“Yeah?” I call out, forcing my breathing and heart rate back to the vicinity of normal. I think I pull off nothing-out-of-the-ordinary pretty well for a girl flat on her back under a desk chair.

“It’s me,” a male voice answers.

Troy!

“Crap,” I whisper, then louder, “Just a sec.”

I scramble off the floor, righting the chair as I snatch the book off my desk and try to shove it in a drawer. Only I can’t find an open spot. My drawers are too full of old homework and school notices and other junk.

“Come on, Nic,” Troy whines. “You wouldn’t believe what happened in chemistry today.”

“Yeah, hold on,” I answer, searching desperately for a hiding spot. My room is not exactly spotless on the scale of cleanliness. Closer to pigsty. “I’m just, uh—” Maybe under the bed. “Getting dressed.”

Diving to the floor, I shove a pile of stuff out of the way, slide the book under, and—just in case—move some of the clothes back into place.

Perfect.

“What are you doing in there?” he asks. “Sounds like you’re tackling the furniture.”

“I told you, Travatas,” I gasp as I unlock my door and swing it open wide, “I was getting dressed.”

His gentle green eyes, with bright gold centers that match the color of his short-cropped hair, give me a once-over beneath raised brows. He knows me too well. To sell the lie, I tug at my tank top hem to make it look like I had to rush.

Troy Travatas is my best friend on the island—and, since I’m pretty much stuck here until graduation, thanks to Olympic decree, that makes him my best friend anywhere. I don’t like lying to him. But we’re practically opposites on the bold-and-daring front. Even the thought of stealing a book from the archives would give him a rash. The prospect of attempting time travel—if it really exists—would probably kill him.

Apparently buying my just-getting-dressed act, he shrugs and takes a step forward. Right into my do-not-disturb assurance.

“Ow!” he howls, jumping back from the photomorphosis electric-shock curtain I laid over the doorway.

“Sorry,” I say, waving my hand over the invisible shield to make the power disappear. “You rushed me and I forgot.”

He scowls as he steps—tentatively—into my room.

A burnt smell wafts by me. His Imagine Dragons tee is smoldering at the shoulders. I act quickly before he notices, pretending to brush some dust off his shoulder as I use a little aerokinesis to cool off the red cotton knit. He still hasn’t forgiven me for the fireworks incident with his Green Day tee. And that was just a tiny hole.

“That hurt more than last time,” he complains. “What’d you do, double the strength?”

“Not on purpose.”