Hunters of Chaos (5 page)

“Oh, hey, Jason,” Nicole said as she threw her arm around my shoulders. “I see you've met Ana. You're not breaking hearts with those baby blues already, are you?” I'd never seen a girl do this in real life, but Nicole batted her eyelashes.

It was clearly a practiced move, meant to turn any boy into butter. But instead Jason's face turned to stone. He glanced back at me. “This is your roommate?” he said, hiking a thumb toward Nicole.

I nodded again, and his eyes filled with anger and pity. Whatever warm fuzzies we'd had between us evaporated like steam. But I was pretty sure the anger wasn't directed at me. He shot an icy glance at Nicole, then said, “Good luck, Ana,” and quickly jogged across the athletic field.

“Wow, what was that all about?” I asked Nicole. “Did you two have a fight or something?”

Nicole flipped her hair behind her shoulder and gave me a grin. “Who, me and Jason? Don't be silly. We're like this.” She wrapped her index and middle fingers around each other. “It must have been because of you. He's just shy around new people.”

I gave Nicole a skeptical sideways glance. Granted, I'd only just met Jason, but he hadn't seemed shy at all. Pointing that out would have only hurt her feelings, though. “Well, if shyness makes a person seem angry,” I said instead, “that girl over there must be the shyest person on campus. She's been glaring at me ever since I started talking to Jason.” I gestured subtly to the queen bee of the bleacher girls, who had gone back to monitoring Jason's every move.

Nicole looked toward the bleachers and nodded knowingly. “Yeah. That's Lin Yang. You'll want to watch your step around her. She's spoiled rotten and is a major brat.”

I glanced back at Lin and the group of girls surrounding her. “Then why does she seem to have so many friends?”

“Those leeches? They're not really her friends,” Nicole answered matter-of-factly. “They just suck up to her because her parents are sort of famous and they have more money than God. Lin's used to getting her way, though, so if she's got her eye on Jason, I'd back off if I were you. You don't want to be on her bad side.”

Anyone—especially someone I didn't even know—deciding who I could or could not be friends with rubbed me the wrong way. But I didn't want to make any waves before I'd even settled in. For now it seemed safer to just change the subject.

“Should we finish the tour?” I asked.

“You know, I think we
have
finished,” Nicole replied. “I've already shown you the most awesome stuff. I only skipped the boring things—the library, the museum, the classrooms—and you're going to see all that when classes start anyway. Besides, you must be starving. What do you say we head back to our room, order some food, and have a
Vampire Diaries
marathon? Damon is so hot, am I right?”

Even though I'd never actually seen the show, I nodded. After the long plane ride, the earthquake, and the gossip-filled tour around my strange new home, going back to the room to just relax and eat with my roommate sounded like heaven. “Let's do it,” I cried, genuinely excited.

Only, instead of the one-on-one roommate bonding I'd been expecting, Nicole made it a party by inviting the rest of the girls who lived on our floor of the dorm. Since the
Vampire Diaries
marathon went on so long, everyone changed into their pj's and the whole thing turned into a big slumber party. It was actually fun, and my dorm mates all seemed nice enough. But I found myself feeling nervous all over again. I was wearing mismatched Hello Kitty pants and a tank top, and they were wearing La Perla silk pajamas.

For the rest of the night I did my best to mimic their casually chic vibe. I wasn't sure I would ever fit in with this group, but as we dug into our slices of pizza and watched the show, I realized that I wanted to fit in.

And if I played my cards right as Nicole's protégée, I just might.

T
HE NEXT MORNING, WHILE
N
ICOLE
grumbled about having to wear our school uniforms, I put mine on with a sigh of relief. At last I looked just like everyone else. But as we filed into the spacious auditorium for assembly, I gazed out at the sea of knee-high socks, blue and gray pleated skirts, and crisp white shirts and felt sad. It would be so easy to lose myself in this crowd. Only the jaguar, which I wore around my neck, as I'd promised Aunt Teppy I would, reminded me that I was still me—Ana Cetzal. Subconsciously, I reached up and rubbed it between my fingers.

