Golden Girl by Mari Mancusi Page A

talking twenty-four-seven.” Lulu shook her head pityingly, as if the guy had been stuck in 24-7 detention instead of tearing it up on the mountain every day. “Seriously, he barely ever had time to see her.”
    â€œOh the horror!” Logan broke in, rolling his eyes. “Someone with priorities and a work ethic! Alert the media.”
    Lulu lobbed a hot dog bun in his direction. “We have priorities, Logan Conrad!” she shot back. “We’re going to make Manic Pixie Dream Girl the biggest, baddest band in the whole entire world!”
    Logan caught the bun and took a big bite out of it. “Yeah, well, you’re going to need a singer who can actually sing, first.” He grinned wickedly. “No offense, Rol.” The guitar player smirked and kept playing.
    â€œWell, maybe we’ll make Lexi our new singer!” cried Scarlet. She flopped an arm around me. “What do you say, Lexi? Want to give up your Olympic dreams for rock stardom? I promise it’ll be worth your while. Or, at the very least, warmer!”
    She was teasing, of course. But she had no idea how good the prospect sounded to me at that very moment. A free life, without pressure from parents, teachers, and coaches. It sounded like a dream come true.
    â€œYeah, what do you say, Lex?” added Lulu, shoving Logan out of the way to get on my other side. “Want to be rock stars together?”
    â€œWhy not,” I declared, leaning against the two of them with as much girl power as I could muster. “At least for the next hour or so.”
    Whooping loudly, the girls yanked me to my feet and started twirling me around. Roland struck up a fast-paced punk song to match us, and we started dancing madly to the beat, tripping and laughing over one another with bull-in-a-china-shop-style grace. Soon a few others joined in, and suddenly we had an impromptu mountainside dance party going on around the fire. I half wondered, as Scarlet spun me around, how long it would take for someone to fall in and get burned.
    For a moment Logan watched us, amusement dancing in his eyes, then his attention turned to something just behind us. I twirled around to see a tall, black-haired guy standing off to the side, his arms crossed over his chest. He looked older, like he was already in high school. He also looked somewhat familiar. Did he work on the mountain somewhere?
    â€œHunter!” Logan greeted him, rising. “Where’ve you been all night, bro?”
    The guy—Hunter—raised an eyebrow. “In the park, of course,” he replied. “Where I assumed you would have been.” His eyes fell upon me, critical and cold. “And what do we have here?”
    â€œLexi, this is Hunter,” Logan said, introducing me, and either not noticing the look or refusing to acknowledge it. “He works on the mountain with my older brother, Chris. Hunter, this is my new friend Lexi.”
    I held out my hand, but Hunter just gave it a dismissive glance, then turned back to Logan. “Can I talk to you?” He paused, then added, “Alone?”
    â€œUh, sure.” Logan said, glancing at me apologetically. “You cool here for a sec?”
    â€œYeah, I’m fine,” I assured him, my heart starting to beat faster in my chest, though I wasn’t sure why.
    Hunter grabbed Logan by the arm and dragged him a few feet away. They should have been out of hearing range, but mountains had tricky acoustics sometimes, and I could still hear everything he was saying from where I stood.
    â€œWhat were you thinking, bringing her here?” he was demanding. “Don’t you know she’s one of them?”
    â€œUh, define ‘one of them.’ ”
    Hunter leveled his gaze upon my new friend. “Do you even know who she is? Who her father is?”
    â€œDarth Vader?” Logan asked hopefully, and it was all I could do not to giggle, even as the unease rose in my