Pulse

jump.
    When Wade sat up in the pit, his hair was a gorgeous mess, and a generous smile appeared on his face. Faith could only think of one thing to say.
    “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
    Wade winked and pushed himself up off the mat. Their shoulders brushed as he went by. Faith wished she could touch his face and maybe kiss him. But she let him pass without committing a reckless act of love in front of the principal.
    “Raise it,” Wade said as he returned to his starting spot.
    “Let’s take it up four,” Mr. Reichert said, which would put Wade at the world record height if he cleared it. Faith thought they should be recording it and said so, but Mr. Reichert brushed the idea off as he set his side of the bar.
    “Better there’s no evidence on a Tablet just yet. We want to surprise them when the time comes. More dramatic.”
    When the bar was set, Faith moved quickly out of the way. She wanted to see the entire thing for herself this time. Wade took a huge breath as his twin sister had done. He made the same mumbling sound at the bottom of the breath, and then he was on the move. He was like a gazelle, precisely measured in every movement. When he reached the bar, there was an explosion of silent power that vaulted him higher than Faith thought was possible. He cleared the bar with 99 percent of his body until the very edge of his heel nicked the bar and knocked it down.
    “Damn it!” he yelled, pushing himself off the mat without looking in Faith’s direction. “Set it up again.”
    He tried three more times, each time missing by the slightest margin and growing angrier with every attempt.
    “It’s okay, Wade,” Faith said encouragingly. “It’s eight feet, four inches and you’re basically clearing it. It’s incredible!”
    “How about you stick to drawing daisies and let me worry about this. Think you could do that?”
    The comment stung, but Faith was strong willed, always had been. She’d lost a lot of friends over the past few years, and she wasn’t about to let Wade Quinn talk to her that way. He was turning out to be everything she hated about hot guys. She walked out of the gym, but Mr. Reichert followed her. He knew how Wade and Clara could be: coldly focused on becoming the greatest athletes the world had ever seen. It was time to put on the principal hat and make sure the new student wasn’t totally devastated.
    “Don’t take it too hard,” he began as he caught up to Faith in the corridor. “He’s very intense about the training. So is his sister. It sort of comes with the territory. Ever hear of a guy named Tiger Woods? Best golfer in the world like fifty years ago. Amazing. He wouldn’t even sign autographs for little kids most of the time. Just head down, marching from hole to hole, dominating the course. Then he lost his focus, and the whole thing went to hell.”
    Faith felt a little better. Mr. Reichert with the pale, cratered skin and the awful haircut was turning out to be an okay guy.
    “Come back in an hour,” Mr. Reichert said. “I promise he’ll be a different person. He’s frustrated because he knows he can clear it. Don’t be so hard on him.”
    “I never give guys like that a second chance,” Faith said, walking away and thinking about the grade school, hoping she and Liz and Hawk would be going there that night. “Tell him I said so.”
    But Faith had to admit that she was thinking about it. If she could have seen what was happening in the gym while they were having this conversation, it might have changed her mind. Or more likely it would have blown her mind. Wade had put the bar back in place and taken up his starting position again, and this time he didn’t bother with the formality of preparing his mind for the approach. He just went for it.
    He cleared the bar by a foot and a half in a way that looked like he wasn’t even trying. Standing on the mat afterward, Wade knocked the bar off the holders and watched it fall to the floor. There was a long pause and then a voice from the far end of the gym.
    “Be careful.”
    Clara was back, leaning against one of the double doors that led outside to the throwing area. “She’s not worth it.”
    Wade fell back down on the pit and stared at the ceiling. He wasn’t so sure Clara was right about Faith Daniels.
    Maybe she was worth it.

Chapter 5
I’m Just Here to See the Monkeys and Eat the Candy
    Whole sections of Old Park Hill had been shut down because the place was about ten times bigger than