Complete Nothing (11 page)

I kicked Gavin’s foot. “Move.”

Gavin’s jaw dropped, but he got up. The way that girl moved her hips when she walked toward me should have been illegal. She paused next to the empty space on the bench and smirked.

“On second thought.”

She sat down on my lap. Just wedged herself in there and put one arm around my neck. She touched the lollipop to her lips, looking me directly in the eye.

“I’m Josie,” she said.

Then she rolled the pop around inside her mouth.

“Holy shit,” Lester said, watching us.

“P-Peter,” I stammered. “I’m Peter.”

“I know that,” she said with this laugh that filled the entire gym. Her butt pressed down firmly into my lap before she pushed herself up and took Gavin’s spot on the bench. Which I could suddenly not imagine Gavin ever sitting in. Not when it was filled with that skin and that hair and those lips.

“Hey, football players!” Liza announced. “We’re ready for you. Let’s practice the player roll call.”

While the rest of the team got up and tromped down toward the floor, Josie trailed her fingertips down my arm, and I did everything in my power to look her in the eye and not check out her body again.

“Hey, Marrott!” Liza shouted. “Way to be a leader, Captain!”

I glanced around and saw that Josie and I were the only people left on the bleachers.

“Oops,” I said.

And everyone laughed. Everyone except Claudia, who was turning purple. Josie got up and we walked down together as I told myself there was no reason to feel guilty.

Claudia and I weren’t together anymore. And apparently she was auditioning homecoming dates. The thought maybe made me want to strangle someone, but it also meant I could do whatever the hell I wanted.

“Did you know that you’re the second-tallest girl in the junior class?”

I blinked up at the guy standing next to the lunch table Hephaestus and I occupied. It took me a second to focus. I had been so intent on watching Peter watch Claudia with a sourpuss look on his face that it was like waking up from a dream. That girl who had come on to him at pep rally rehearsal had been a momentary distraction, clearly. Peter was practically turning green while I watched. My plan was already working.

“Wallace Bracken, right?”

He was holding that electronic pad thingie he always had at Boosters against his chest and smirking at me. The boy wasn’t bad-looking with his porcelain complexion, aquiline nose, and shiny dark hair hanging over his forehead. If only he wasn’t constantly bent over his contraption, I might be able to find him a nice girl.

“Yep. You wanna know how I know you’re the second-tallest girl in the junior class?” he asked excitedly.

He was already pulling a chair over to the end of our table
and sitting in it. I looked at Hephaestus, who seemed nonplussed. We hadn’t been talking much, what with me watching Peter and Claudia and not having a clue how to talk to him—or whether I should—about my mother, so this was a welcome distraction.

“I know I’d like to know,” Hephaestus said, leaning in.

“I created this app,” Wallace said, putting the electronic tablet down and hitting the screen a few times. A picture of me came up, taken the other day while I was talking to Claudia, Peter, and Orion at Boosters. “I can take a picture of anyone, and the app will calculate their height, weight, and body mass index. Provided they’re standing, of course. My margin of error is only three percent.”

“Hey. That’s actually pretty cool,” Hephaestus said.

Wallace blushed pleasantly. “Thanks.”

“Does it have any practical use?” I asked.

“True,” Hephaestus said, somehow scolding me with one syllable.

“I’m just saying, what would you do with this knowledge?” I was genuinely curious as I leaned over his shoulder and bit into a carrot stick. “Why do you want to know everyone’s height, weight, and whatever else you said there?”

“Well, aren’t you glad to know you’re the second-tallest girl in your class?” he asked plainly.

I lifted a shoulder. “I suppose.”

“Here. Give me your phone.” He held out his hand, which bore one thick purple band on its ring finger. “I’ll download the app for you.”

“I don’t have a cell phone,” I told him.

His whole face went slack. “You don’t have a cell phone?”

“Nope.”

His hand hit the table with a crack, and I winced. That had to hurt. But he didn’t flinch. “How do you text?”

“I don’t.”

“How do you tweet? Update Facebook? Instagram? Play games? Listen to music?”

I sat up straight at this. “Wait. You can use them to listen to music?”

Wallace looked at Hephaestus as if I’d just dropped in through the ceiling from some far-flung galaxy.

