Three Girls and a God (6 page)

I
didn’t admit it to my sisters, but Dylan from Denver stayed in the back of my mind all weekend. And so did Apollo. I thought about how they were alike (they’re both strong and so funny) and how in so many ways they were different (Apollo is bullish and stubborn, and Dylan’s just plain goofy). And then I spent hours trying to
not
think about either one. After a morning marathon of
Cops
on the TV, I decided it was time to stir up a little adventure of my own. I thought the first place to look was this room off the house. I’d heard it referred to on TV as a garage.

We’d avoided it until now. It was dark and musty and had spiderwebs. I hate spiders, and my sisters hate them even more. Still, I thought I’d brave it in hopes of finding something good amid the boxes.
There was so much stuff in this room. I could only assume it belonged to the previous owners, left behind for someone else to clean up. There were boxes upon boxes of unidentified junk. I was hoping there would be a bicycle in here. Polly just refused to let me go back to that Mart store and get one. Somehow she’d become queen of the credit card and all the cash. Which seemed pretty ridiculous to me, considering we had an unlimited supply of money.

After going through countless bags and even more boxes (and seeing numerous unnecessary items…a chicken with a clock in its belly? A painting of a single lemon?), I still had found no bike. But I found the next-best thing. I had heard it referred to alternately as a board and a skateboard, but I just knew it was my new toy.

I ran outside with my beat-up board to try and use it on the road in front of the house. Daddy had granted the world a beautiful day. The sun was shining. The air was warm but breezy, and it smelled like flowers and grass and pavement. Grinning, I threw down my board, jumped on, and the board went flying forward while I landed sharply on my butt. It was great!

I knew I could master it if I just took a little time. I’m a natural at most sports, won the Junior Stellar Sky Skiing championship three years in a row. So I ran after the board, placed it more gingerly on the ground in front of me, and stood on it. Steady. Good.
Then I propelled myself with the one foot while balancing myself on the other. Down the street I went. After just twenty minutes I could fly off the curb with two feet firmly on the board. Now, this was the most excitement I’d had in a very long time.

I figured I was doing pretty well, so I tried this move I saw a girl do in the school quad. I kicked the back of the board hard and flipped it all the way around and landed on it.

I fell on my butt. Hard. But it didn’t matter. It was thrilling, downright exhilarating. I got up and did it again. And again. And again.

I skated around and around and up the driveway and off the curb and around the corner and back.

I had started to concentrate on the flips again when the board seemed to come to life. It felt like it had a mind of its own. It came out from under me with tremendous force and shot straight ahead, like Hercules tossing a discus, and went deep and straight into this large evergreen bush.

Then the bush made a loud, deep, “Yowww!” Talking bushes, oh, my!

I had begun to apologize profusely to Mr. Bush when I spotted an upside-down 15. I looked closer to find a football-pants-clad butt pointing straight at the sky. Dylan was sort of hanging there, dangling from the back side of the bush. I mentally took back all my apologies.

Then I noticed our camera, just hanging on the tallest, tippiest, tiniest branch, and it was about to break. I panicked. My grade! My life! I jumped up to try to get it but only knocked it loose. The camera came tumbling down the side of the bush. I made a dive for it but missed. Then Dylan’s large hand punched through the bush and caught it, just inches from the ground, in the nick of time.

I screamed. He screamed. We all screamed.

“Where did you come from?” I shouted.

“Ow, are you trying to kill me?” he asked.

“Are you trying to stalk me?”

“Huh?” He looked dazed and wobbly. Yet he had managed to catch the camera. Impressive, considering the massive tumble he’d taken.

“What are you doing here, anyway? I told you, I don’t want to go out. I told you I would see you in school,” I said, sounding a little harsher than I felt.

“You don’t have to be mean,” he said, getting up off the ground and shaking the twigs out of his hair. He had a small scrape across his perfect nose.

“And you don’t have to follow me around everywhere I go,” I retorted.

“Following you? Following you? Why, I’m out filming the sights and sounds of our fair town. There’s lots of excitement on your very own Castalia Way.”

“Lots of excitement? On our street? I don’t think so.” Our street was just a collection of quiet, cute little houses, green lawns, and front porches.

“It’s true, and I’m not talking about your incredible skating abilities.”

“Hey. That was sarcasm—I’d recognize it anywhere.”

“Don’t you like sarcasm, Thalia, and teasing?”

“Hardly.”

“Hardly?”

“Yes, hardly. See, you think you know me, but you don’t,” I said.

