ten feet above Brock’s stationary body—a trick he’d learned from Celia that day in the lake. With each new addition, the snowball grew and grew. Eventually, the weight of it was too much for Landon to hold while keeping up with Brock’s speedy projectiles and suppressing the full strength of his abilities, so when Landon was eliminated, he released the ball. A smile stretched across his face; if Brock had moved, the plan would have failed.

Joining the rest of the eliminated members of the blue team on a bench next to the faculty bleachers, Landon moved off the field, satisfied with what he’d accomplished. He hoped with Brock and the twins eliminated that Katie Leigh, Riley or one of the other two remaining members of his team would have a chance at pulling out a victory, but over the next five minutes, each one of them was knocked out of the game. The students had been nervous about Brock, Parker and the Crane twins, but for some reason, everyone forgot about Cortland Cartwright. He easily cleaned up the field once it was down to the final few. After all of that, the blue team lost again for the third year in a row.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

THE OLYMPIC TOWER

“How are you doing, Landon?”

Landon turned from the food services line; he didn’t recognize the voice, and he wasn’t sure why someone would stop him while he was getting his breakfast. Since the First Frost Frenzy ended a few days ago, Landon had received a confusing mix of praise, snubbing and contempt from his fellow students. His actions during the match, particularly with regard to Brock and the Crane twins, had placed him in a precarious position with the student body. Everyone had to now choose whether to support his challenging the most powerful students in the Gymnasium, to condemn him for embarrassing those same students, or to avoid Landon altogether, figuring that it would all blow over and things would return to normal.

To Landon, the First Frost Frenzy was just a game, and he was doing all he could to win. There was nothing more to it. A part of him wanted to make Brock, Jeremiah and Joshua understand that they couldn’t push him around like they did other students, but Landon never expected his performance in the game to stir such strong emotions within every student at the Gymnasium. He now understood that by eliminating the trio, he’d drawn the proverbial line in the sand and challenged the alpha male.

Landon was shocked to realize Cortland Cartwright was the one speaking to him. Landon had never met nor spoken to Cortland in the four months he’d been at the Gymnasium. They didn’t share a single training session together and were rarely ever in the same place at the same time. The only times Landon could remember even seeing him were in the cafeteria, but Cortland sat with Brock . . . so they’d never been introduced.

“Umm,” Cortland said after an excruciating period of silence. Landon had turned and was looking at him, but he hadn’t said a word. “I just wanted to tell you that you were awesome out there last Saturday. I don’t think anyone expected you to be capable of that.”

“Thanks . . . I think,” Landon replied. It took him a second to form the words in his brain. He couldn’t figure out if