Somebody write this down- water football is not a real, actual sport. I said as much to that nutjob with the green shirt and the weird metal strip things around his neck, but he only laughed.

"Aw, come on! It's not so hard! It's just a little catching and swimming, right?"

I was about to explain that it was impossible for one to run when he was chest-deep in water (which any real athlete would know) when I spotted the fin arching through the water towards us.

"Shark!"

I was out of the lake and halfway across the beach before that bumbrain even turned around. And just so we're clear, there was no girly screaming involved.

The dock was farther away than I remembered, and three-fourths of the way to it I stopped and hunched over a bit, winded, hands resting on my knees. I was a sprinter, yes, but running uphill through sand in July makes fools of us all.

"Hey," snapped a blond guy, elbowing me in the ribs. "Get out of the way, fuzzhead!"

"Fuzzhead?" I spluttered. "Now wait, you-"

Too late. He had broken into a run, shouting something at the guy in the green shirt who was now standing on the edge of the sand, peering out at the shark fin slicing through the water.

I decided that there would be time to argue over the 'fuzzhead' comment later. I wasn't too keen on getting close to that overgrown fang-faced salmon. My plans for the day did not involve becoming fish food, nuh-uh. You can't land me on a plate and rub my stomach down with butter.

My breath back in me now, I ran the final short stretch to the dock. Two guys and a red-haired girl were standing there, and the other eight soon-to-be contestants sat in a vague semi-circle around them.

Soon-to-be contestants. Ha! As if. They'd all be out of this game before you could say sha-lightning.

Which I did, just because I could. A girl dressed in pink glanced up at me in amusement and then struck up a conversation with the dude next to her- something about how her great, great, someone had invented thunder? Please.

"So when's the boat gonna get here?" I asked the red-headed girl at the end of the dock, and flexed a muscle when she looked my way. "Lightnin's ready to get a move on. Can't start winnin' 'til we start the game. Sha-yeah!"

"I don't know," she replied, sounding like she really didn't know. "Sorry."

"Girl, what do you mean you don't know? You're a girl, aren't you? Aren't ya s'posed to just know stuff like that? All that knowledge in your blood or whatever?"

At that, she clasped her hands in front of her waist and looked up at me with the most innocent smile I had ever seen. I have to admit that it caught me just a bit off guard. "Well, what I do know is that Chris did say that we would have to wait awhile for it to get here."

"Lightnin's been waitin' here for two hours! Sha-boring!" I crossed my arms and scowled down at her. "Lightnin's gettin' pretty tired a' waitin'."

Someone behind me drew in a gasp. Then, "Darn kids these days! So rude and impatient-like! Why, back in my day, us kids used to spend weeks sittin' around and waitin' for the ole horse'n wagon cart to pull up with the mail. That's what we did for fun!"

I whipped around and jumped a bit in surprise when I saw Svetlana hunch over, one eye squinted up and one fist raised. "What the-? Hey, you callin' the Lightnin' impatient?"

She blinked (winked?) up at me, her lower lip curling upwards into a sneer. "Yeah? Ya wanna make somethin' of it, punk?"

Why does she play with me this way? One instant she's flirting all over your lap, the next she comes walking up and introduces herself like it's the first time you've ever met and she hadn't just flashed her shirtless body to the whole rest of the bus?

"Ha! The Lightnin' makes somethin' of everything! He just don't wanna punch a girl square in the jaw!"

Especially in front of witnesses, I added to myself in silence. The exchange had gathered quite a bit of attention from the others on the dock- all except for a girl with skin so dark it was nearly orange, a dude with his eyes glued to some contraption in his hands, and a second girl who sat cross-legged on a post, scribbling into a notebook with a frown across her face.

"Hey, get back here!" Svetlana hollered after me as I marched back down the dock, still using her scratchy old man voice. "I wasn't finished with ya yet, ya punk! Learn to respect your elders!"

My shoulders automatically tensed at the jibe, but I forced myself to keep walking and not give him the satisfaction of looking back. "Ha. Lightnin' is the best at respectin' his elders."

"Elders?" I had been speaking to myself, but that word had apparently piqued the interest of the girl dressed in pink. "I know all about my elders. Yeah, my great, great, great-"

I kept walking. Past her, past the dude playing something in his hands and chuckling to himself every few seconds, past a girl who sat taking pictures of herself with her phone, past the girl who was spraying something into her hair in order to stiffen it up, past a ginger-haired boy who accidentally-on-purpose shoved an undersized girl in a red hoody off the dock and into the water. I punched him in the shoulder and scooped up the coughing, spluttering girl in one fluid movement and set her upright on the dock again.