“Ah, well, in that case, would you like me to let you in on the excitement on Castalia Way?”

“I don’t care, whatever. Sure.”

“Your neighbors, Mr. and Mrs. Hall, are the proud owners of a dragon.”

“Yeah, so,” I said, but the fact was, I was all aflutter inside. We had giants back home. Monsters, too. And I’d heard a story or two about Daddy battling a dragon or three, but I’d never actually seen one with my very own eyes.

“I just thought you’d get a kick out of it, that’s all. Apparently it’s a variety called a Komodo dragon and it’s totally illegal to own one.”

“Yeah…dragons…huh?”

“And it can eat a whole pig in one sitting. And I’m sure it will spit fire. Maybe it can fly! You
want to join me? I’m going over there to check it out.”

“Nah, I’m busy.” But I wasn’t. And I wanted to see a real, live dragon. Maybe after he was gone, I thought. Yes, later. I could wait.

“Suit yourself,” he said, and turned and walked away, the smile still on his face.

“Stalker!” I called after him with a small smile.

“Coward!” he called back to me. With a smile, but did it matter?

I picked up my board and headed back to the house. But try as I might, I couldn’t wipe the smile off my face. Dylan’s excitement over the fun side of life was adorable, even if it was infuriating.

And he pushed my buttons better than…better than…oh, rats! Maybe better than even Apollo.

Thalia and Dylan, well, isn’t that nice?

We’d love it if our hearts weren’t colder than ice.

But since we are evil, our plan must go on,

We will not settle till Dylan is gone.

In the meantime, though, we have deeds we must do

Because from the bushes we’ve seen what we want to:

That Dylan, while godly, is a bit of a klutz,

Now all we need is to make him mess up.

What we have in store will do two jobs in one,

And all will be ruined, oh, isn’t it fun?

Dylan will destroy his chance with his mate,

And Thalia will fail, yes, that is her fate!

The girls will be banished to Hades for sure,

And those simpering Muses will plague us no more!

E
ra here. So yes, I admit it, it wasn’t the brightest idea to take this class. On Sunday, when I could have been in my best frilly nightgown, deep under the covers of my fluffy bed, I instead found myself outside, running for what seemed like eternity in the rain. No, not just rain, a dramatic downpour. I wore clothes that only Thalia would be caught dead in—baggy pants meant for sweating and those shoes with no pretty points or tiny heels—they were horrible. My “sneakers” were soaked through and squeaked with every painful step I took. And Josh, well, Josh hadn’t looked at me once the whole time. It’s no wonder—I was soaked to my insides, and my hair was flatter than a nymph’s in Hades. I missed the Beautorium!

The tall trees around us blocked any possible small bits of sunlight that might have been able to
squeak through the rain clouds, so it was just dark, which only made it feel colder. And you know what, it was uphill! Josh had said the first part was flat, but it wasn’t.

Some of the more serious kids were ahead, and Polly and I were back in the last pack of students, struggling to keep up. Everyone was silent. All I could hear was the roar of the wind echoing against the trees.

“I can’t…do it…. I can’t…run…anymore,” Polly said very quietly through short, deep breaths.

“Me neither,” I said, and we fell behind the last group in an instant. We began to walk.

“I…hate…you,” she said, barely.

“Fine, I don’t care. Your own fault. Allergic to paint,” I said. “Hey…do you have a mirror…in your pack?”

“What? I’m dying over here, and you want a mirror? Are you insane?”

“No, I just have a gift,” I said.

“Excuse me?”

“I can see the beautiful in a bad situation. The beautiful in this situation is, well, if I can get a mirror and a little mousse and maybe a towel, is, um, me.”

“Grrrrrgrgrrgrgrgrhhhh!”
My sister had let out one of those primal wails, the kind that would be perfectly acceptable in, say, the Peloponnesian Forests, but here, in the empty wooded lot behind Nova
High, was totally and completely unacceptable. You’d think she would have had her earthly etiquette down by now.

“Polly, please, no yelling,” I said.

“No one can hear us, Era, we’ve fallen behind the crowd. We’re in the forest. It’s raining and windy. And we’re going to fail!
Ggggrrrhhhhhhhhh!
”

“So, do you have a mirror, maybe a hairbrush?”

“Era, my silly, vain sister, my mystically blind little sister, do you have any idea how infuriating you are? Do you understand the consequences of failure?”

“You don’t have to call me names.”