“Welcome, students!” Principal Ferris called out from the podium once we'd all settled into our seats. Her smile was as bright and cheerful as the day she'd shown me to my room, and she wore a formfitting beige pantsuit with delicate pearl-drop earrings.
So she's Jason's mom,
I thought, searching for similarities. I glanced around, hoping to catch a glimpse of him, but the room was too packed.

“It's wonderful to see so many familiar faces, and a few new ones too.” Principal Ferris scanned the crowd and smiled right at me for a moment. “I trust you all have made the most of your summer vacation. Show of hands—how many of you read the books on our recommended summer reading list?”

When one girl up front enthusiastically raised her hand, Nicole tittered beside me and whispered, “Brownnoser.”

I pretended I hadn't heard her.

“Now, normally I would use this first morning assembly to discuss our goals for the year,” Principal Ferris continued. “But I have exciting news that I simply can't wait to share.”

“Probably just another big alumni donation. Happens all the time,” Nicole mumbled, adding an exaggerated yawn. But what Principal Ferris said next made me sit up and take notice.

“As you know, we experienced a minor earthquake yesterday afternoon.”

So I wasn't crazy! The ground
did
shake yesterday.

“Well, as one of our teachers discovered last night while walking the grounds,” Principal Ferris continued, “the earthquake collapsed a cliff side on the north end of the campus near one of the hiking trails and revealed something rather astonishing: an ancient temple carved into the rock!”

The room erupted into gasps and whispered conversations. Even the teachers, who'd been standing on the sidelines like stone sentries, seemed to come to life at the announcement.

“Though we obviously haven't had time to verify this definitively, we do suspect that the temple is Anasazi in origin. As I'm sure Ms. Benitez could tell you”—she gestured to a pleasant-looking woman with shoulder-length brown hair and wire-rimmed glasses hanging from a long chain around her neck—“it has long been known that the Anasazi people were active in this area as far back as fifteen hundred BC, but this is the first indication that they may have lived right here on what is now Temple Academy! Needless to say, this is quite a coup. Temple has always valued the history of the many cultures that have enriched our lives, but now we can say that our fine campus is also an actual archaeological site.”

She started clapping, smiling from ear to ear, and we clapped along with her. I wished Uncle Mec and Aunt Teppy were there with me. They would have been more interested in the uncovered temple than anyone. I wondered what they were doing right then. I zoned out for a minute, trying to picture them sitting at our blue kitchen table, poring over the newspaper together, drinking fair-trade coffee. By the time I refocused, Principal Ferris was waving a tall, dark-haired man with gray patches of hair over his ears onto the stage. I'd never seen him before—not even in the welcome packet, which featured pictures of every member of the faculty.

“I am delighted to introduce a very special guest speaker, Dr. Richard Logan, who will be the lead archaeologist working on the site. Please give Dr. Logan a warm Temple Academy welcome.” Once again, she led us in a round of applause as Dr. Logan replaced her behind the podium and adjusted the microphone so that it angled up toward his chiseled face.

“Thank you, Principal Ferris,” he said. “And thank you all for the welcome.” He straightened his tie and shook his head, as if he still couldn't believe what had happened. “I must tell you,” he began, “the news of this temple's discovery was so exciting that I hopped on a plane last night so that I could arrive here first thing this morning. As Principal Ferris mentioned, the Anasazi—or Pueblo peoples, as they are sometimes called—did once populate the Southwest in significant numbers. But to find an actual temple, well . . .” He shook his head again and smiled, revealing a row of perfect white teeth. “It's a rare and extremely important find.”

He nodded to someone standing on the left of the stage—his assistant, I guessed—who used a remote to roll down a large screen from the ceiling, then pressed a few keys on a laptop. Suddenly a picture appeared on the screen behind Dr. Logan's head: an entire city carved out of sand-colored rock beneath a jet-black ledge.

“What you see here is the Cliff Palace, located in the Mesa Verde National Park in Colorado, discovered in 1888. Notice how the structures were built into the cliff, which we believe was done to protect them from the elements and from outsiders.”

