Chapter SEVEN
Reyna really wasn't going to stop laughing her head off. After fifteen minutes, she paused for about a millisecond and proceeded to start laughing for another hour straight. If she had time, she could make the swim team. Laughing for sixty minutes and counting—continuously—had to be a world record. Of course, Reyna swam pretty well, but it wasn't exactly her strong suit.
Bobby had enough of it and he kept on yelling at Reyna to shut up. Of course, it wasn't working.
No more monsters came near for the rest of the Coliseum punishment, which was really boring and I spent most of my time poking the snowy ground with a frost-bitten stick, vaguely listening to Reyna and Bobby argue. So I was nearly frightened out of my wits when somebody tapped me on the shoulder.
"Fancy meeting me?" Hazel whispered smugly right in my ear.
"Oh my gods!" I screamed, consequently causing Reyna and Bobby to stop bickering to see what in the name of the gods was wrong. Reyna almost lost it when she saw Hazel calmly rolling a snowball.
"You too?" Reyna exploded. "How many people—"
"What?" Hazel demanded. "I was innocently strolling around the camp, not liking what I was seeing, and I land in here with no recollection of how the heck I got here, and you have the nerve to start yelling at me?"
Reyna spluttered like a monkey that was sniveling underwater. "But the Coliseum is magic-proof!"
"Huh?" Hazel cluelessly asked.
"You aren't supposed to just 'appear' here," Reyna started, but Hazel gave her the shut up look.
With a ridiculously silly smile plastered on her face, Hazel rolled her snowball, humming something that sounded suspiciously like Jingle Bells.
After a couple minutes of this awkwardness, Hazel peered over the horizon and laughed. "Hot pink bunnies don't really exist, do they?" she asked, her maniac smile fading.
"Cute," Reyna muttered, still disgruntled.
Bobby nudged her. "Are you sure you know what you're saying?"
Reyna whipped her head around to stare at the lone hot pink bunny that had appeared out of nowhere. "Wait a moment. Did you just happen to say... hot pink bunny?"
"So if I be extremely stupid," Bobby whispered to Reyna a few minutes later when we were all crammed behind a snowy bush, "the hot pink bunny will die?"
The hot pink bunny had come from the part of the arena that was totally the stark opposite of the snowy winter wonderland that we were currently in. The part of the Coliseum that seemed to be the exact middle of the torture zone—to say, the Coliseum—was a raging hot desert, probably full of nasty little surprises; a rattlesnake here, a pit full of desert jack-in-the-boxes there (What? They're real!).
Reyna rolled her eyes and mumbled something that suspiciously sounded like an extremely bad curse to me. "You dumb idiot!" she snapped as quietly as a person could snap. "Stupid! Stupid! Argh!"
"Um," Bobby said, "will you get to the point? Not everybody is as smart as you!"
Reyna let out an exaggerated sigh as Hazel casually (and pointlessly) continued to make a snowman.
"What are you trying to do?" I asked Hazel, who didn't look up from her now huge base of the snowman. "Get into the Guinness Book of World Records for making the largest snowball/snowman in the whole entire universe?"
Hazel shrugged. "No." She poked the six-foot tall/wide snowball and frowned. "How did I ever get it this big?"
"I don't like it," Bobby immediately said. Reyna fumed besides him. I could swear the the snow was melting around her.
"Why?" Hazel asked, seemingly offended.
"It's bigger than me." Bobby stared at her as if it should have been obvious, which it obviously wasn't.
"This is so epically hopeless," Reyna snapped, her face bright red. "There's a hot pink bunny that could kiss you any moment over there, and you are debating over why the snowball is bigger than Bobby or some dumb thing like that. I've never heard a more pointless conversation!"
She was a totally different girl from when she was two minutes ago.
The hot pink bunny hopped to our bush.
"Um, I think that we should run," I whispered loudly.
Reyna exploded out of the bushes without warning, leaving the rest of us to follow her or get turned into fluffy hot pink bunnies. I chose the second option.
"All right," Bobby panted after we had been running in the other half of the Coliseum for about an hour. "Why did you go into the desert place, Reyna?"
"Shut up! Would you have liked to turn into a hot pink bunny, Bobby?"
Bobby kept quiet. Whether it was because he didn't have a retort or was just plain out tired (like I was) and conserving his energy, I don't know.
We tripped through dry, scraggly bushes, brambles, and steered clear of the occasional rattlesnake for another half-hour. Hazel nearly got bitten by one as she accidentally tripped over a rock.
Suddenly, the gong rang. That ended the Coliseum torture zone.
A shadow loomed over me as I found myself lying on stony floor. Jason Grace, just what exactly are you doing with Reyna in the Coliseum?
Oh, gods. I could sense a whipping as surely as the gods are real.
"Um..."
Very apt response, Lupa said icily. And why was Bobby and Hazel with you, Praetor?
I stammered as Reyna kicked me out of the way.
"Don't blame him," she said.
I had no idea what Reyna was planning right now, but it didn't sound really good.
Lupa inclined her head. And why is that?
Reyna turned red as she managed to get out, "Because... because, I wanted him to come with me."
Wow, that was a dumb ending to this chapter. Oooooh, what's going to happen to Reyna? Apparently, she "broke the rules" for a second time. Seems that that girl is a lodestone for trouble.