“Era, listen to me and listen good.” She stopped walking, and I broke into a slow jog to keep up. “Your priorities are haywire. We are in the pouring rain, on the weekend, running for what seems like all eternity, failing one of our classes because you,
you
thought another random boy cute. So cute that you would join a class you have no desire in taking, a class that you have no business being in, a class that goes against your very nature, your very being, your…very…soul.”

My hair clung to my face for dear life. Polly’s just looked like it weighed her down, her shoulders slouched toward the ground. We began to walk again. “I didn’t sign you up for this class. For that, you can only blame yourself.”

“No, I can blame you,” she said, practically hyper-ventilating. “I can blame you because once again, I
have to take care of my sisters….” But before she had even finished the last
s
in
sisters,
she knew. I didn’t have to say it.

But I did, anyway.

“
Take care of your sisters,
huh? Well, I see you,
too,
have learned a lot here on earth. Because that is the one old habit
you
are supposed to be correcting.”

She looked solemn. Beaten down. Utterly exhausted and totally distressed. I felt horrible. She then said, “You’re right. How can I criticize you for falling back into your old ways when I, too, surrender so easily to my nasty habits?”

“Right. See. Now, let’s stop fighting. Do you have a mirror or not?”

“Oh my
goddess!
You are insufferable! At least I realize the error of my ways, but you, you, you!”

“Look, Pol, Daddy didn’t tell me not to care how I looked, he told me to not blindly follow others. And face it, I didn’t blindly follow anyone into this class—and who says this class won’t be good for me and teach me a little discipline? That is what it’s about, right?”

Polly shrugged.

“No, that was a real question. See, I think that’s the point of the class, but I’m not sure. I wasn’t paying attention when Josh gave us that lecture the other day. I mean, his eyes are like the same color as the sky back home, and, well, he did mention something about discipline, right?”

“Eyyyyahhhhhhhh!”
Another scream from Pol. Only this time Mr. Josh Hawkins was on his way to check on the back of the pack, aka us, and he heard her. He hightailed it in our direction. I tried my best to fix my hair without a mirror.

“Girls, what are you doing? Move it, ten hut! I need to see some action here!”

“So, Coach, that’s an awfully nice shirt you’re wearing, and your hair, it looks so good, even in this rain,” I said.

“You’re kidding me, right? Save the drama for your mama, girls, and let’s get a move on. Neither one of you is taking this class seriously, and your attitudes better change right here, right now, pronto, do you read me? I will not hesitate to give you both a failing grade. Now let’s pick up those legs and move it, move it, move it!”

I was trying, I really was.

I had tried to put a happy spin on this whole thing, but it wasn’t working. I was still freezing cold, dripping wet, and totally exhausted. I was failing. Not just this class, but at finding my own strength.

I looked at Polly, who still looked angry, as angry as our first day on earth, but now she looked tired and dirty, too. She was trying to run, as was I. But we were barely moving at all. I wondered if I looked that dirty.

And then I started to cry.

W
hile Era and Polly were at that survival class, I decided to surprise them with a genuine home-cooked meal. Like I said, we’d been going out to eat, a
lot
. More than anything because it was fun to try something new each time. I mean, the food back home was more grand—it tasted sweeter and hotter. But food on earth was pretty exciting. The choices were never ending! Still, we really needed to get the hang of cooking for ourselves like normal people.

I went to the grocery store and scanned the aisles. It was there that I noticed, on the back of a soup can, the instructions for making something called a mushroom tuna casserole surprise. It sounded fancy but only needed six ingredients, so I decided then and there to make my own adventure. A cooking extravaganza starring mushroom tuna casserole surprise!

Never mind that it then took me almost two hours to figure out what those six ingredients actually were and then to hunt them down in the store. It would be worth it when my sisters got home and I served them up a seriously gourmet meal. I’d even bought these fancy paper plates to serve it on!

So after opening cans and mixing things up and making a treacherous mess of the kitchen, I shoved my extremely fancy mushroom tuna casserole surprise into the oven for fifteen to twenty minutes. And then I sat back and waited for the girls. I figured
they
could clean up.
I
had had a hard day in the kitchen.

I sat on the front porch in this old creaky swing and watched the leaves blow around in the yard, but it was really too noisy, too windy, too icky. I miss a lot of things back home, but the very perfect weather may be at the top of my list. (Apollo has dropped a notch or two in the last couple of days. Don’t ask.) I mean, this humid thing that Athens, Georgia, has going on is wretched. It’s hot and wet and sticky, all at the same time. And right now it was raining,
hard
.

Just moments before the spectacular mushroom tuna casserole surprise would be ready, the girls stormed in, yelling and screaming at each other.

