Page 83 of The Mentor
Marco stopped Raven with a hand on her shoulder. “Don’t forget to breathe, sweetie.”
She frowned. “Okay, but the best part was when Shelly put Plato in his place.” She narrowed her eyes and looked over at Plato. “She made him look really stupid and he’s been sulking ever since.”
A smile tugged at Marco’s lips. “Now you have me curious – how did Shelly make a big boy like Plato sulk?”
“I’m not sulking and she only made herself look stupid,” Plato defended himself.
“Now you wait a minute,” Marco told Plato. “You and I are gonna have a conversation about respect. Shelly is a mentor assistant like me and you can’t talk back to her. Do you hear me?”
“Thank you,” Shelly interjected, “but I can fight my own battles.”
“You haven’t heard everything.” Raven pulled Marco’s attention back to her and licked her dried lips with eagerness before she continued. “The best part was when Shelly told Plato that the fact that jellyfish have survived without a brain for a million years gives hope for someone like him.”
“Huh.” Marco turned to Shelly, whose cheeks looked awfully red and who was busy drawing in the sand. “Did a nice girl like you really say that?”
“More or less,” she muttered. “Except that I want to point out that I did say the jellyfish have been around more than five hundred million years, not just a million.” She looked up at him. “Facts are important to me.”
“I see.” Marco ran his hands through his wet hair and drew in a long breath. “Plato, I would like us males to stick together and all, but I don’t know much about marine life. At least not enough to argue with a genius. However, I will say this: you were absolutely right about girls being weaker than boys.”
Raven squared her tiny shoulders and looked up at him. “That’s not true, I’m stronger than Nieall and Tommy.”
“I’ll bet you are, but they’re younger than you. I’m sorry, Raven, but it’s a fact of life that men are physically superior to women. It’s the natural order of things, since men are created to be protectors and hunters while women are created to be the caretakers.”
Shelly gaped at me, “Is he for real, Kya?” she asked.
I didn’t get a chance to answer before Marco carried on. “Yes, brainy, I’m for real and you can’t dispute that men are bigger and stronger than women.”
Shelly got up and brushed off sand from her behind. “I can’t listen to this, I’m going for a swim.”
“Really, Shelly?” he teased her. “I was expecting some genius comeback from you. That’s really disappointing.”
Shelly stopped and turned to look at him with disdain. “Just because I think doesn’t mean I’m obligated to share my thoughts. It’s a strategy I strongly suggest you start implementing.”
When she calmly walked away, I wanted to stand up and salute her. For a while now, I had been worried about her having a crush on Marco, so it made my day to see that at least one of us had the sense to move past that foolish notion. If only I could get Archer out of my system too.
Marco looked to me and split his sides in a fit of laughter. “I swear that nerd cracks me up. She says the craziest things.”
“She certainly has a temper,” I agreed and looked after Shelly in her one-piece bathing suit that revealed she hadn’t started developing into a woman yet. The contrast was clear when she walked past Rochelle and Willow, who might only be twelve and thirteen years old, but were already starting to fill out in the right places.
It wasn’t uncommon for siblings to develop differently since women in the Motherlands were typically inseminated with an anonymous donor. In Rochelle’s and Shelly’s case, it was pretty evident that Shelly’s father had to have been a small man in comparison to Rochelle’s father.
“Hey, Marco,” Willow called. “Can you teach us how to do a flip?”
Marco shielded his eyes from the sun with a hand to his eyebrows and looked at the two girls, who had been doing cartwheels. “Sure, just give me some time to dry, will you? His eyes swung to some of the older boys. “Hey, Oscar and Solo, go show the girls how to do flips.”
They rolled their eyes, but at least Oscar pushed up from the sand. “You coming?” he asked Solomon, but the oldest of the boys stayed firmly on his belly and looked away from Willow.
“Yeah, I just need a minute.”
Oscar nodded with a sympathetic glance and muttered “Oh, okay.” And then he jogged leisurely over to impress the girls with a long series of acrobatic flips, perfectly displaying his balance, strength, and body control.
“Marco, can you look after the kids while I take a dip?” I asked and got up.
“No problem, and you can tell Finn to get up here if you want to. He’s been in the water for almost an hour now.”
The men were playing some rough games with the children, throwing them and splashing water, so I chose to float next to Shelly instead.
“Are you excited about your mom coming tomorrow?” I asked her.
