I WASN'T SICK. In fact, I was the exact opposite of sick: I felt great. Energized like waking up from a twelve-hour-nap kind of energized. Mom had noticed at the breakfast table this morning and asked if I'd chugged coffee (the answer was no), and I really couldn't explain why I felt so good. She obviously didn't believe me about the coffee, because she then gave me a two-minute lecture about getting addicted to caffeine, but I said I'd be late if I didn't leave right then, and she let me off the hook.

School was a significant distance away, but I was too hyper to sit on the bus. I walked instead, finding myself skipping down the sidewalk while humming the tune to a song I couldn't get out of my head. People gave me odd looks as I passed by them, and I forced myself to go slower for the rest of the way to Wilson High, but the urge to skip was still there, supported by unnaturally high energy.

Just what it was, I couldn't put my finger on. Considering that I was a generally happy person, my current joyous mood shouldn't surprise me, but this seemed...different. I didn't know why. Whatever it was, morning math would kill it.

I didn't hate math; I was good at it, and who hates a class they're good at? The teacher was great, but the lessons were never exciting enough to keep my attention, and I always ended up staring out the window, daydreaming. The class was a real morning-enthusiasm killer.

I twirled my pencil around my fingers, staring down at the problem in the book that I was supposed to be doing. It was the kind of problem that you look at and realize how much work you have to do for it, and suddenly your will to do anything slowly drains from you and you just stare at it, hoping that someone will come to your rescue and say you don't have to do it. I stared at it for a good five minutes before I raised my hand and asked to do the problem on the whiteboard to force myself to actually do something. As predicted, the solution took up a good ten minutes plus half the whiteboard, and as soon as I sat down in my seat, the bell rang. Time for gym.

Gym was almost as dreadful as math, and the reason for that was my personal tormentor, Dana Edgar. She was an attitude-toting girl with a huge chip on her shoulder, and I was the subject of her insults. It had been this way since elementary school, but we'd found out two years ago that we were distant cousins, and somehow, being related made everything worse. I didn't care much about what she had to say about me, but I was always dreading seeing her. I couldn't stand to hear her talk, but if I talked back, we'd end up arguing, and I would hate that even more. So I tried to be neutral, letting her think she was winning even though it made my skin crawl.

Dana was standing by the girl's locker room door, across from the boy's door, when I rounded the corner of the hall. She waited for me there every day without fail. On some days she would make some snarky remark, and on others she would just glare at me, but I could always count on seeing her there.

"Morning, Dana," I said. It was no use trying to ignore her; she would do something whether or not I acknowledged her presence.

"Morning, loser," she said dryly.

Apparently, 'loser' was all she could come up with today, because she went into the locker room without another word. Shaking my head, I went through the boy's door.

After quickly getting changed, I sat cross-legged on the gym floor, waiting for class to start. It was an unspoken rule among the students that everyone had to change slowly to stall as much as possible, but the locker room was crowded, and I'd rather be out here than wait in there.

"Hey, Peter." Ben yawned, sitting down in front of me.

My best—and quite possibly only—friend Benjamin Ramirez was always yawning. He never got enough sleep because he was constantly studying. He was the president of Wilson High's academic team, which would be competing in the district Academic Bowl in a few days, and he was spending hours preparing for it. Sleep was for the weak, he liked to say.

"Hey," I replied, sweeping my gaze around the gym. People were finally coming out of the locker rooms.

Ben yawned again, and then glumly said, "We're running the mile today."

The mile was the task he despised the most, and it just so happened to be one of the few tasks I loved. I smiled, and he scowled.

Coach Carter got us warmed up with jumping jacks. As I jumped, I snuck a look at Dana, who was watching me, too. She smirked, well aware that she was jumping faster than me, and I responded by going faster, and then she went faster, and by the time we both managed to get the same pace going, Coach Carter ordered us to go outside.