"Don't worry, the Lightnin' was here ta save ya!"

"My first time in the water," she moaned as she adjusted her thick glasses, "and I don't like it."

Sheesh. What a bunch of losers. Sha-losers, even.

The girl who sat cross-legged on a post looked up as I approached and gave me a thin smile. "Greetings, child of the Earth Mother. My name is Dawn. That was very nice of you to help poor Cameron like that."

"Nice?" My eyebrows shot a bit higher on my forehead. "Huh. Lightnin' can't remember the last time someone called him nice."

She smiled and tucked a strand of pale blond hair behind her ear. "Your sister, I believe it was, when you carried her back home after she fell down into the stone quarry."

A chill ran down my spine. I took a step back out of impulse.

"Uh… yeah. Hey, yeah, how'd you know that?"

In answer, Dawn gave me a mysterious smile. It vanished, however, when she looked back at the notebook in her lap. She shook her head and made a mark on her paper. "Oh, curse these fractions and all that they stand for. The earth should be shared among every living creature, not divided up into neat little plots for the selfish to lay claim to."

"Fractions?" I tilted my head a bit, trying to read Dawn's paper from upside down.

"Unfortunately." She gave a soft sigh. "Homework can be such an abomination, but it must be done if one wishes to pave the way for success in the future, does it not?"

"Homework? In the middle a' summer? Sha-terrible! Stand aside, little girl. The Lightnin' is the best at math." I snatched away her pencil, causing a surprised look to appear on her face, and then came around to her side in order to see what was written in her notebook more easily.

"One-half plus one-half equals two," I read, and looked up at Dawn again. "Y'know, Lightnin' sees what your problem is, creepy girl." I upturned the pencil with a quick flick of my fingers and set about erasing what she had written down. Dawn cringed with each scrub of the eraser.

"See, what you wanna do is look at these two bottom numbers here. They're the same, right? So what you do is take half of that number, and sha-bam! That's your answer. One-half plus one-half equals one."

I showed Dawn her notebook again. A crease appeared on her forehead as she frowned.

"… Oh. Well, that doesn't seem very fair to the two."

"Fair? Girl, this is math we're talkin' about here! Who said anything about fair? Your whole life ain't fair, 'cuz you weren't born Lightnin'. Okay, next problem. It's three-and-three-quarters added to seven-and-two-quarters. What's that?"

"Even eleven."

"Sha-tastic! No, wait… How in the world'd you get an even eleven?"

Dawn's frown deepened as she touched the equation gently with one finger. "Three and three is six. Four and four is eight. If we have six, seven, and eight, then the next number in the pattern is nine. Then you add two more and you get eleven."

"… Huh. Lightnin' does not understand your logic, so… next problem. This is an easy one. You've got one minus one-half. How many are you left with?"

"One."

A groaned behind my tongue. "Girlie, this is basic Kindergarten jazz! Don't tell me ya've never gone to school before."

"Oh, no. I ran away from home as a child. That's why I'm so far behind in these things and have to catch up if I ever hope to study biology and saving the environment in college."

She said it so casually - that part about running away from home as a child - that for a moment I stood there in stunned silence.

"All right," I said slowly, and flipped to an empty page in her notebook. I tore it out, causing Dawn to flinch, and held it up. "See here, we've got one page. One whole page, right?"

"Right."

I creased the paper, unfolded it again, and tore it neatly along the line. Then I put one of the halves behind my back. "So now how many pages are you left with?"

Dawn tilted her head, her eyes narrowed to thoughtful slits. Then she shrugged. "Nope. Still one."

I looked back at the paper in my hand. Then I looked at the paper in my other hand.

"All right, all right," I growled, and held them up for her to see. "So Lightnin's got two halves here."

"Right."

"Now he's gonna put the two papers together." I slid the papers close together to be sure that Dawn understood. "Now how many papers does Lightnin' got?"

Dawn raised her eyebrows at me. "Two. Which I believe is what I wrote down in my notebook the first time you asked me that question."

"What?" I grabbed the notebook back for her and flipped back to the page with the fractions on it. I had erased her answer, but sure enough, the 2 still showed as a faint smudge against the page.

"Huh. Okay, so you did, in your freaky witchcraft princess way. But that's…" I shook my head. "This ain't workin'. Lightnin's gonna try a different approach. Tell me somethin' that you like. Maybe that'll keep your attention."