He went on to talk about how the Anasazi were known as the “Basket Makers.” He said they were farmers and pioneers in building irrigation systems. He showed slide after slide of all the treasures they had left behind—the pictures they'd drawn on cave walls, the bowls decorated with intricate designs, the baskets woven tight enough to hold water. Then a final slide came up, this one of what the earthquake had uncovered on the far side of the campus. I could only see pieces of it since so much was still buried in rock and soil, but the parts I could see were incredible. It looked almost like the pictures that Uncle Mec had shown me of the Mayan ruins of Chichen Itza in Mexico. There were heavy stone stairs leading up and out of sight and skulls etched into the base, like a warning.

Dr. Logan nodded once more to his assistant, who typed something on his laptop and pointed the remote control. The screen darkened and ascended back into the ceiling. “The Pueblo people may have begun as humble farmers,” Dr. Logan said, “but I think you'll find this temple indicates that they aspired to greater levels of spiritual enlightenment and power. I can only hope this excavation proves enlightening for us all.”

We applauded as Principal Ferris rejoined Dr. Logan on stage and shook his hand. She then stepped up to the podium and waited until we quieted down. “Thank you, Dr. Logan, for that fascinating insight. I'm sure all our students will be interested in seeing how the excavation unfolds. And now for one last piece of school business before I bring this assembly to a close.” Her lips tightened the slightest bit and her normally eighty-watt smile dimmed to a low sixty. “I'm afraid there have been reports from several students of small items that have gone missing from their bags. I truly hope this is simply a misunderstanding and these things have been misplaced. But if that is not the case, let me make our school policy perfectly clear: Any student caught stealing will be immediately and permanently
expelled.
No exceptions. Is that understood?” When no one made a sound, she gave a curt nod and said, “Good.”

I wondered who would need to steal anything when all the students seemed incredibly wealthy. Were there other
normal
students like me? And if so, was one of them jeopardizing her position here by stealing? I hoped not.

At last we were dismissed and I made it to my very first class: history with Ms. Benitez. Thankfully, Nicole and Jessica were in the same class, so they led me through the hallways, saving me from wandering around aimlessly, or even worse, using the welcome-packet map. As I sat down in an old-fashioned wooden desk near the center of the room, all I could hear anyone talk about was the Anasazi site.

“Seriously, how major is that temple?” said Lorna, one of the girls Nicole had introduced me to the day before. “Do you think this could be on the news?”

“Probably,” Nicole answered, sounding unimpressed. “You heard Dr. Logan. The site is a ‘rare and extremely important find.' ”

“Well, I think Dr. Logan is the rare and important find,” said Jessica, pulling her red hair up into a ponytail. “How cute is he?”

“So cute I'm thinking about becoming an archaeologist,” said Sindu. “If that's what archaeologists look like, sign me up!” They all dissolved into giggles.

Are they really all gaga over Dr. Logan?
I thought. Maybe it had been a mistake to make Temple an all-girls school. They were clearly so unused to seeing boys around that any guy looked like Ryan Gosling to them—even a geeky-looking grown-up like Dr. Logan.

Ms. Benitez, who had walked into the room and now stood at the front of the class, listening to all this talk with an amused look on her face, said, “Well, ladies, I'm glad you're all so interested in this—for whatever reason.” She raised an eyebrow at Jessica, who bit her lip bashfully. “So, why don't we go take a closer look?”

A few minutes later we were all walking in the soft reddish dirt that surrounded the unearthed temple. Dr. Logan and his team had cordoned it off with ropes and yellow cautionary tape, and there were two women dusting off the steps with small brushes. With every swipe, the line of skulls came into clearer focus. I wondered if maybe they should have been trying to cover them up instead. I knew that ancient Mayans believed that skulls represented fallen enemies and would grant them eternal life. But what did they mean for the Anasazi?

I asked Ms. Benitez, and she looked thrilled that I was actually interested. “Excellent question,” she said. “There could be many meanings behind the skull images. Some say they were a means of honoring their ancestors and calling on their spirits. Some say they were simply meant to scare off outsiders. What do you think the skulls mean?”