Wilson High's track had been redone last month, and now it smelled like fresh, chemical rubber. The weather was a comfortable mix of warm and windy, perfect for the mile. Coach Carter blew the whistle, sending the kids running. I jogged with Ben for the first half of a lap, going slower than my usual speed because he wasn't great at running and I didn't want to leave him behind. But then he turned to me and encouragingly said, "Get lost."

I smiled back and picked up my pace, running alongside Dana for a few seconds before she scowled at me and sped off. Remember when I said that I was kind of short? Well, I was five-foot-seven. I consider that to be average, not actually short, but everyone at school, including Dana, seemed to tower over me. Men of the Maguire family were not tall, so I couldn't count on genetics to kick in for my last few years of growth. I would be lucky if I even made it to five-eight. So, when five-foot-ten tall Dana took off, her long legs taking much larger strides than I could manage, I just glared at the back of her head and stayed at my speed because there was no way I'd ever catch up.

After the second lap, I realized that something was off. Normally, I would be out of breath by this time. I would at least be a little tiny bit tired...but I wasn't. I wasn't going any faster than I usually did but I felt better, like I suddenly had a stamina boost overnight.

I finished the last lap, beating my time by only a few seconds. I stopped and leaned against the fence to wait for everyone else to finish. I had a love for running, but that felt ridiculously good.

"What gives?" said Dana, approaching me. Other than us, only a few people had finished. She crossed her arms over her chest. "Decided to try and beat me?"

I pushed myself off the fence and turned to face her, crossing my arms over my chest, too, and meeting her hostility with a smile. "If I was trying, believe me, Dana, I would've beat you."

It wasn't true, and we both knew it. I'd have to train like an Olympian if I wanted to outrun her, but my remark pulled her lips into a thin line and she shook her head, rolling her eyes.

It did the trick, and she went away just as Ben finished running. He wiped the sweat off his forehead and leaned back with his hands on his hips as he tried to catch his breath.

I gave him a pat on the back. "You did great!"

He stared at me with his "Are you kidding?" face and shook his head. Coach Carter ordered everyone to go inside, and since we had about seven minutes before we were allowed to change, she told us to keep ourselves busy.

I sat next to Ben on the indoor bleachers. He was still catching his breath, and I rubbed his shoulder affectionately as Dana unfortunately caught my eye. Her friends, a group of equally nasty personalities as her, were watching her do a line of cartwheels and flips with perfect precision. On the last flip, she turned and bowed, staring directly at me.

I tensed, and Ben must have noticed: he was suddenly trying to drag me to the group kicking around a ball. Dana's words never hurt me...but that didn't mean I wasn't annoyed, and there was no way I was going to pass up a chance to one up her.

Ben followed me as I stepped off the bleachers and walked over to Dana, her eyes widening threateningly as I approached. I started in the middle of her friends, repeating her exact ensemble of cartwheels and flips and adding more at the end, ending with the same bow as I stared directly at her, grinning. I had taken gymnastics for six years, and I thought it was pretty useless since I didn't want to be a gymnast, but it was all worth it now.

Dana raised both eyebrows coldly as her friends looked to her for a response. She pointed at the two long climbing ropes hanging from the ceiling. They were there solely for fun, since they weren't a mandatory task in gym class.

"Wanna go?" she said daringly, grabbing one rope and sending the other swinging my way.

I caught it with both hands and looked up. It went so high; I wasn't afraid of heights, but I'd never done this before. Ben was shaking his head at me, telling me not to do it. But I looked past him and at Dana, glaring at me with unfounded hatred, and I nodded.

She didn't even wait for a countdown or a go, she started up the rope as soon as I nodded. I tightened my grip and climbed as fast as I could, way faster than I would've expected. She must not have been expecting it, either, because her jaw dropped when I caught up to her and we were both going up at the same rate. It felt oddly exhilarating.

The ropes were pretty close together. A leg's distance apart, some might say. She suddenly stuck her leg out to trip me up, probably intending to make me lose my focus for a second, but her foot struck me hard in the stomach, and I lost my grip.