Dawn steepled her fingers and tapped them against her lower lip. "Well," she said at last, "I am very fond of animals and all the creatures of Mother Earth."

"Animals, great. So, say that Lightnin' had a… a weasel or somethin'." I held up my hands less than half a meter apart. Dawn nodded to show that she understood.

"Lightnin's got one weasel, right?"

"In your imagination, yes."

"Now, say that Lightnin' cut that weasel in half." I made a slicing motion with my arm, even adding a ssnkk! sound for effect. "So now how many weasels does Lightnin' have?"

"One."

I slammed my palm against my forehead and let it stay there for a moment, running my fingers over my stubbly hair. "No, girl! How can Lightnin' have one whole weasel if he chopped it in half?"

"A weasel would never let itself be sliced in two in the first place," Dawn replied, like it was obvious.

"All right, all right, forget the fractions. Now tell me how many people you can see all around here."

Dawn studied the crowd around the dock, nodding her head as she counted each person silently, including me and herself, as well as the two guys down by the water, where the shark had disappeared. Then she glanced my way again. "Seventeen."

"Seventeen?" I counted them all myself just to be sure. Sure enough, I came up with only thirteen, and told her so. "Explain that, sha-math-fail!"

Nothing on Dawn's face even hinted that she had been offended. She bobbed her head as she counted people again, and repeated her answer of seventeen. Then she shrugged. "I can sense at least five different aura shapes inside of Mike, although it seems that there may be two or three or even four more rattling about somewhere deep down in there."

How exactly were you supposed to argue with that?

"You're a lost cause, girl," I insisted, and turned to another fresh page in her book. "All right, Lightnin'll try one more time. Lesse here. You said you sha-sucked at fractions, right?"

Dawn nodded.

"So what about with whole numbers then? You understand those?"

Dawn nodded again.

"Addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division?"

"That's right."

"All right, then prove it." I scribbled down 18 x 6. "There. Tell the Lightnin' what that all ends up as."

She spent a few moments puzzling that one out on her fingers. "Fifty-four," she pronounced at last.

"What? No!" I shoved the notebook back at her and crossed my arms. "Show Lightnin' how you got that."

"Show you by adding it?"

"Ha. By whatever sha-works for you best."

Dawn took her pencil and jotted the numbers down carefully. Six eighteens lined up in a neat column. She looked back up at me again, and I made a go on motion with my hand.

"Right." She touched the first of the eights with the tip of her pencil, moving it down the column each time she counted. "Eight, sixteen, twenty-four, thirty-two, forty, forty-eight."

I nodded. "Sounds good to the Lightnin'."

Dawn wrote 48 beneath her equals sign, then moved to the first column and counted downwards again. "One, two, three, four, five, six." She penciled in 6 beneath her 48 and underlined this second equation. "I believe forty-eight plus six equals fifty-four."

"What the…?" Again I ran my hand over my scalp, cursing inwardly. Here I was, being outsmarted by a girl who didn't understand math, for crying out loud.

"All right, y'know what?" I said, flopping back against the nearest post, "Lightnin's gonna have to give this one up."

In reply, Dawn gave me a gentle smile. She reached out and touched my cheek with one soft hand. "Thank you for trying, Rudolph. It means a lot to me."

I tensed beneath her fingers. Out of impulse I grabbed for her wrist. "Shh," I hissed, shooting my eyes around in case someone had heard her.

By good luck, no one seemed to be paying either one of us any attention. The girl in pink was telling the ginger-haired boy something about how her cousin Dora had invented freckles. Svetlana had quit the hunching-over business, and she scrambled to explain something about a comedy routine to the redheaded girl. The girl with the hair spray stood nearby, clucking her tongue and tugging on the hoody of Cameron, the undersized kid that I had rescued from drowning.

"The name's Lightnin', girl. Light. Nin'. It definitely ain't Rudolph." Another thought occurred to me then, and I released her wrist with a sudden start. "Wait a mo, how'd you even find that out? You ain't a hacker for the government or somethin', are ya?"

She laughed and shook her head. "Not in the slightest."

It was a stupid question in retrospect. I mean, the girl couldn't even figure out that two halves added up to one.

"Oh." I eyed her a moment, still uncertain. "Well, just don't go spreadin' it all around, y'know? Rudolph was a chubby li'l wimp who lived back in Alberta. Lightnin's the name of a world-famous football champ."

