Heaven Sent (5 page)

B
oys
were the first thing on my mind the day after Daddy announced his ridiculous plan to make me marry Apollo. Well, namely, the stupidity of boys…

That morning I jumped out of bed and headed straight to the Beautorium. I needed a steam bath to clear my aching head, and I needed to talk to my sisters—who’d already been asleep when I’d gotten the news the night before. I recounted the story to Polly, Era, and Clio
*
, fittingly in a roomful of hot air.

Clio immediately put herself in charge of the engagement party. “Oh, it will be fun, Thalia. We haven’t had a good party in ages.”

“How can you say that? This isn’t about a party—this is my life.”

“Sorry, it’s just that I—I mean, we won’t have to sing at this party, just dance, with whomever we want. It will be so grand.”

“Hello? You’re not thinking here.” I pleaded with her to see it my way. “This means I am getting married. As in marriage, as in I won’t be around here much anymore. Can I get a little help, please?”

“I’m helping,” Clio said. “I’m crafting you the best party Olympus has ever seen!” And with that,
she left the steam room to go get her nails done.

“Era, Polly, what am I to do?”

“Well, Apollo is really handsome,” said Era.

“What? It’s just Apollo!” I said.

“Are you going to tell me, Thalia, that you have not noticed his creamy, most perfect skin? Or his piercing dark green eyes that fall soft when you are around? Or his incredibly round and firm behind?” asked Era.

“Stop! What are you saying?”

“I’m saying he’s gorgeous, male perfection, smart, sassy, and stunning!” said Era.

I was shocked, completely shocked that this was how my sister saw him. To me, he was the same boy I had played with in the clouds when I was five. The same boy who had eaten mud pies with me, courtesy of the Furies. Okay, so now that I thought about it, he had lost some of his baby fat. Maybe all of it. I wondered why I had never noticed.

“And jeez, besides being extraordinarily handsome, he is so sweet to you,” said Era.

“Yeah, well, yes, he is, but that, well, we’re friends. I am sweet to him, too.”

“Not exactly,” said Polly.

“What is that supposed to mean?” I asked.

“It’s just, well, you’re harsh with him; you tease him and make him do things for you. Thalia, you’re a little bossy,” Polly said.

“No, I’m not. I mean, that’s the way we are. We tease,” I explained.

“You still make fun of his lisp. He hasn’t had a lisp since you were eight!” Polly cried.

“He doesn’t have a lisp? Not since we were eight? Nooo.” I surely would’ve noticed that.

“It’s true,” said Era. “Apollo, he is fun, really fun. Remember that time that you and he and that Amazon from—”

“Sure, whatever. I mean, I know,” I practically yelled. “But I want to have a life of my own. I want to run in the Caledonian boar hunt and go on Crusades. I want to swim with the mermaids and fly with the eagles. I want to go on adventures. I can’t do those things if I get married.”

“But he’s so very kind, and wouldn’t he want you to go on adventures, too?” Era asked.

“Doubtful. Once you’re married, life as you know it stops. Or so it is in all the books, right, Polly?”

“Well, no, not always,” she said.

“In all those books I read…” I went on.

“All those books, eh? I can’t remember the last time I saw you pick up anything but that gossip scroll Hermes puts out,” said Polly.

“Anyway,” I continued, ignoring my sister, “it’s different after you get married. Look around. Do you know any adventurous couples? Take Daddy and Hera, for instance. Daddy’s full of life and excite
ment, and Hera sits on her throne all day long, just getting her hair done and polishing her jewels….”

“And what’s wrong with that?” asked Era.

“Puh-lease! Haven’t you been listening?” I moaned.

“You know, Thalia, I bet Apollo is different,” said Polly.

“You don’t know that,” I said. “Apollo—Apollo is stubborn, and he’s pretty high up there as far as gods go. Don’t you think I’d be expected to be the good little goddess? Stay at home, look pretty, wait patiently for him to come back from fighting monsters and giants and flooding cities and all those sorts of things?”

Era shook her head. “It’s just that, well, they’re not asking you to marry ol’ King Cepheus;
*
they’re asking you to marry Apollo, your best friend. Your very cute, very sexy best friend.”

“I know, I know, I know, but boys and marriage are not the magical key to a happy life.”

“Right,” said Era, as if she didn’t believe a word of it.

Polly had just been sitting there quietly, taking it all in.

Still, I think she knew in her heart that I was born to run with wolves and laugh with centaurs and slay dragons. She hadn’t ever said as much, but we had an understanding. She, too, believed boys and
marriage were not the key.