“I know, dude,” Hephaestus said, biting into an apple. “She’s weird.”

Wallace put his pad thingie away and took out his phone, which looked just like the pad thingie, only smaller. He placed his phone on the table and opened up a screen that had songs and bands listed with prices next to each one.

“You can buy any music you want,” he said slowly, as if he was attempting to communicate with a dolphin. “You just need to open an account with a credit card number and you’re in.”

“Any music I want?” This was interesting. I scooted my chair closer to Wallace’s and tentatively touched the screen. I had missed music since I had been on Earth. The stereo system at Goddess Cupcakes played a steady stream of current pop hits, but I was more of a classical connoisseur, and I’d heard nothing of it since my arrival here over two weeks ago. Perhaps these soul-sucking devices I’d so vilified had a positive purpose.

“Here.” Wallace pulled out a pair of earphones and stuck one side in my ear, the other in his. “What do you like? Hip-hop? Hard rock? Country?”

“Mozart,” I told him.

He glanced at me, obviously surprised and maybe impressed. “Mozart it is.”

After hitting a few buttons on his phone, Mozart’s
Requiem
flowed through the earpiece. I leaned back next to him and sighed,
the music instantly working its calming effect on my frayed nerves. “Thank you.”

He grinned. “You’re welcome.”

“Aw,” Hephaestus said. “True’s made a new friend!”

I picked up a carrot stick and chucked it at him. It bounced off Hephaestus’s forehead and landed on Orion’s foot as he was walking by. He froze. I froze. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t noticed him coming our way. For the past three days I’d had a sort of instinctive radar alerting me every time he was within a twenty-foot radius. Orion looked from me to Wallace and got this odd expression on his face—one I couldn’t define. My heart pounded at his nearness.

“Your projectile?” he said finally, stooping to pick up the carrot.

I shoved myself up from the table, the earpiece ripping from my ear. “Hi,” I said. “I actually need to talk to you.”

“You do?” he said.

“You do?” Hephaestus echoed.

“Uh . . . yeah! About your spirit basket!” I improvised.

“Oh. Well, I was just going up to get something to drink.” Orion smiled, and it nearly melted me. “Wanna come with?”

It was a simple invitation, but it made my heart dance. “Sure.” I glanced at Wallace, who was wrapping up his headphones. “I’ll be right back.”

I wanted him to teach me more about the music purchasing system. If it was as easy as he made it seem, I might have to cave and finally get one of those cell phones for myself.

“So what’s up?” Orion asked, rubbing his hands together as we walked. His strong, gentle, masculine hands.

I drank him in, even as I realized he wasn’t looking at me. He was looking ahead, probably more interested in deciding what to drink than in me. My spirits began to sink.

I wasn’t going to get what I wanted out of this. I wanted him to take me in his arms and kiss me like he had that day in the woods back in Maine when I’d saved him from that huge bloodlusting bear. Or the time we’d gone skinny-dipping in the stream just outside our house. The day he’d caught me singing to the birds in the trees while I searched for kindling. Or any of the hundreds of small, seemingly insignificant kisses—the wake-up kiss, the good-night kiss, the see-you-when-I-get-back-from-hunting kiss.

Any of these would have been fine. But none of them were going to happen.

I reached up to touch his arrow pendant, which was tucked under the collar of my T-shirt.

“Well, first . . . I wanted to apologize for the other day,” I said, feeling as though my pulse was pounding in my skull.

He looked me up and down but kept walking. “Apologize for what?”

“For . . . you know . . . kissing you? I thought you were someone else.”

You. With your memories. That’s who I thought you were.

He glanced back over his shoulder at my table. “Oh, that.”

He laughed and mercifully stopped walking. I wasn’t sure I would be able to keep up with him with the room spinning and my brain weighing nothing and my heart slamming around inside my chest. I didn’t understand how humans managed to make it through an average day, what with the way my body always seemed to be at odds with my intentions. I so badly wanted to play it cool, but just being this close to Orion was putting me in need of an oxygen tank.

“You don’t have to apologize for that,” he said. “There are worse things than getting randomly kissed by a hot girl.”

I blinked, my face flushing with pleasure. “You think I’m hot?”

