Dreams of the Golden Age (Golden Age 2)

He brightened. “You could go with me.”

“I’d be useless.”

“No, you wouldn’t. You’re not useless,” he said, but the words were rote and they both knew she was right. He added, “Maybe you shouldn’t worry so much.”

Her mother’s words from yesterday’s after-school conference echoed. Math quiz, she wished. “Somebody’s got to worry, the rest of you sure aren’t.”

They arrived at the second floor, north wing corridor, and history. Her first class. Teddy had chemistry. What he really needed were some physics lessons—pressure, velocity, force of impact.

“Are you saying that you want me to quit?” he said.

“No, it’s not that. I just … you could have been killed.”

“I could get killed crossing the street—”

“That’s another stupid argument.”

“We have to keep going. We’ve started this. It’s the right thing to do, isn’t it?”

That all depended on whom you talked to. Which sounded like something her mother would say.

“Yeah,” she said. “We have to keep going.” They didn’t have a choice. They’d already come this far.

* * *

Tom picked Bethy up from middle school first, then Anna, who didn’t have anything after school today. She could have lied about it and taken the bus home, like she usually did when soccer was on or she had a group project. But she didn’t want to push her luck. Dad might be able to tell she was lying. Or not. That was the trouble, he hardly ever let on what he knew or didn’t. He’d just let her keep digging whatever hole she started on until she hit bedrock. And he’d just stand there, his eyebrow raised, not saying anything.

The car waited because she was late, between picking up books from her cubby and talking to friends on the way out. Tom never gave her a hard time about lingering. Bethy was in the back of the car, math book open, doing her homework. Anna shoved the book over as she slid onto the seat. “Drive on, Jeeves,” she called to the front seat.

“Afternoon, ma’am,” Tom said, his smile amused. He was a silver-haired man who’d been working for her mother for eons. Anna couldn’t imagine that, working for the same person forever. Getting old doing the same job. She didn’t know what she wanted to do with her life, but it wasn’t that. She didn’t want to run West Corp, either. Her mother had taken over right where her father, the previous president of West Corp—and the famous Captain Olympus—left off. Like they were some kind of clones or something. Anna was afraid to ask if everyone expected her to do the same. She’d rather they give it all to Bethy.

Throwing her an annoyed pout, Bethy gathered up her book

s and papers as the car pulled away from the curb.

“You flunk your quiz?” Anna asked.

“No. A minus. Mom was right, how did she know?”

“You love math, it’s your favorite, you’ll never flunk a math quiz.”

“But I was worried.”

She could tell Bethy that everything would be perfect for the rest of her life and she’d still worry. “You’re weird, you know that?”

Bethy should have said, “No, you are,” after that, but she didn’t. Instead, she hugged her book bag to her chest and watched her sister, staring hard until Anna squirmed.

“What?” Anna said. The plea hung through a long pause.

“If you got powers, would you tell me?” Bethy asked.

She could answer with a straight face because she’d been dealing with the question her whole life. Her grandparents, her father—all superhuman, and sometimes superhumans passed on their powers.

The trick was not to respond any differently from all the other times. People were always watching her; she just had to act normal, always.

“Yes, I would.” Except she wouldn’t, because she hadn’t, because if Bethy knew, their father would be twice as likely to find out, so Bethy couldn’t know about any of it. Anna had to keep it all to herself.

“Really?”