I could see the surprise on her face and feel the surprise on my face as my hands grasped at nothing. I was falling, and I shut my eyes...and then I was on the ground.

On my feet.

I somehow managed to land in a crouch, my feet planted firmly on the floor. I stayed frozen in that position, shocked that no pain had shot up my legs, and shocked that I didn't even lose balance and fall over after landing. First the running, and now this: where was this agility coming from?

Dana scrambled down the rope, and she looked shaken. She opened her mouth, actually looking like she was about to apologize, when Coach Carter blew her whistle for everyone to go change.

I had straightened up from my crouch, but my feet were still apart on the floor in the position I landed in, and Dana stared at me for a second before mumbling, "Sorry." Then she turned and ran to the locker room.

Coach Carter hadn't noticed at all. She yelled at me and Ben to go change and then went into her office.

I brought my feet together and turned to Ben, who was staring at me oddly. "Since when could you do that?" he asked, grinning with admiration.

"I..." I laughed nervously, running my hand through my hair and feeling a little breathless. "I don't know."

"Let's go change," he said, turning and starting toward the locker room.

I looked up at the rope before I followed, lagging a few steps behind him. My sneakers squeaked against the rubbery gym floor and I stopped, swallowing.

"Peter?" Ben hadn't made it to the lockers yet, and he turned around, raising an eyebrow because I had stopped. "Everything good?"

I blinked, my vision suddenly narrowing into a tunnel that only let me see him and nothing else. I stumbled back, opening my mouth to answer, but then I bent over, gasping and coughing. I felt like I was going to throw up, but nothing was coming out. I stayed bent forward, dry-heaving as Ben rushed over and tried to get me to straighten up.

My ears had started ringing, and he had to repeat his statement three times before it actually registered. "No," I choked out, grabbing his shirt. "Don't get Carter."

"What's wrong with you?" he cried, his arm draped over my back.

Most of my weight was leaning against him, and I struggled to shove myself back onto my feet. I was still breathing hard, but I stopped heaving and draped my arm around Ben's shoulders for support. "Just...take me...to..." I couldn't get anymore words out, but he understood and started dragging me to the nurse.

Expertly placed, the nurse's office was in the same hall as the gym. By the time I got there, I was feeling kind of better, but if I didn't lie down soon, I was going to fall on my face.

"Is everything all right?" the nurse asked, her eyes flicking from Ben to me.

"Can I just lie down?" I asked, my voice weaker than I'd ever heard it. I took my arm off Ben's shoulder to try and prove that I wasn't feeling as bad as I sounded. "And can you call my mom?"

I thanked Ben for helping, and he glanced worriedly at me before being forced to leave. I lied on my back on the white bed, staring up at the ceiling as I listened to the conversation the nurse was having with my mom.

My ears finally stopped ringing, and I subconsciously touched the little healing bump on my neck. That syringe, whatever it was, had done something to me. I couldn't shake it off like I'd originally intended, it was important now.

Mom picked me up, and as soon as we were in the apartment, she sat me down on the couch. She waited for the thermometer in my mouth to let out a little beep, and she took it out right away, reading the number with a frown.

"You don't have a fever," she said.

"I'm fine," I assured her, but my voice was still weak and I probably shouldn't have spoken at all. "I just felt a little sick, that's all."

She capped the thermometer with a shake of her head and went to the kitchen, mumbling chicken soup ingredients to herself. I sighed; I hated chicken soup, but if she was making that, then she genuinely believed I was sick, and I needed her to think that and nothing else.

I leaned heavily against the couch, the day's events making my heart heavy. I didn't even care that for the first time, Dana almost physically hurt me, and she would have if it weren't for my impressive landing. The landing itself was what I was worried about. Why was I suddenly so agile?

I twisted my head to look at Mom. She was stirring hot water in a pot, still mumbling ingredients to herself. I exhaled slowly. I had to wait this out, and if I didn't get better...

I could always sneak out to a doctor.

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