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Archway Publishing - Mena Sheth

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95 pages

English

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Gale heals people with her touch, but she’s not the only special kid at the Pandora School, and an evil entity now seeks control of these students—with ill intent.

In Project Apollo, thirteen-year-old Gale tries to fit into middle school, but she is different from everyone else and she knows it. She has a secret ability that she hasn’t told anyone about - she can heal with her touch. Gale and four other “special” kids win scholarships to the prestigious Pandora School for the Gifted. But instead of facing algebra and history, they face dangers they never expected. Just as Gale and her new friends are settling into their new school, their enemies surface. The question becomes, how can the kids take down a group that will stop at nothing to claim control over them and their powers?

Sujets

Jeunesse Aventure

Juvenilee Fiction

Adventure

Action

Imaginaire

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Publié par	Archway Publishing
Date de parution	11 novembre 2022
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781665727099
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	1 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0200€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

PROJECT APOLLO

MENA SHETH

Copyright © 2022 Mena Sheth.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

Archway Publishing
1663 Liberty Drive
Bloomington, IN 47403
www.archwaypublishing.com
844-669-3957

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

ISBN: 978-1-6657-2708-2 (sc)
ISBN: 978-1-6657-2707-5 (hc)
ISBN: 978-1-6657-2709-9 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2022913195

