Chapter Ten

'Just jump, Andrew.'

'Oh Marie,' Georgie chided, 'You can't expect him to jump from that high.'

Marie sighed in exasperation and went to upright the ladder for him, muttering all the way. Andrew stomped down the rungs till he came to face her with a glare.

'I could have died,' he stated.

'Oh that's dramatic, Andrew, I barely let go for a minute.'

He huffed, 'I was trying to get your attention for a full ten minutes!'

She waved him off, glancing about and noticing with disappointment that Georgie had started work on the interior.

Marie turned to look around the field for a moment and then changed the subject. 'Let's go checkout the other tents,' she suggested, 'I can't see them well enough from here. Did you see the dragon James made? He didn't let me look at it.'

'Yeah! It looks great!' Andrew enthused as they started walking clockwise towards it, 'He's been working really hard on it.'

'Does it look better than the cheetah?' Marie gasped, 'Georgie made the bestest for sure!'

'No, the dragon is much better and its huge-'

He paused as they got to the front of the green tent. The dragon's body covered the entirety of the roof, its feet covering the four pillars of the tent. Its scaly back went over the back of the tent, and its tail lay curved on the ground, long enough to start from behind the tent and curve all the way to the front where it ended in a pointy triangle. Its large head was hanging over the banner with translucent shiny orange paper cut into flame shapes coming out of its open mouth.

Andrew had helped James painstakingly make the rows of razor-sharp teeth by gluing sheets of paper in a conical shape and dipping them in a hardening solution for them to keep their shape. He would never in a million years admit this to Marie, however, for she would dramatically call him a traitor to his own house.

'Wow, it came out really well,' Andrew smiled as he greeted James who was adding the finishing touches to dragon's claws.

'Thanks!' James smiled back. 'And thanks for helping, I was really running out of time to finish.'

Oh, crap.

'You helped him??!' Marie rounded on him with a loud dramatic gasp. 'A TRAITOR! A traitor to your own house!' She flung an arm over her chest and pretended to faint in the shock of his betrayal.

Andrew laughed as he caught her around the waist and uprighted her. 'I'm sure the teeth don't make much of a difference,' he reassured her, 'I'm quite certain the dragon would still come in first either way, but why don't you go take a look at the other houses? We may still place second.'

'We're still going to place first overall though because I'm going to run really fast. James doesn't even try.' She shot him a mischievous look before she skipped away.

'What's a dragon without its teeth?' asked James as Andrew knelt on the grass beside him and held the large glue bottle that he was using to stick on the claws. 'You made all the difference,' he added with a sweet smile.

'Well don't tell your sister that, I'll never live it down,' Andrew retorted, flicking the lid of the glue bottle at him.

James laughed as he flicked it back. 'Sorry I brought it up,' he joked, 'I forgot what she was like as a person.'

They managed to finish up the tent just as Coach yelled through her megaphone that the races were about to start and that the two-hundred-meter girl's race was up first. Marie went to the starting line along with two to three girls from each house.

'Get into your starting positions,' Coach yelled, 'And Ready... Set... Go!'

Marie immediately took the lead and whizzed past them in a blur, winning by a long shot.

'Wow, she's really fast!' Andrew exclaimed, 'I honestly thought she was exaggerating but she's unbelievably- well, inhumanly fast.'

'She trained from a young age,' James explained, frowning a bit in worry. He had warned her before the tournament not to use her powers to their full extent but she'd tossed aside his advice and insisted that no one's ever questioned it before.

Andrew and James were up next and Andrew walked with some trepidation to the starting line. He wasn't too terrible at running, but they didn't have races back in the islands so he'd never practiced it. They had other sports like volleyball and swimming, since it was mainly a beach area.

The race started and his feet moved quite easily, he quickly got into the flow of it and tried his best to go faster. Upon reaching the finish line Andrew turned with shock to see that he had actually managed to come in first. Apparently he had been gifted with talent and not even known it back on the islands.

James finished in second soon after and he looked quite surprised too. Andrew glanced at Evan and the others who were still quite far behind and decided that it was far more likely that he was just average, and that Evan wasn't just being modest when he'd claimed to be a really slow runner that day in the cafeteria.

The boys jogged back to their respective houses. Marie was hopping on one foot with excitement when Andrew reached her.

'You won!' she exclaimed, 'I knew you could do it!'

'I didn't!'

'Our house is twice in the lead now! I must go goad it over James before the next race,' she beamed.

Marie ran up to where her brother was standing a bit away from the green tent and re-tying his shoelace.

'You lost to a puny human, O' the Humiliation!' she teased as she annoyingly undid his other shoelace, 'The shame you cast upon our great family!'

'I don't cheat and use my powers like you do,' he pointed out, 'It's unethical.'

'Oh blah, blah, what's the point of having powers if you're not allowed to use them? Ya' boring!' She pulled out the shoelace that he had just finished tying.

James sighed and gave up trying, allowing his laces to drag on the ground. 'He questioned your speed you know; you should be more careful.'

'Killjoy,' she grumbled under her breath as she sauntered away, but she secretly made a note to take her brother's advice.

The races kept going one after the other until the sun went down and the tournament ended. Marie, of course, came in first in all the categories she entered for various lengths of relays and hurdles. She took care not to use her full speed but she couldn't bear to lose, so she somewhat heeded her brother's advice and left only a short gap between her and the runner-up.

The dragon house won the tent decorating competition as expected, and James was sent up to accept it. The Cheetahs were then announced the overall champions of the meet and Marie was ecstatic. She got to accept the trophy because she had the highest number of races won, and she carried it high above her head for all to admire.

Marie pranced around the field, fully decked out in gold medals and showing off to anyone who paid her any attention.

'Wow, congratulations Marie!' Georgie exclaimed as Marie came up to her, 'You're a fantastic runner!'

'Oh well, you know, sports is my passion,' Marie boasted, clinking her many medals against each other.

'I can see that,' Georgie replied with a smile.

'You should've won the decorating trophy though, Georgie! Stupid James doesn't need it,' Marie huffed.

'Oh don't say that, the dragon was lovely! And winning isn't the most important thing, you know.'

'What? Why ever not?' Marie asked, aghast, 'What else is the point of having a competition? Or this entire sports day in fact?'

'Fun and team-building.' Georgie giggled at the look on the younger girl's face.

'That's a bit boring isn't it.'

Georgie laughed again. 'You'll realize its importance when you're a bit older,' she replied.

Marie huffed, feeling that her tone was a little unnecessarily condescending. Georgie was only TWO grades higher— and Marie was five-hundred-and-fourteen!

'Well, whatever!' Marie said, 'I'm the bestest at sports!'

~~

A/N: Marie loves to pull shoelaces, she just like me fr. There's just something so... enticing about it xD