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face to the cerulean sky and took a long deep breath. The whole city smelled like copper, oil and a hint of algae. They said it was because of the permafrost that had covered the city for thousands of years before Fable, her parents and the eight other families found it. She was the only one of them the Fountain of Youth turned immortal.
    “Yeah Jonathan was a bad choice.”
    “He was a straight choice.”
    “It wasn’t just that. He really wants to be immortal,” I said.
    “I think he has a crush on Fable,” Isaac said.
    “That’s sickening. She’s . . .” I paused, doing the math in my head, knowing that I would give an accurate answer to anyone else I knew.
    “Thousands of years older than him.” He chortled under his breath. We reached a fork in the road and Isaac took the path on the right. It curled downwards and to the left, leading into the deeper parts of the city. We passed through a shadow, the other path forming a bridge above our heads. Isaac was heading further west and south, towards the uncharted parts of the underground.
    “Where are we going?” I asked, the path still relatively smooth and easy to walk on.
    Isaac looked back at me and grinned. “I half thought about introducing you to David and the other guys on the team, but I thought you might say no and go straight back to that Arena.”
    He was joking, but there was truth in it. I had never gone to the East side with him. I knew he played street hockey with a few of the boys down there, but I wasn’t interested in getting to know the East side boys. Some people called the East side a bohemian village. I couldn’t be associated with riff raff. Plus, Isaac told me his mom would make me paint something instead of talk to her. I didn’t understand exactly how that worked but apparently they had paint inside each of the little clay stone houses and instead of actually greeting people, they were supposed to paint their greeting on the wall. The idea of being creative terrified me, and so I never went.
    “I’m not obsessed with the Arena.”
    We were heading into uncharted territory, the ground becoming uneven and rocky. I side stepped a stone sticking up out of the path as Isaac gracefully strode forward. I couldn’t help but look at the way his hips moved when he walked, not quite strutting, but he had swagger.
    I couldn’t help but think about Thomas Gim, the boy I had kissed. Thomas was another descendant of the founding families. We used to go to school together. When we weren’t busy with the rigorous schedule, we were playing Othello. Three years ago we were sitting in his room moving the pieces around board and it just happened. I had known before then that I preferred hanging out with boys more than girls and I never tried to hide it. Thomas on the other hand decided to date the first girl he laid eyes on, Serena Carter, a commoner from the North Side.
    I later told Isaac that Jonathan Cray was one of the most beautiful boys I had ever known. He was tall, muscular, sandy blond hair, piercing green eyes. He was way out of my league with me being shy, short, and scrawny. I had muscles, but they weren’t the same thick cords of arm that Jonathan had. Isaac was somewhere in the middle between my build and Jonathan’s. His lazy East side accent made him stand out among my friends, most of whom were the scholarly type. We still learned old English, the language spoken during Fable’s time.
    Isaac didn’t answer. He ducked under a low hanging archway and I followed, reaching into my belt and clicking on my flashlight. The stony streets were piled above us now, and what we were treading over was speckled with shale and boulders. It smelled musty down there, the usual faintness of algae attacking my senses. I ducked under the archway after Isaac and stood, noticing how there were walls springing up on either side of us. There were still plenty of breaks in the stone, but sometimes we were entirely encased in walkways only a few feet