He grinned that grin that had stolen my heart. “Isn’t that an accepted fact?”

That was the Orion I knew and loved. Confident and complimentary. Honest and playful. I wanted to kiss him so badly my lips hurt.

“So, you wanted to ask me about the spirit basket?” he said.

“Right. I want to make sure I fill it with things you like.”

“Oh, you don’t have to worry about it. I like everything.”

“But everyone has favorites.” I took a breath and held it, anticipating his reaction to what I was about to say. “Let me guess, you seem like a peanut butter cup kind of guy.”

Orion’s jaw dropped slightly. “How did you know?”

Because I brought them to you to celebrate your one-month anniversary back on Earth and your eyes rolled back in your head when you tasted them?

“Lucky guess,” I replied with a smile. “I was also thinking raspberry cheesecake bars, pretzels, and maybe something with coconut?”

Orion actually took a step back and nearly leveled a pair of small girls walking by with vanilla cones from the frozen yogurt machine.

“That’s crazy. What are you, a mind reader or something?” he asked.

“Nah. I just think it was meant to be, us being matched up.”

He looked me over with a sort of pleased awe. “Yeah. Maybe it was.”

My fingers twitched to take his hand. To press it against my chest so he could feel my heart beat. To do anything and everything to
make
him remember. But I could do nothing other than stare into his eyes, his incredible blue eyes.

This was so wrong. We were soul mates. We were each other’s one and only. I knew him like the back of my hand. Shouldn’t he have known me no matter what? Shouldn’t our eternal connection be more powerful than any spell a god could cast on him?

I felt my blood begin to boil, even as I knew I was asking the impossible. Zeus was more powerful than any being in the universe. He could do anything, even erase true love, obliterate memories, alter souls. But still, I burned with anger.

Orion should have been able to overcome it. Our love should have been more powerful still.

“There’s something about you,” I said carefully, trying to tamp down my roiling emotions. “I feel as if we’ve met somewhere before.”

He tilted his head and in a breath, something stirred inside his eyes. Some spark of recognition. My heart leaped, and I did reach for his hand.

“Hey, Orion!”

We both flinched. Darla Shayne stood behind me with Veronica Vine at her side, each wearing the same low-cut T-shirt in different colors. Darla’s diamond D pendant hung right at the top of her serious cleavage, and I saw Orion’s eyes dart there.

“Hey, D,” he said, stepping toward her. “I didn’t think it was possible for someone to look that gorgeous after staying up all night.”

“I have my ways,” Darla said flirtatiously.

“You were up all night?” I asked. “How would you know that?”

“They were texting,” Veronica said with a sneer. “Not that it’s any of your business, freak.”

“I was just going to get a soda,” Orion said to Darla, as if I hadn’t spoken. “Want anything?”

“I’ll come with you,” she said.

“We’re good, right, True?” he asked me.

“Sure,” I replied quietly. “Yeah. We’re good.”

He lifted his hand in a wave, and the two of them walked off together to join the dwindling line near the soda machine.

“So many hot new guys and you seem to be going after every one of them,” Veronica said, tilting her head. “First Charlie, then Heath, now Orion. Too bad not one of them looks like he’s interested in you.”

My jaw dropped open to reply, but I had no response, and Veronica slowly sauntered off. She was right. Not one of them was interested in me. Charlie had Katrina, Hephaestus had my sister and previously my mother (gag), and now, it seemed, Orion was moving on to Darla. As Orion ordered his soda, Darla placed her hand delicately on his arm, and I suddenly saw myself with my bow and arrow, drawing, aiming, piercing her through the heart.

I felt the cool, smooth shaft of a wooden arrow in my fist and looked down. I was holding an actual arrow. A straight, perfectly calibrated arrow with genuine feather fletching and a silver tip. My heart vaulted into my throat. Not again. Had anyone seen that simply appear in my palm? I glanced around, but no one seemed to be watching me. Then I spotted Claudia approaching, her eyes trained down on her phone. It gave me enough time to drop the arrow on the floor and kick it under the nearest table.

“True! Hey,” Claudia said.

I glanced down at the arrow. The fletching was bright red and not entirely tucked away.

“Um, hi. How’s everything?” I asked.