Gift Academy (Book One in the Gifted Series)

Chapter Nineteen

Gina

This girl haunts my dreams, and now my real life. How pleasant.

I'm battling the one and only Emily Walker, who- let me tell you- is very aggressive. I mean, I knew she was pretty mad at us during the dreams I had of her, but my god. It seems like she's a volcano that's just erupted and is now spilling out all its lava onto me.

She blasts me with powerful winds, which would knock me off my feet and send me flying to New York if I didn't have wind as well. She puts almost of her strength onto one blast she throws at me, which I also do, so we're basically having a wind duel.

The people all around us are almost knocked down from the strong winds that surround Emily and I, but neither of us stop. She glares at me with such hatred I wonder what I ever did to her. Absolutely nothing, that is.

I glare back at her, thinking of the bombing at the Center, which almost killed my two closest friends, Veronica and Fay. I think back to the dream I had of Emily, the way she just bluntly decides to kill us off one by one just to have a school for the Extras.

I push with all my might and I feel Emilys wind being pushed back as I become stronger than her, but she decides to play dirty instead of lose. She uses some of her wind powers to trip me before I take her down. I trip and fall on my bac, my winds dying down completely. Emily doesn't take one step closer to me. All she does is summon two fireballs at once and hurls them at me. I'm not fast enough to dodge them. I know that this is the end of me, and I can't stop it.

But someone else does.

I see two freckles hands reach out in front of me before the fireballs hit me and they take the balls of flame into their hands instead. Whoever this is, their gift is obviously fire as well.

I see Emily stunned about what happened, looking at whoever just saved my life. I take my chance and thrust my hand out to her, making her fly down the entire hallways. Whoops. Sorry, not sorry.

I feel a warm hand grab mine and haul me to my feet. I look into the eyes of my savior and see the guy I've known for years.

Austin.

"Thanks, Austin," I thank him. He smiles warmly at me.

"Anytime. Come one, let's go," he replies, rushing down the hallway to find any other Extras to destroy. I don't exactly know why, but I feel butterflies in my stomach at Austin leads me away from the place Emily and I had our fight. Don't tell me I'm starting to have a crush on my best friend. That would literally be the worst thing possible. I'm already in the friend-zone, no need to cause an unnecessary pity towards me.

But I can't seem to stop myself as I continuously keep sneaking glances at Austin. I've just realized how cute he looks with those hundreds of freckles on his face.

"Austin, wait," I call to him, placing my hand on his shoulder to stop him. He stops running and turns to face me, one of his eyebrows raised.

"Yeah?" He asks me kindly. I'm going to regret doing this later, but for now, we're in the middle of a battle here and I almost died. Better make the most out of this while I freaking can.

Without thinking, I stand on my tip-toes and give Austin a long kiss on the cheek. I can feel his cheeks grow warm and I can tell that he's blushing. When I let go of him, he's just staring at me, dumbfounded. He stutters, looking for words, for a few seconds before slightly smiling at me.

"Okay." Is all he manages to get out, but that's enough for me. I place my hands on his already-red cheeks and pull him closer to me. He's surprised at first, but he quickly gains enough confidence to kiss me back when our lips connect. And my god it feels great. When we pull away from each other, it feels like there is no battle, no war, and no Extras. Just me and Austin, making the most out of life while we can.

"Woah there," I hear someone call to us. I look to my right and see. Claire, Hailey, Jake, Wesley, Fay, and Flora staring at me and Austin. I can tell that it was Wesley who called out to us. I smile at him a blush madly. I came here to look for Jake and Wesley and the first time I see them after they've been kidnapped is after I made out with Austin. Smooth, Gina. Real smooth.

God, I have to get my priorities straight.

Fay

Okay then.

The last thing I expected to see today with Gina making out with my crush in the middle of a deadly battle after I had just murdered someone.

Okay, I'll admit, I have a huge crush of Austin. I have since we kissed during spin the bottle. But he obviously doesn't feel the same way since I just caught him kissing my best friend.

"We should get going, find Veronica and Nick, and end this stupid battle," Flora orders us all. We all nod our heads. I don't want to be there when someone disobeys Flora. She has taken up a pretty good leadership role. I'm not surprised, I always knew she had it in her. All I feel for her now is proud. I'm proud of my twin sister, and I'm not ashamed to admit that.

We all follow Flora to the other two floors lined with dorms, just like Gift Academy, which just saddens me all over again. We find Veronica and Nick pretty quickly, considering this place is packed with battling students. I don't see that Mariah Smith girl anywhere, thankfully. Hopefully she took my advice and fled to a better, safer place.

And that's when the worst happens.