Fifi pops up, eyes wide. “Don’t hear what?”
“I don’t know. There’s a noise.” I press my ear to the wall, hoping to figure out what it is. But all that does is muffle the sound, so I pull back.
“Is it something electronic?” Fifi suggests, looking between me and the mural. “Maybe the air conditioning is behind there or something.”
“I don’t think AC works that way. Besides, this sounds more like…” I pause for a second, trying to figure out how to describe it. “Music,” I finally decide. “It sounds like some kind of chant, but without words.”
“I wonder if it’s some kind of Aphrodite thing,” Arjun says as we start walking again. “Maybe the mosaics always make that noise, but we don’t hear it because we’re just walking by.”
“Maybe,” I agree, because it’s true that I’ve never been that close to the tiled walls before. Except my first night here when I was crouching down on the dance floor. But music was playing then—loud music—and there’s no way I couldhave heard anything. “That doesn’t explain why I was the only one who could hear it now, though.”
“Yeah, there’s that,” he sighs.
“Maybe you should just start listening whenever you pass one, Ellie,” Fifi suggests. “See if this is a onetime thing or if it happens all the time.”
“And if it happens all the time?” I ask, just the thought making my chest ache and my stomach churn. “What does that mean? And why can’t you guys hear it too?”
“I don’t know. Maybe it’s part of your gift—”
“Seeing tiles move?” I ask skeptically. “Hearing noises that aren’t there?”
“First of all, no one is saying the noises aren’t there. Just because we can’t hear them doesn’t mean something isn’t going on,” she tells me firmly. “I didn’t say it was your whole gift. Remember, we get our gift in small increments every year—maybe this is the beginning of yours.”
“Yeah, but aren’t we supposed to get them at the end of the year?” Arjun asks skeptically. “We’re only a week in.”
Fifi lifts a brow. “Are you going to tell Aphrodite when it’s okay to give a gift and when it isn’t?”
“No, of course not,” he sputters.
“Well, then, I say we don’t freak out about this until we have to. Let’s just see what happens for a while, and if it doesn’t go away, we can ask Levi what he thinks.”
As we make one more turn into a hallway lined with gummy-bear wallpaper instead of tile mosaics, the sound finally goes away. Which is something I’m thankful for—thelast thing I want is to have that noise in my head twenty-four seven.
But at the same time, it’s still really strange. I mean, if Fifi is right, what kind of gift has me hearing things like that? And what am I supposed to do with it?
It seems like ever since I got to Anaximander’s, all I have is questions without answers, and I’m sick of it. I know our curriculum is designed like that—to make us figure things out for ourselves. And I’m fine with it in class.
But I’m really sick of it in the rest of my life.
It would be nice—really nice—if, just once, things could happen the way I expect them to. The way I plan for them to.
I start to say as much to Fifi and Arjun, but before I can, we finally come to a pair of hot-pink double doors at the very end of the hallway.
“I think this is it!” Fifi exclaims as she throws the door open. “Welcome to the candy room!”
40.Meet and Sweet
I’M NOT SURE WHAT Iwas expecting when Fifi told me Aphrodite Hall had a candy room. Maybe a closet full of candy bars or several jars filled with brightly colored individual candies? Maybe even a few shelves with a bunch of fancy chocolates—she is the goddess of love, after all. But whatever I imagined, it doesn’t even come close to reality.
Then again, I think Arjun—and even Fifi, who’d been told about the place by her brother and sister—wasn’t any better prepared for what was waiting for us than I was. Because this isn’t some oversize coat closet filled with a dozen different candies or so.
No, this room is wild—and filled with more kinds of candy than I’ve seen in my entire life. And the smell—it’s somehow sweet and sour at the same time. And absolutely mouth-wateringly delicious. It’s also packed with other students, and I can definitely see why.
Two of the walls in the room are covered with the same gummy-bear wallpaper that’s in the hallway. But the other two are covered with strip after strip of white paper covered in multicolored candy buttons alternating with strips of sugar-coated, rainbow-colored sour strips.
Running the length of one of the gummy-bear walls is a row of the biggest candy dispensers I haveeverseen. Each one is filled with a different gummy candy—worms, frogs, bears, fruit shapes, building-block shapes, lightning bolts, flowers, hearts, owls. If you can think of the shape, it’s in one of these dispensers.
The opposite wall is also covered with dispensers, but these hold every small candy imaginable, from jelly beans to M&M’S and from Skittles to Hershey’s Kisses.