“You really don’t want to marry Apollo, do you? I mean, are you sure as sure can be?” asked Polly.

“Um, yes. Yes, I am,” I declared.

“Well, maybe you can run away,” suggested Polly.

But before I had a chance to even imagine it, she took her suggestion back. “No, Daddy would find you…anywhere.”

“Maybe I could marry Apollo in your place,” Era said.

“No!” I cried. That was not what I wanted, either.

“It was just a thought. Maybe you do want to marry him after all.”

“I do not. But you offering yourself to him is clearly not the answer.”

“Hey, I’m just trying to help,” said Era.

Hmpf.

“I’ve got it. You will get sick, really sick and horrid. And Apollo will not want you then,” suggested Polly.

“But I don’t want to be sick as much as I don’t want to marry Apollo.”

“Ah, but what if you weren’t really sick?” said Polly.

“Okay, where are you going with this?”

She paused, deep in thought, and Era and I both hung on her breath, waiting for her words.

“What if you go and apologize to Daddy and what if you tell him you made a mistake, you will indeed marry Apollo. Then at the grand engagement party
you become frighteningly sick with—with—with Scyllia disease! Oh, oh, oh, your head will sprout serpents and you’ll sprout extra limbs and you will be covered in the smelliest of sea scum and Apollo simply will not want you then.”

“Polly, there is no known cure for Scyllia—even Daddy cannot cure it.”

“Exactly!”

“I’m still not following you.”

“Me neither,” said Era.

“The other day the Furies came to visit Hera. I overheard them talking and, well, Hera was out to punish Pegasus because he has repeatedly gotten into mischief at your orders instead of obeying hers. The Furies had brought Hera this book—it was a book of Hades’s secret spells, and they were showing her how she could freeze Pegasus’s wings without any of us knowing how or why it happened. I was shocked, and I just hid out of sight, listening in. They became distracted moments later when Hera had to show off her latest jewels Daddy got her, and, well, I—I sort of stole the spell book. I know it’s not
right, and I was so sick with myself that I didn’t tell anyone. But you see, I’ve been reading it, I couldn’t help myself, and you know, it’s actually extraordinarily fascinating.”

“You shouldn’t feel bad—you saved dear Pegasus from frozen wings!” I cried.

“But stealing is not right. I still can’t believe I did it. Anyway, I do recall a spell contained in the pages of the book. I believe it went something like this—if three of us put our powers into Hera’s charmeuse bag with a snip of the hair of a young goat boy, we three could give you a proxy of the disease that will last but twenty-four hours.”

“My smartest little white witch of a sister, you are a savior! It’s brilliant!” I declared.

“Wait a second—I dunno. We could get in a heap of trouble for this,” said Era fearfully. “Maybe you can just leave me out?”

“But we need you, Era,” I all but screamed. “The two of us alone cannot do it—we need a third, plus you are the only one of us who can get close enough to a goat boy to snatch a lock of hair.”

“True, true. The goat boys do love me. But I just don’t know. If Father finds out, he will be so very angry.”

“Please, Era, even Polly’s willing, and you know how straight and narrow she is. I mean, she’s like our most uptight sister and…”

“Hey! Be nice. I came up with this ‘brilliant’ plan, remember?”

“Right, sorry. So Era, please? For me? I cannot marry, I just cannot.”

“Well,” Era said, breaking into a proud grin, “I really don’t see what the big deal is, but since you seem so adamant and, well, because I love you so very much and, well, since Polly is going along with it and, well, you do need me, don’t you?”

“Thank you! You’re saving my life, really, Era, you are. Both of you are. You are saving my life.”

A sense of relief flooded over me. Maybe there was a way out of this after all. But a nagging question stood out in the back of my mind. Didn’t Hera or the Furies notice that their spell book had gone missing? And if so, what were they doing about it?

For some reason, the hairs on the back of my neck stood up at the thought. It made me wish I knew what the Furies were doing right at that very moment, just so I could make sure that, whatever it was, it had nothing to do with me or my sisters….

We choose to pick on the Muses of nine,

Not for their behavior, nor their bustlines,

But because of their annoyingly sweet little actions

And their loathsome and trite self-satisfactions.

It goes but against our Furies credo:

Be dark and mysterious complete with bad mojo!

Are these three so foolish that they forgot to check

Who was listening in on their devious dreck?

Apollo was to be Tizzie’s love of her life,

But now he wants Thalia to be his lil’ wife?