“Hey, yo,
stop!
” I yelled. They’d tracked mud into the house. In one brief moment it was everywhere. They looked horrible. They sounded worse.

“She embarrassed me to no end today. I mean, screaming and yelling like a—”

“She got herself into this mess and then she cried because she thinks she looks horrible, not because it was a complete and total disaster, not because we may fail—”

“And then to blame me when she herself joined the class after I told her no—”

“Did you know your sister is completely insane—”

“I bet she had a mirror in her pack all along and was just keeping it from me to be spiteful—”

“Quiet!
Both of you, take off those dirty clothes, clean up, and get ready for dinner, without arguing! I made a very fancy dinner tonight, a beautiful mushroom tuna casserole surprise, and you two are going to sit at that table and at the very least pretend to get along, just tonight, and you’re going to eat my incredibly luxurious mushroom tuna casserole surprise, every last bit of it, and you’re going to make small talk and you’re going to appreciate my incredible selflessness and you’re going to thank me profusely and…and…
now
!”

“What’s gotten into you, sis?” asked Era, totally calm now.

“I slaved over the hot stove to make this fantastic dinner for you two, to surprise you with my generosity and to show you how I can think of others like Daddy wants me to, and gosh darn it, you’re going to enjoy it.”

“Is there a freaky role-reversal thing going on here that nobody told me about?” Polly asked.

“Very funny. I just got into it, that’s all, and wanted to surprise you. Now go clean up, c’mon.”

“Fine,” swooshed Era.

“Sure, Thalia, and this was very sweet of you, thank you.”

“You’re welcome. Now go.”

As they headed for the bathroom, I heard Era whisper to Polly, “You do realize how ridiculous that was coming from her, right?” But I let it go.

They emerged from the bathroom fifteen minutes later. The mushroom tuna casserole surprise looked a little worse for wear, but I was nonetheless just as excited to serve them in a grand manner. We sat at our little yellow kitchen table. I lit the candles I had found in a drawer. I gave them each an embossed paper napkin (they had swans on them!) and dished them up a heaping portion each. Lastly, I served myself. Era almost dove right in, but I made her wait till we all had a helping.

Then I said, “Okay, now you can eat, and make sure you tell me how wonderful I am.”

They each took a bite, and I don’t think I have to tell you what came next. Rave reviews! Era told me it was delectable and said it was tantalizing. Polly gave me a triumphant thumbs-up.

Only it didn’t look like they were swallowing.

They were smiling, but I had to admit, their grins looked rather forced.

I took a bite and understood everything before it had even hit my throat. My mushroom tuna casserole surprise was delectably…disgusting. It had the flavor of wet dirt and salty seaweed combined with a big ol’ bag of worms. It was horrible. Worse than horrible. It was alarmingly atrocious.

We all sat there for a moment with a mouthful of wormy tuna casserole. And then, at once, all together, we burst into laughter, spraying slimy, gritty mushroom goo everywhere. Era’s mouthful, a particularly large mouthful, hit me squarely in the face, which only made her laugh harder. I picked up my spoon and scooped up a big old wad of the sandy gunk and whirled it her way, hitting her wet hair. Polly fell off her chair laughing.

Era and I both looked at Polly and grabbed our spoons. Polly, panicking, began to scooch herself backward across the kitchen floor, shaking her head no at us but laughing all the same. Just before we launched our spoons of mushroom sludge her way, she grabbed a new box of Choco-Stars off the counter and blocked our attack. She then opened the box and in one fell swoop grabbed a handful of stars and chucked them our way. Dozens of little Choco-Stars hung from the slimy goop dripping from Era’s curls. We each raced to a different cabinet. I grabbed
a can of whipped cream, popped the top, and sprayed away. Era got her hands on the pudding and tried to smear us into a chocolate death. Polly, after going through the entire box of Choco-Stars, grabbed the box of Sugar Os and proceeded to pelt us with sweet and tasty little zeros.

It didn’t last long. It didn’t have to. The room was annihilated in under fifteen minutes. Our once bright yellow kitchen was now mostly gray gook. There was pudding dripping from the ceiling. We were covered head to toe in a gruesome mixture of sweetness and slime. We lay back on the floor amid our handiwork and giggled furiously.

“Yum, I love whipped cream,” Era said, wiping a poof of it off her shirt and licking it. “It reminds me of the ambrosia back home.”

“Who is going to clean this up?” Polly said, still laughing but shaking her head.

“Not me,” I declared, “I made dinner!”

Era tossed one last spoonful of muck my way.

Yeah, I guess I deserved it.