Archway Publishing rev. date: 11/04/2022
CONTENTS
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Acknowledgments
About the author
1
B EEP! BEEP! BEEP! Gale reflexively whacked the clock on the nightstand, silencing the alarm. Her heart was pounding. A sliver of sunlight fell across her face from between the heavy curtains.
Gale heard her father snoring, and her mother singing in the shower, and remembered she was in a hotel room in Boston. For the opportunity of a lifetime, supposedly. She swung her legs over the side of the bed and stretched.
Three weeks ago, she had gotten off the school bus and walked into her house to find her father reading a newspaper article in the kitchen. The Cape Cod Times had announced an upcoming competition in Boston for middle schoolers. And apparently it was a big deal.
Gale had just finished seventh grade, and frankly, she was glad that middle school was halfway over. She got good grades and played lacrosse for the school’s team, but she mostly stayed away from the spotlight. She felt different from everyone else.
All her life, Gale had a recurring dream that felt too real, like a vision. Or a memory. She didn’t know anyone else who had dreams like that. But that was not the only reason why she felt a chasm between herself and everyone else. She had a secret she had not even told her family. She had discovered it a couple of years earlier, when her younger brother, Deven, had fallen while climbing a tree.
Gale had been riding her bike down the street near her house when she heard a scream. She raced back to her house and found Deven lying in the backyard. His arm was twisted at an unnatural angle and was clearly broken. Gale instinctively knelt and held his arm, feeling the tingling in her hands as tissue reconnected and bones fused back together. By the time her parents found them, Gale had healed Deven’s fracture, and he was just whimpering from the shock of the fall. Luckily Deven was too young to realize that his arm had been broken—and then healed by Gale. Her secret was safe.
After that, Gale healed a bicyclist. A car had hit him, right in front of her. She thought no one knew she had healed him, because he had been unconscious and no one else had been around. But then she found an article about it in the Cape Cod Times . Gale quickly threw away the newspaper before her family could find it. And she worried that she was being watched.
So, when her mother asked Gale if she wanted to enter a competition to win a scholarship to the Pandora School for the Gifted—which would mean a lot of pressure, having a whole new set of kids to try to fit in with, and likely revealing her secret—she was definitely on the fence.
“Do I have a choice?” she finally asked.
“Well,” her mother said, tucking a wisp of Gale’s dark brown hair behind her ear, “this school is supposed to be pretty amazing. Why don’t you just try? If they offer you a spot, then you can decide if you want to accept.”
Gale already knew a lot about the Pandora School. Everyone did. It was a prestigious academy in Boston for middle school through high school students. Admission was nearly impossible. Graduates of Pandora went on to attend elite universities. And the families always donated back to the school.
Gale agreed to think about it. Finally, after three weeks and many hours of family research, she found herself waking up in a hotel room in downtown Boston. She threw on her best pair of jeans and a clean T-shirt, yanked a hairbrush through her hair, and grabbed her backpack. As she and her parents walked out the door, she wondered what she was getting herself into.
Although the Pandora Convention Center was only a five minute walk from Gale’s hotel, the line to get in wrapped around the building. It reminded her of the lines at Disney World. She wondered if some people had camped out overnight.
In front of her was a boy who clearly did not want to be there. He pouted and played on an iPad while his mother intermittently hissed things at him. “Stand straight and give them a firm handshake!”
Gale was just grateful that they had left Deven at their grandmother’s house, as he would have needed constant entertainment and snacks after some time standing in a line like this. Entertainment and snacks didn’t sound so bad, now that she thought about it.
An hour later Gale and about two hundred other kids crowded through huge double doors into a large auditorium. Burly men in black suits, wearing walkie-talkies and heavy boots, kept a watchful eye on the group. This is a lot of security for a kids’ event, Gale thought. The parents, guardians, and chaperones had been asked to kindly wait in the lobby, where many of them paced with coffee in hand or stared at their cell phones.
By 11:00 a.m. everyone had registered and was seated in the huge auditorium. A striking woman with smooth black hair, wearing a lab coat and a confident smile, took the podium.
“Good morning, and welcome, prospective students!” she began. “My name is Doctor Starling. We are very excited to have you here. All of you are gifted in some way, even though some of you might just be here because your parents forced you.” She was met with a few laughs. Gale liked her immediately.
Dr. Starling told them she was a scientist, and that she was a frequent lecturer at the school, even though she had not attended it herself. She had been raised outside Boston in the historic town of Concord, Massachusetts. She had attended Stanford University for college and had a PhD in neurology. Pandora Labs had recruited her a few years ago for her cutting-edge brain research.
Dr. Starling continued, “Today is all about you. Just do your best, and show us what you’ve got. A scholarship is waiting for some of you. Those of you who pass today’s written exam and field tests will be invited for a tour of your new school … the Pandora School for the Gifted!” She stepped aside as the kids applauded. The large screen behind her came to life.
Wait a minute. Two tests? And what did “field tests” even mean? Gale’s stomach started to hurt, the way it always did when she felt nervous. She started wishing she had decided not to enter this competition. She debated leaving now and skipping the tests. She could sit in a stairwell and spend the day reading the book she had packed in her backpack. Or she could call her parents and tell them she was feeling sick. That would be true, actually.
Unfortunately, she was jammed in the middle of a row, and the video was starting. Leaving now would be like getting up in the middle of a movie theater. A boy next to her was literally breaking open a bag of chips.
Gale’s mind wandered as the video showed the grand campus. The expansive fields contrasted sharply from the busy streets of Boston surrounding the school. She drifted back to the dream she had been having when her alarm rang earlier that morning. It was a dream she had had many times before.
Gale heard a voice whispering urgently, “She’s the one.” A young, dark-haired boy sat down next to Gale. She looked into his bright blue eyes and felt a sharp pain in her arm.
An actual tap on her arm startled her back to the present. It was the boy with the chips. He leaned over. “Try these!” he whispered. “My favorite from back home.”
Gale gave him a little smile and held out her hand as he turned the bag upside down and shook chips into her palm. As she watched images of happy students, the festive bookstore, and the famous on-campus ice cream shop called Sugar High (which actually looked pretty fun), she noticed Dr. Starling pull a cell phone out of her lab coat pocket and hastily turn away. At the same time, she saw another woman, oddly disheveled and also looking at her phone, slip through a side door of the auditorium.
The video ended. Dr. Starling turned back and briskly piped into the mic, “Off to the testing room!”
As everyone shuffled down the rows of folding seats and into the hallway, Gale lingered at the back of the crowd. Dr. Starling had fast-walked off the stage and met up with the side-