Evergreen

5

Crash! Crash! Crash!

Watching the orbs beak against the outer rings was hypnotic. They would be spherical one second, and in millions of pieces the next. But I wasn't throwing orbs just to watch them shatter. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't get anywhere near the third inner ring, let alone the center.

I had tried everything: I positioned myself differently, shifted my weight, went through drills and called Reesha and Mark down to help me go through the moves, but I never hit the bullseye.

Mika and Reesha were arguing upstairs. They had been for the last few minutes. I felt awkward and uncomfortable listening to them. (Well, I mostly heard Mika. Reesha was pretty quiet)

I threw another one. It hit the wall half a meter away from the target.

"Ha! That one was horrendous!" Barb scoffed. She claimed she was practicing orb throwing as well, but I think she was just there to make fun of me.

"Shut up." I grumbled, throwing another one.

"It's like this, Thrush." She grabbed an orb four times too big for her mouth, twirled gracefully and released the orb. It hit between the second and third ring. She was getting better, not only at orb throwing but at most other chaser things. She was also getting quite cocky.

"Perfect!" She purred.

"That wasn't perfect. You didn't even hit the middle." I retorted.

She shrugged.

Mika came thumping down the stairs, breathing heavily. Steam blowed from her ears as she stomped to the chest, ripped it open and hastily grabbed a handful of orbs. As she huffed back upstairs, the lid of the chest came back down with a boom. The metal lock clattered shut.

"I don't like her." Barb said.

I tried my best not to belittle others behind their backs, but from what I knew about Mika, she wasn't very nice. I'd never talked to her, but everyone in the North Pole knew her. From what I heard she sounded stubborn, rebellious, cocky and impulsive. She had done a lot of clever and cool stuff, like dealing with the dragon attack and escaping from the Ice Wolf's prison. And she was the youngest trainee to be made a chaser since . . . Well, I can't remember if there was younger chaser than her, but if there was it had been a while.

According to Nick, Mika was a Bran Hjertet, like me. We seemed like polar opposites, it was strange to think we both had the same . . . condition.

"I don't know." I said, fixing my pile of orbs Mika had messed up. "Maybe she's just having a bad day . . . everyday."

"You say that about everyone." Barb snickered.

"I believe everyone wants to be good and happy, but they aren't always good and happy because it's impossible to be always happy." I said, throwing another orb. It hit the fourth ring.

"And some people are just cotton-headed ninny-muggins." Barb said. She was always negative.

I grabbed my last orb and threw it at the wall. "I think I'm done for today. It's almost lunch anyways. Do you want to come with me to the restaurant?" I asked.

"I'll come. But if they're out of mac and cheese, I'll need another word with their manager." Barb hated everything on their menu. She had them make some Craft macaroni and cheese every time she ate there.

We cleaned up the glass shards and headed to the restaurant. Everyone was very busy, except for Barb, Qiwi, myself and the other trainees. We weren't allowed to go chasing yet and we had nothing to prepare for Christmas, so we did what we would do all year; train and train and train. Since Kota was missing, Reesha had taken up our training, but she was terribly busy and didn't have the time to tutor us. We were left to ourselves to go through drills.