Well, horrors on her and demons on him,

We’ll turn their plan upside down and out on a limb.

Those three can give Thalia the Scyllia disease,

But the very first person she touches will feel dizzy,

And then they too will turn all ugly and smelly,

Their skin will become mutant green mint jelly,

And that person will have Scyllia for good,

Not some twenty-four-hour fake gobbledygook.

And who do you think she shall touch that first time?

Our dear Apollo for sure—we’d bet our fine rhymes!

Apollo will never love anyone evermore,

And on those three Muses we will even the score.

A
nyway, back to the life on earth.

We’d been in Athens, Georgia, for a week, and yet we’d had not one opportunity to complete Daddy’s challenge. No progress whatsoever. Zilch. Zero.

“I just love these Pop-Tarts—we need to get more, okay?” said Era, sitting on the ground in the middle of the school quad, scarfing down cold Pop-Tarts one after the other.

“I guess. Personally, I don’t know how you eat that stuff. And for lunch? It’s so sugary sweet. I think you need some more carrots in your diet,” replied Polly. “And something green, too.” Era rolled her eyes, but she picked a piece of celery off Polly’s plate and started gnawing on that—wincing the whole time.

“So, we made it,” I said cheerily. “One official school week. How do you feel?”

“I feel good. Although I wish we could eat lunch together every day like this. That part doesn’t seem fair,” said Era.

On Fridays the whole school had lunch at the same period. Otherwise Era and I were together for the first half of the day, then from there we were all separated. It wasn’t that bad—I got to eat with Claire and her friends Pocky and Hammerhead, and they made me laugh.

Era continued. “But, you know, I quite like it here. The scenery is nice. Very nice.” At that moment a
young football stud, Jimmy J. Johnson, went walking by. I was plenty sure Era wasn’t speaking of the plants, which, while attractive enough, weren’t nearly as spectacular as back home. No, my bets were on Jimmy J.

Jimmy J. took a seat with my backroom archnemeses, the three witches from science. “See those girls?” I said, pointing them out to Polly. “Claire calls them the Backroom Betties because they always sit in the back of the classroom and gossip. They hate me and Era, and for what reason?”

“They especially hate you,” Era said matter-of-factly.

“But why do they hate me at all?” I moaned.

“It’s simple,” Era replied. “You’re smart. And gorgeous.”

“Really? You think I’m smart? And gorgeous? My beautiful sister, well, aren’t you just the sweetest. But those are not reasons to hate someone.”

“Thalia, you know better than that. Jealousy is just as alive and well on earth as it was on Olympus.”

These were wise words coming from my sister’s mouth. Especially that part about me being smart and foxy. Maybe this place was truly having a positive effect on Era. I couldn’t say the same thing for my elder sib, though. Polly was sitting with us physically, but her mind was obviously somewhere else.

“Yo, Polly. What’s up?” I asked.

Nothing. She said nothing.

“Polly, hello, earth to Polly. What on earth has got you all mystified and tongue-tied?” I asked, making a little rhyme.

“What? Oh, it’s nothing. Math. Algebra. That’s all.”

“You’re daydreaming about algebra? You are not related to me,” said Era.

My thoughts exactly.

“Um, English. I have a big test in my English literature class,” Polly said distractedly.

“Literature is your best subject. What’s the matter with you? Are you sick?” I wondered.

“Fine, I’m…perfectly fine,” she muttered.

I watched her eyes follow this young, black-clad guy with thick, long hair and one of those I’m-trying-to-grow-a-beard-but-I’m-just-too-young faces. He came out of the math building, crossed the quad, and went into the English building. There was a look of pain on his face, like the instrument he had slung on his back (which looked like some kind of wooden, oddly shaped harp or something) was just too heavy for his delicate frame. And something about him looked familiar, but I couldn’t place him. In any case, he kind of seemed like a weenie to me. A moderately cute weenie. But then, Claire said half the boys at school were weenies.

Surely my sister was not looking at this guy. No, it was impossible. I didn’t even bother to pursue it.

“So, what do you both think I should do about
those torturous Backroom Betties? Polly, they taunt us and tease us throughout class, especially me. Mr. Zeitland is simply clueless. They pass notes around making fun of my clothes, and they’ve begun to start rumors about my past. Oh, this one was rich—on Wednesday the ‘note of the day’ said, ‘We heard Thalia was born of freakish circus stars. Pass it on.’ I got it from Claire; she intercepted. I swear, it takes all my willpower to keep from turning them into black-footed frog-lizards.”

