Dr. Minthe grins at me. “I knew you had the soul of a fighter the moment I saw you, Penelope. This year’s hall competition is a scavenger hunt. Each hall will be provided with seven symbolic items to find—one to symbolize each of the seven evils that escaped from Pandora’s box. Whichever hall gets them first wins.”
“What do we win?” Sullivan calls. He looks almost as excited about the competition as I am.
“Self-respect, bragging rights, and—of course—a smallgift from the gods for every member of the hall that participates in the hunt.”
“What kind of gift?” Selene asks, suddenly looking alotmore interested.
“Whatever kind the gods deem appropriate,” Dr. Minthe answers. “More will become clear as the semester unwinds, but for now we tackle issues that were raised in class today.”
He lifts a hand, and four doorways appear in a circle around us in the pattern of north, south, east, and west on a compass. They’re very different from one another in color and design, though the one thing they all have in common is that the number six is tacked onto each of them.
“Now, instead of me dividing you into groups, I’m going to let you figure that out. All you have to do is pick a door and walk through it. Once you do, the number on the door will decrease by one. Once six people have walked through the same door, that door becomes locked until the six of you find the key to open it.”
“Are you sure there’s a key behind the door?” Paris asks, looking skeptical. Then again, he’s at the edges of our group and is in prime position to see behind at least two of the doors—unlike me, currently stuck right in the center of everyone. “I don’t see anything.”
“You will,” Dr. Minthe tells him in a way that feels as oddly mysterious as the rest of this place has been—which should freak me out, but somehow comforts me instead. Everything at Anaximander’s is challengingby design. Why should we expect our first assignment to be any different?
“Your goal is to walk through the door by yourself, work together to find the key in a chest, and then walk back out as a group. All who do that will receive highest honors on the assignment.”
“So, all we have to do is find the chest and get the key?” One of the other students—a girl of Asian descent with waist-length black hair—asks. She sounds almost as skeptical as Paris.
“Actually, the chest will make itself obvious to you right away,” Dr. Minthe tells her.
“So what’s the catch, then?” Sullivan asks. “There has to be one, or we’ll all be back with the key in ten seconds flat.”
“Thecatch, if you want to call it that, is that you have to figure out the right time to open the chest. If you open it too soon, you’ll be deterred from getting the key.”
“Deterred how?” It’s my turn to interrupt as visions of upside-down waterfalls and runaway keys dance through my head.
“That’s for you to find out,” he tells me with a wink. “But if you practice patience and learn what the myth has to teach you, the key will be there for the taking when you reach for it. The way this experience will go is completely in your hands and the hands of your group members.”
My stomach drops a little at the reminder that my fate will be in the hands of five other people. I know that’s how things are in real life too, but that doesn’t make it any easier to accept. I don’t know most of these people, and I don’t have a clue how they’ll react in a stressful situation. Not that Dr. Minthe actually said this would be stressful, but considering how thingshave gone down over the last twenty-four hours, I’m heading into this assuming the worst.
An assumption that feels justified when Dr. Minthe takes several large steps away from us. I start looking for Agatha—or who knows what—to attack, but he finally stops once he’s outside the boundaries of the makeshift circle made by the four doors.
Only then, when he’s put some serious distance between himself and the rest of us, does Dr. Minthe ask, “Are there any questions?”
Every person in the class shoots a hand straight into the air.
His laugh booms across the field. “That’s what I thought. It’s too bad I don’t have any answers to give…except this one.”
This time when he waves a hand, a giant, bright green30appears directly above our heads. “You each have thirty seconds to choose a door, or you’ll receive a zero and be disqualified from the activity.”
A flick of his fingers and the thirty rolls down to twenty-nine as we stand there gaping at it. At least until it hits twenty-eight. Then we all take off running.
“What door are you choosing?” Fifi asks as we race toward the edge of the circle.
“Whichever door I get to first,” I answer.
“Sounds like a plan to me,” Arjun agrees.
The red door with the stained-glass window is the closest, so I head there. But before we can reach it, Atlas, Selene, and two other students I haven’t met yet run through it. Which means there’s only room for two of us.
Not going to happen.
I pivot and race to the door to my right. We’re closest to the purple door with the grapes carved into it, but it’s already down to three and two more students are heading straight for it, so I bypass it and head for the other side of the circle.
The door on this side is teal and rounded at the top. It’s got roses and other flowers carved into it, and as of now, the number tacked to it still reads six.