Dawn only smiled that mysterious smile at me again. She took my fingers in her own and used the others to pat the back of my hand. "Your aura is exceptionally yellow, with an underlining pattern of orange and just a hint of blue at its core. You must work to control your feelings, or that may turn out to be a disastrous combination."

I yanked my hand away. "Lightnin's what has gone and went what now?"

For the first time, the faintest hint of irritation crossed Dawn's face. She folded her hands neatly together in her lap and tossed her pale blond hair back over her shoulders. "You don't have to pretend to be dumber than you really are just because your father's misguidance taught you to value your brawn rather than your brains."

A hot flush rose in my cheeks. My fingers tightened into the wood post behind my back. A meter or two away from me, the dude playing the handheld game yelled, "All right, score! New record! Huh huh huh!" The redhaired girl at the end of the dock called out, "Hey, I can see the boat, I can see the boat!"

"Brains don't win sports games," I told Dawn through clenched teeth. "They don't get you anywhere in this world 'cept to college, and why study up for college if you can get there on a football scholarship?"

"You don't really have an athletic primary gift. Do you, Rudolph?"

My vision blurred.

"I so totally have an athletic gift! My pops has got an athletic gift! My uncles have got athletic gifts! My grandpop's got an athletic gift! My mama's got an athletic gift! Even my great-grandmama had an athletic gift!"

She raised one hand. "The orange parts of your aura are beginning to grow stronger now. You mustn't allow your anger to control your emotions."

"Last time Lightnin' checked, anger was a recognized emotion, spooky girl. Now, good-bye. Have fun sha-figurin' out your math homework on your own." With that, I spun on my heels, prepared to rush to the end of the dock and shove everyone else out of my way.

"Rudolph," Dawn said, her voice so cold now that it made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. "Your name is Rudolph. It always has been Rudolph, not Lightning. You don't even call yourself Lightning inside your own head."

"Sha-scuse me?" I whipped around and gave a furious snarl of, "Girl, Lightnin's life ain't none of your business!"

She stared impassively back at me. "There is no shame in revealing your true wisdom. Trying to hide it, pretending to be less than you really are. That helps no one. The road of dishonesty only leads to a city of heartache."

"Just sha-butt out of it already!"

"There is still a blue pulse that thrives at your core. Do not let it be overcome by the thicker orange parts to your aura. Chances are they you aren't actually the disgrace to your father that you think you are, Rudolph-"

"Girl, stop calling me that!"

"-just because the closest he has ever come to acknowledging your existence is when you win at sports games. And then if you are lucky he will pat you on the back and tell you that you did an 'All right job'." Dawn smiled and tucked her hands into the pockets of her moss-green hoody. "Even now, Rudolph, even from what little I have seen of your aura, I can tell that he truly does care for you."

"What do you know about love and family? You're the one who up and ran away from home!"

Dawn's gaze flicked past my shoulder. Distantly, I realized that the noisy chatter on the rest of the dock had turned into a distracted muttering. Dawn did not seem to be particularly surprised or impressed by this, however. She turned to me again.

"Let your brains guide you in this game, Lightning- not your strength, and you will end up with a circle of friends who love you for who you really are, and not who you project yourself to be. Above all, let your heart lead your way, and by the time a month has passed you will be one happy young man."

"Friends?" I scoffed, hands tightening against the post they rested on. My fingernails sliced off a splinter of wood. "Lightnin' doesn't need no friends! Lightnin' has only teammates that he can carry to victory! Sha-pow!"

A shudder ran across the dock then, nearly throwing me to my knees. I heard bodies fall behind me. Yelps of pain and grunts of irritation. I heard the words "boat" and "bump" and "crash" more than once. Oddly enough, however, Dawn remained in her cross-legged position atop her post, exactly where she had been sitting this whole time.

"Your path will only become darker and more thistle-grown if you continue this way," she warned, tucking her pencil into the pocket of her hoody. "Do not let ambition become your downfall. Trim it down, and it can serve you well. You, the rest of your team, and all of your friends, including the one that you love."

"Downfall? Trimming? Friends? Love? Ha! Yeah, whatever. Sha-later, whacko girl." Then I really did turn away, shoulders stiff, and as the other to-be contestants climbed back to their feet, I raced down the dock and leaped over the side of the white ship that had just pulled up.

"Outta the way, losers! This is Lightnin's place to stand! Sha-tastic!"

Fantastic, I suddenly corrected myself, but only up in my head.