“Don’t worry about it,” said Polly absentmindedly.

“But they’re making fun of you, too, when they say that. If my parents are freakish circus stars, so are yours.”

“What are freakish circus stars?” asked Era.

“Well, I had to ask Claire that, too, and she said they are traveling performers who live out of trailers and juggle balls and wear clownish makeup and train lions and stuff.”

“That doesn’t sound all that bad to me,” said Era.

“Yeah, I know. But Claire made it sound like it was awful, so I assumed it must be. I swear people have started to look at me funny in the halls,” I said.
If only they knew who our
real
father was.

“You know,” I mused. “It’s only been a week since we were banished, and I’ve sort of forgotten Daddy. It’s not like he ever spends time with us, anyway, since Hera came along. And he never lets us have any fun.”

“Well, on Olympus we got to dance and sing and play twenty-four hours a day. What about that don’t you call fun?” said Era. Then she added, “I miss home.”

I expected Polly to mimic Era, like my old parrot Wilhemina, but she didn’t. She didn’t mention home. She looked off, toward the English building, in a daze.

“’Course, home doesn’t come with Jimmy J. Look at his fine behind. Even the gods back home don’t have rear ends like that.” Era’s homesickness had lasted all of five seconds.

“Beware, though, after spending ten minutes with those Backroom Betties, Jimmy J. will think you not only have circus freaks for parents, but that you smell of cabbage and don’t wash your socks. That would be Tuesday’s and Thursday’s Thalia-bashing notes. And, well, you are my sister, a geek by association.”

“You
don’t
wash your socks,” said Polly, back from some other universe.

“Nice of you to join us,” I said.

“What?”

“Polly, can you pay attention to us for, like, five whole minutes?”

“Oh, right, the world revolves around Thalia; I must pay attention to Thalia. So sorry, Miss Thalia, high priestess of the galaxy.”

“Okay, I did not deserve that. What is the matter with you, Polly? Why are you so—so—so on edge?”

“I’m simply not in the mood to chatter on about silly spiteful girls or cute-butted Johnny Jims or cabbage breath,” she said defensively.

Well, she was sort of paying attention.

But then
he
walked by. Out of the English building, through the quad, and right by our bench. The long-haired guy with the pained look. He waved coolly at the Backroom Betties, winked at a pretty cheerleader, slapped high five with a random jock or two, and then pitched his chin my sister’s way. My
big
sister’s way. And Polly’s eyes followed him every step of his journey. He nodded at her, smiled a sly sideways smile, and kept walking. My sister never blinked. She watched him, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. And I swear, right when he passed our bench, she gasped quickly and quietly for air.

Era didn’t notice him. She was too busy straining to hear what the Backroom Betties were saying to Jimmy J. But I saw him. And I saw my sister see him.

It was the same guy, the very same guy from the grocery store.

“You like him,” I blurted out.

“What? Who? No,” she said, unconvincingly, I might add.

“Yes, you do. Oh my gosh. Polly, you like him.”

“Thalia, I’m not here to meet boys. I just want to make Daddy proud and go back home. I do not like him. I don’t.” This time she said it firmly, but then she smiled a teensy, tiny little smile. My heart clenched.

Why did I feel so protective all of a sudden? It wasn’t like me to worry about my big sister. So
what
if Polly had a crush on someone? It might loosen her up a bit.
Besides,
I reasoned,
Polly’s smart enough to handle a little romance.
He wasn’t
that
bad. He was kinda cute in a scruffy sorta way. If Polly liked Mr. No Shave, I decided, it was her right, and I would help her have him. Then another thought occurred to me. Daddy
had
said I should put others before myself. And he did say that Polly should find a life of her own. Maybe we could slay two dragons with one stone. Maybe we’d be on our way home sooner than we’d thought. And even though I kind of liked it here, I had to admit it wasn’t as exciting as I’d hoped. I missed using my powers. I missed Apollo. Not that I thought he would ever talk to me again.

“Well, I gotta get to class. I will meet you two after school right here, okay?” I said. I needed to get started on my new mission ASAP.

“Why are you going to class so soon, Thalia?”
asked Era. “We still have ten minutes before the dingdong rings.”

“Yeah, I know, but I have some stuff I must do for, uh”—I looked down at the folded sheets of paper lying on the table in front of me—“the school paper. See you girls later,” I said, and I dashed.

As I walked away I could hear Era wondering aloud, “Since when is she on the school paper?”