The Second Ship (The Rho Agenda #1)(27)
Left hand, right hand. Back and forth he worked the ball, adding different English to the spin, causing the ball to weave about crazily, but always bouncing to the spot he anticipated. Between his legs. Behind his back. Between his legs as he walked. Between his legs as he ran. He moved around the court—whirling, spinning—and always the ball bounced flawlessly from one hand to the other.
Mark moved back to the free-throw line at one end of the court, bounced the ball twice, and then shot. The ball passed through the basket so smoothly that the strings at the bottom of the net made a gentle popping sound. Retrieving the basketball, Mark shot again and again. Ten in a row. Twenty. Fifty.
He began moving around the court and launching jump shots. The first of these missed, although he immediately knew why. He had surprised himself with the height of his jump, his new muscle efficiency propelling him far higher than ever before.
The next shot didn’t miss. Neither did the one after that. Left hand, right hand: it made absolutely no difference.
He spun the ball up onto the middle finger of his left hand and then caught it and launched a shot, which landed the ball back in the rack right beside its fellows. He made his way out through the double gymnasium doors, giving one a flat-handed smack as he left. A broad smile spread across his face.
Inconspicuous.
Chapter 18
Heather had never studied so hard in her life. Considering she was ahead in all her schoolwork and had no tests coming up, her study load was nothing short of miraculous. But compared to the work Jennifer was doing, Heather felt like a slacker.
Sometimes life drives you to do entirely new things, things you never believed you could do. Heather remembered when she first started skiing, midway through fifth grade. That was when she had met Bobby Jones. It had been forever since she had thought of him, but in fifth grade she thought Bobby Jones hung the moon.
He and his family had arrived from Steamboat Springs, Colorado. Bobby had asked her to go skiing with him, and although she protested that she didn’t know how, he promised to teach her. Allow her to humiliate herself was more like it.
To be fair, he had spent the morning with her on the bunny slopes of Pajarito Mountain, the wonderful little ski area originally built by the lab employees. As thrilled as she was with learning the gliding wedge, the snow plow, the pizza slice, or whatever you want to call the uncomfortable beginner ski position, she probably would have terminated her ski career that day if not for Bobby’s patient instruction. By noon, though, that patience had worn thin, and Bobby suggested that the she continue her practice solo.
Having fulfilled his duty, Bobby Jones spent the rest of the day swooshing down the black-diamond slopes with Kristin Beale, a sixth-grade girl whose long, blond hair would never know a ski cap, not even if her ears froze off and fell into the snow. Kristin had been born on the ski slopes, and it showed, which allowed the vacuity of her speech to go unnoticed.
Her humiliation complete, Heather had worked on her skiing that year with passion that bordered on obsession. But by the time Heather had mastered the sport, her interest in the lovely Mr. Jones had evaporated. However, the motivation that had driven her—that she could feel like it was yesterday.
So now that the otherworldly combination of high personal interest and event-driven need had superimposed themselves, Heather’s study drive was fearsome.
Mark worried her, though. The seductive influence of his enhanced physical prowess only heightened his natural competitive drive. And basketball gave him the perfect outlet. Jennifer was furious at her twin and had hardly spoken to him in the last few weeks, convinced that his irresponsibility threatened them all.
When Jennifer first learned that Mark had tried out for and made the Varsity A basketball team, she had confronted him.
“Mark, are you crazy?
“No, I’m good.”
“I don’t care that you’re good. Our new gifts are too important to use for petty personal aggrandizement. I think we received them for a higher purpose.”
“Higher purpose? Sis, you’ve been reading way too many comic books. I don’t have a gift. I have talent the ship just released. And I’m not about to sit around and hide it. I plan on living my life.”
Jennifer clenched her teeth. “Mark. Think for a change. What’s it worth to become a big basketball star? Is it worth attracting all that attention? Is it worth the risk of getting our ship discovered?”
“Yes, it is. Let me tell you something, Sis. Life is risky. We might get hit by a bus tomorrow. Someone might wonder why you’re leafing through every book you can get your hands on. Heather might slip up and let the cat in the savant hat out of the bag. The only really safe place is in a cozy straightjacket in a nice rubber room. If you want that, then go for it. Not me, though.”
“Jumping off a cliff isn’t being a risk taker. It’s being an idiot.”
Heather had stood there watching the confrontation, although she might as well have been invisible for all the attention her two friends paid her. It had concluded with Mark storming off as Jennifer yelled after him, “Don’t be an idiot!”
Not that Mark would have liked helping with what they were working on anyway. She and Jennifer were on a mad quest to learn, each focused on her own areas of special interest. Heather worked her way through book after book of advanced mathematics and physics while Jennifer focused on computer science and data mining, that obtuse art of storing and categorizing data so that a search engine can find it. In addition, Jennifer had once again redone her data-tagging scheme, which forced her to rescan all of the books she had already memorized.