Avalon High by Meg Cabot

sweat.
    But it felt good to work my muscles after a long day of being cramped behind various desks. I sailed past the dog walkers, careful not to make eye contact (my dad would have been appalled), intent on the beat of the music I was listening to. I went around the running path once—dodging a T-ball and nearly running into a kid ona tricycle. It wasn’t until my second and final time around that I remembered to glance down into the ravine—out of habit, really, more than that I expected to see anybody in there—and practically tripped over my own feet and fell onto my face.
    Because Will was there.
    At least, I thought it was Will. My glimpse of him, as I tore by, was fleeting.
    Still, after I was done with my second lap, I doubled back, just to make sure. Not because I wanted to go down there and talk to him, or anything. I mean, the guy is clearly taken. I don’t go after other people’s boyfriends. Not that, you know, if I tried, he’d go for it, or anything. The truth is, I don’t go after boys at all. What’s the point? I’m not the type of girl they ever think of in that way, anyway.
    But what if he was in trouble, or something? What if the reason he was at the bottom of the ravine was because he’d tripped and fallen down it? Hey, it could happen. And maybe he was lying down there, bleeding and unconscious, needing the kiss of life? Administered by me?
    Okay, whatever. So I wanted to talk to him some more. So sue me.
    I found myself on the part of the running path that overlooks the ravine, and there, down below, was someone who looked a lot like Will. How he’d gotten down there without getting torn up by thorns or tumbling down the steep sides of the ravine, I didn’t know.
    But I figured I’d give it a try myself. To make sure he was all right, I told myself.
    Yeah. That was it. To make sure he was all right.
    Whatever.

CHAPTER SIX
    All in the blue unclouded weather
Thick-jewell’d shone the saddle-leather,
The helmet and the helmet-feather
Burn’d like one burning flame together,
As he rode down to Camelot.
    It actually wasn’t that bad, once I got past the initial wall of brambles. It was even cooler in the deep part of the woods than it was on the running path.
    And once you were in among the trees and headed down the ravine, you couldn’t see the running path at all, much less hear the cars from the highway. It was like a primeval forest, where the trees all grew really close together and practically no sunlight at all reached the forest floor, making it a damp, mulchy mess beneath your feet.
    It was the kind of place you’d expect to meet a monster like Grendel.
    Or possibly the Unabomber.
    It was Will, I saw, when the trees thinned out enough to allow me to see to the bottom of the ravine. He wasn’t unconscious, though. He was sitting on one of the big boulders that jutted up from the creek bed below. He didn’t appear to be doing anything. He was just sitting, staring down at the burbling water in the creek.
    Probably someone who’d chosen such an out-of-the-way and hard-to-get-to—I had scratches from the brambles all over my ankles—place to sit and think really wanted to be alone.
    Probably I should have just left him there without disturbing him.
    Probably I should have turned around and gone back the way I came.
    But I didn’t. Because I am a total masochist.
    I had to pick my way along the stones that stuck out of the burbling little creek to get to the boulder he was sitting on. The water wasn’t deep, but I didn’t want to get my running shoes wet. I called his name when I was only a few feet away from him and he still didn’t seem to notice me.
    Then I noticed why. He had headphones on. It wasn’t until I jostled one of his feet, dangling above my head, that he started and glanced sharply down at me.
    But when he saw it was me, he smiled and turned off his iPod.
    “Oh,” he said. “Hey, Elle. How was your run?”
    Elle. He’d called me Elle. Again.
    Was it wrong