Fire Country
changing the subject. At the game, I’m doing the same, studying the match like it’s a strange ten-legged insect with a red tail.
    Feet ball. Yet another activity I’ve never been good at. Trying to run around while simultaneously kicking and throwing and catching a ball? Well, let’s just say it’s about three too many things for my two left feet to handle at once. Not to mention the hordes of defenders trying to do everything in their power to grind you into the unforgiving desert floor. Yeah, violent sports and me don’t mix. Scorch, any sport and me don’t mix.
    I played when I had to as part of the physical activity required during Learning, but never for fun. Thankfully, as a fifteen-year-old female Youngling—also known as a pre-Bearer—I’m exempt from any physical activity that might prevent me from having children in the near future. Which means I get to watch Circ play, which is like watching Greynote Giza paint one of his famous paintings: fluid and natural and graceful. The score is tied and it’s already in extra time, which means the next goal’ll be the decider.
    I’m sitting next to Lara, ’cause, well, ’cause I don’t really have many friends at the moment. I don’t know if she’s my friend exactly, but at least she’s not an enemy, and she’s never called me any of the not-so-flattering nicknames that I’m used to. So she’s okay in my book. Although she is starting to freak me out with all of her cryptic messages.
    “You still haven’t answered my question,” she says , asking for the fourteenth time since the match started.
    Circ takes a pass off his left foot and quickly dart s past a defender who tries, and fails, to grab him. His movements are faster’n the lightning we get during the winter storms, but not nearly as shocking. So far he’s doing nothing I haven’t seen him do ’fore. He has three goals and a dozen steals, far more’n any other player.
    “I’m trying to watch—”
    “Oh, come on. I could see in your eyes that you were intrigued by what I said. That a life of breeding and childrearing and waiting on your Call hand and foot doesn’t exactly excite you.”
    “Shhh, keep it down,” I hiss, glaring at her. She mig ht not hate me like most of t’other Younglings, but if she keeps talking like this, using that dirty word— breeding , shh!—she is gonna get me in trouble. Again. I’m pretty sure my father’s threat to chuck me in Confinement is a load of tugwash, but I’m not itching to test him. Especially not so soon after the last time.
    “Sorry,” she whispers, rolling her eyes.
    “Look,” I say, as I watch Circ dodge another defender by flicking the ball in the air with his feet, running around them, and then catching it in one hand. “Even if I agreed with you, about the…”
    (breeding, shh!)
    “…about everything , there’s nothing we can do about it. The Call is all there is for us. Without it the older generations would die off faster’n the new ones could be created. Without it we wouldn’t exist.”
    “I thought you were different,” Lara says, a hint of disappointment in her tone. “You sound just like a Teacher. Or worse, a Greynote.”
    I grit my teeth. Circ throws the ball over the head of an opponent to one of his teammates, who grabs it and throws it back to him. He catches it in midstride, now streaking down the field faster’n a Cotee, rolls it deftly out in front of his feet and then rips a booming shot at the corner of the rope net. I hold my breath for a second, watching the potential winning shot careen just past the outstretched hands of the opposing net guard. I start to stand and raise my hands in celebration, but the ball glances hard off the edge of the wooden netpost and over the boundary line. “No goal!” the judge yells, waving his arms around like he’s swatting at sand flies.
    Blaze . That was so close, but now t’other team has the ball.
    “All I’m asking is that you think about it,” Lara

Similar Books

Spy Games

Gina Robinson

Romancing the Alpha: An Action-Adventure Romance Boxed Set

Anna Hackett, Anna Lowe, Leigh James, Ember Casey, Zoe York, Ruby Lionsdrake, Zara Keane, Sadie Haller, Lyn Brittan, Lydia Rowan

Not Quite an Angel

Bobby Hutchinson

The Forgotten 500

Gregory A. Freeman

Bitter Demons

Sarra Cannon