Annabeth Neverending Read Free Page B

this instance they’re wrong, I think as I brazenly chug my budget beer. Would expensive beer taste any better? I wonder. I sure hope so.
    I set aside the empty bottle and snap open the jewelry box. I size up the pendant. It sure doesn’t look like it has any special powers. After all, it’s just a hunk of metal. But can it bring back ancient Egypt? Can it bring back Sethe?
    Maybe he’s calling out to me? The ankh certainly is. I feel it rumbling. It’s insisting that I touch it, and its pull is growing harder to refuse. My fingers slowly inch in its direction. Tentatively, hesitantly. At this point, I’m not sure I can help it. Not that I’d stop, even if I could. It’s compelling me. A power beyond my control. And soon, I’ll have its silky smoothness within my fingertips…

3
    “W hat are you doing?” asks Howie, incredulous.
    I think fast, maneuvering the beer bottle so I’m sitting on top of it.
    Even though he’s only twelve, my “little” brother towers over me. Bernadette can take hers in a wrestling match, but I’ll never know that pleasure. No doubt the behemoth is wondering why I’m about to poke at some strange pendant on a chain.
    “Nothing. Last time I checked, this was my room. Why are you in here anyway?”
    “Uh…no reason,” he responds abruptly.
    So he’s guilty of his own transgression. I’m convinced that Howie regularly sneaks into my room and rifles through my stuff. Everything is slightly out of place when I get home after an extended period of time. I rarely have anything damning in here. But the one time I’ve got the evidence on me to prove I committed a crime , he walks right in. Good thing the bottle escaped his notice.
    Howie tries to get a better peek at my jewelry, but I don’t want him taking the tiniest look. He knows too much already.
    My frustration gnaws at me. I desperately wanted to hold the ankh. But maybe Howie did me a service by bursting in. He probably got here at the right moment, preventing me from exercising some especially poor judgment. I would’ve made myself completely vulnerable to it had I been alone. On second thought, I should thank him. But I won’t.
    “Don’t you have something better to do?” I ask, slipping into antagonized - big - sister mode.
    “Yes, now that you mention it,” says Howie as he stomps out of my room in his heavy - footed way.
    That moment, the one where the ankh was drawing me in, is lost. And I’m not taking any chances. I got the wake - up call I needed. I pull out a brass key and lock the little box tight in my chest. Now that the ankh is out of sight, it’s out of mind.
    I can only hope.

    I arrive at practice seconds before it starts and adjust the waistband on my gold - and - blue York High boxer shorts that say “pompon” on the butt. I search for the answer to a timeless question: Why do some squads spell it pom - pom while others spell it pom pon ?
    Just when I think I may be close to solving the age - old puzzle, Sethe threatens to intervene. Though Gabriel is the one I should be dwelling on, seeing as he exists and all. But Sethe keeps worming his way into my mind. His olive skin, his full lips, his square jaw. His piercing hazel orbs that penetrate into my deepest core…But the more pressing task at hand, that of perfecting a piece of dance - team choreography, pushes him right out.
    I take a seat next to Bernadette and commence my warm - up.
    “Stretching feels so good,” she says, her legs splayed straight out to each side. Her arms are extended, guiding her torso down so far that she could kiss the field house’s pale wood floor. Her long, black - brown hair is fanned out around her, covering half of her body.
    I grunt as I try to mimic her. I can feel my muscle fibers tearing under the strain. Even after some serious exertion, I’m so stiff I’m practically sitting straight up.
    “That is exactly…the opposite of what I was thinking,” I reply sorrowfully.
    “Do you know the choreography