****

It was on Saturday evening on the last day of spring break. Alan spent the whole day preparing for classes at school. He finished everything by 4 pm and suddenly realized that he had absolutely nothing to do today. He climbed in a computer, lazily went over several websites on the Internet, read e-mail, but by 8 o'clock he was bored with it. The Simpsons last season replay was on TV, but he was already watching him. From nothing to do the boy began to disassemble the paper on the table and suddenly came across an envelope of thick gray paper.

Without any inscriptions without marks and stamps, he lay on the corner of the table. Alan accurately remembered that when yesterday he took out an envelope from a box of textbooks, he did not lay here. The intrigued boy opened it. A heavy ring of a dull, darkened metal similar to silver fell on his palm. The boy looked at him with interest, the ring was heavily covered with patina and mud, and he decided to clean it.

When he released the ring from his fingers and put it on the table, it began to vibrate finely and dimly lightened. The boy stared at it stupidly for several minutes, not believing his own eyes. He grabbed the ring with his fingers and the vibrations immediately stopped glowing. Going downstairs, he found a tool in the kitchen for polishing silver that her mother used to clean silverware and ran back into the room. Carefully closing the door behind him, he sat down at the table, squeezed a little pinkish gel onto a rag and began to rub the ring. A minute later he stopped making manipulations and unfolded a rag the ring glittered like new.

- Maybe try to wear? He asked himself quietly.

The boy took the ring with his fingers and turned it in front of his eyes. Something did not allow him to wear a gleaming silver circle on his finger. Alan put the ring on the table again. It lit up so intensely that the boy was almost blind. When he took his hand in his glow again faded away. The ring seemed to require him to put it on the finger. The guy sighed and resolutely put the ring on the middle finger. Why on average he himself did not understand him as if someone suggested it.

The light in the house blinked out completely, but after a few seconds it flashed again.

****

The next morning, Alan woke up with the first birds. He had been doing this for the second week, getting up before dawn and devoting several hours to developing his abilities. It turned out to be not at all difficult, as now the boy would have enough sleep for 4 hours of sleep. Today he was going to go to a local cycling club. They held annual races in races and despite the cool weather, Alan decided to take part in them. He slowly rolled his bicycle down the street, slowed down at the next intersection and suddenly heard behind his back.

- Hello! Do you like cycling too?

He looked around and saw on the other side of the street a girl dressed in a tight-fitting suit for the ride. She did stretching exercises and looked at him with a smile. Alan got out of the saddle and rolled the bike across the road towards her.

“Hi,” she held out her hand in the trimmed glove. I'm Chloe, doing housekeeping with the Andersons, and you?
- I'm Alan. Alan Marshall live here nearby. - he pointed to his shoulder.
“It’s nice to meet Alan, Alan Marshall,” she laughed.
“I haven't met you here before.” Have you recently arrived? - Alan wanted to talk to her.

The girl had such a sexy British accent.

- No, I live here for almost half a year, but I drove away for the first time. The Andersons went to their grandmother in Connecticut and I had a lot of free time. I wanted to make a circle to explore the neighborhood of the city. Where are you headed?

Alan told her about the club cyclists.

- Forget about the club. Maybe you want to ride with me? It will be interesting. - she smiled.I hope you will not leave me alone. I am a serious and enduring racer unlike you Americans. She laughed again with her charming chest laugh.
- So you think I can not stand the pace you proposed? He grinned.
- Do not be offended, but I think that you are not hijacking me. My friends and I regularly performed marathons on bicycles, and the distances we have in England are no longer yours.

They rode bikes and set off. Alan took the girl forward to the old highway, which they stopped using 5 years ago after the Atlantic highway passed through the city center. There were practically no cars on it, and on weekends it was completely empty. At the same time, excellent road coverage was preserved, and the rugged terrain outside the city made it possible to train well. Leaving the highway, Alan increased the pace and Chloe rushed after him.

Having slipped through a fairly flat stretch of land, they drove up to a whole chain of hills along which the highway looped. Alan still increased the pace barely began to rise. He got up in the saddle actively leaning on the pedals and not including a downshift to properly load the muscles. Reaching the top of the hill, he looked back. Chloe was behind. She also worked with pedals standing in the saddle. The guy noticed that she was noticeably out of breath.

The boy rushed down the slope, gaining speed, below the speed according to the speedometer readings reached almost 60 kilometers per hour. Without slowing down Alan overcame a complex turn and almost without the help of pedals only due to inertia soared to the next hill. Skipping a few more miles, not slowing down, he stopped at the curb waiting for Chloe.

He sat relaxed under a tree sipping a juice from a plastic flask when she panting approached him. She gently lowered the bike to the ground, approached him and, without any strength, plopped down on the grass, puffing herself. Alan pulled a second bottle of juice out of his backpack behind his back. She grabbed the bottle with a grateful smile and drank deeply. Then she fell on the grass on her back and spread her arms still breathing heavily and occasionally moaning.

“I regret that this happened,” he smiled with a degree of superiority.

Chloe was silent for a few more minutes trying to restore normal breathing.

- I must apologize to you. I wanted to tease. You Americans have never been good athletes. Prefer to drive cars rather than walk. But you made me! Like David Miller.
“Hey, this is a British cyclist,” he laughed.

And she laughed back.

- The fact that I did more suited to the style of Jacques Durand. He always liked to break away from pelaton on rough terrain due to very strong legs.
- That not a single Yankee comes to mind? Maybe remember Lance Armstrong?

Chloe finally caught her breath and sat up. She looked at Alan with interest.

- So, you are familiar with modern cycling. You managed to make me. This happened to me for the first time in three years. David Miller can't hold a candle!
- Do not exaggerate. I have not won a single stage Tour de France. And never wore a yellow jersey like him. Although I have always believed that he received it thanks to a happy accident.
- I take my words back.

They laughed again. Alan pulled two bananas out of his pack and handed one to Chloe. They silently chewed them. The girl got up to go to the bike. She screamed loudly and fell back into the grass, clutching her leg. A cramp brought her thigh down.

- Heck!
- Can I help you?
- What a cheeky boy! Barely met, and you immediately try to be closer to my panties? - she hissed through her teeth, trying to joke through a strong jerking pain.

Alan silently knelt beside her and began to massage his dense muscular thigh. He used the "gift" to remove the cramp from the muscle.

“Um, fine, you're just a wizard.”

After a minute he helped her up. Alan took two Tylenol tablets from the clip-pack and handed them to the girl. Chloe silently put them in her mouth and swallowed, washed down with water from a bottle hanging on the frame of her bike.

- Well, what will continue or go back?
- Back, of course.Whew, I can't imagine how I will master these hills ...