“Absolutely!” Levi agrees. “I say we go for the syringe.”
“That’s what I was going to go for!” another guy shouts from the crowd.
“And here I figured you’d want the broken mirror,” Levi taunts him.
“Only if you want my hotness to mend it,” the guy calls right back as he fake primps.
Everyone on the roof laughs at their clowning, and soon several people are talking about trying to find something on the scavenger hunt list. It’s not everybody—to be honest, it’s not even half the people—but it’s more than we had a littlewhile ago, so I’m going to call that a win. Right after I thank Levi and Darcy.
“All right, now that that’s settled,” Dr. Dione says loudly enough to be heard over the din. “Pizza’s here.”
A wave of her hand has the food table in the center of the roof filling with dozens of boxes of pizza—which puts an end to the discussion once and for all.
As people file toward the food, Dr. Dione turns to Fifi and me. “Nice job, ladies. It’s been quite some time since anyone’s been able to motivate Aphrodite Hall to participate in the myth competition. I must say, I’m impressed.”
And then she turns and walks away, calling, “Pizza boxes don’t belong on your head, Mischa!”
But Fifi and I are too busy grinning at each other to try and see what Mischa is or is not doing with the pizza boxes.
“Thanks,” I whisper as Fifi throws her arms around me in a huge hug. “I couldn’t have done that without you.”
“Maybe, maybe not,” she answers. “But isn’t it great you won’t ever have to try?”
41.I Feel the School Move Under My Feet
FIFI’S WORDS STAY WITH MEfor that night and the next few weeks as my roommate truly does become the best friend I’ve ever had. We eat pretty much every meal together, hang out together—along with Arjun—almost all the time, search (obsessively and with no luck) for clues to the Pandora’s box objects, and have even started hanging out a little bit with each other’s siblings.
To be fair, I think Levi and Charlie are amazing, and while Fifi tolerates Paris, I’m pretty sure she believes that life with all the Athenas—and in particular his ridiculous, inexplicable crush on Rhea—is making him a little bit obnoxious. I tend to try to play it off as no big deal, but the truth is, sometimes I think she might be right.
Like last night, for instance. The whole group of us had spent the entire day studying for our first big exam in logicclass today, and Fifi, Arjun, Sullivan, and I decided to spend the time after dinner watching a movie.
Paris—my brother who loves video games and his PlayStation Portal more than anything on the planet—started acting like I was the biggest slacker in the world. And when I suggested we break to get some snacks from the Aphrodite kitchen because it’s Mexican food night and everything is amazing, he got super mad and said I wasn’t concentrating.
After that, I told him to chill out, that tacos and empanadas are brain food. He disagreed, telling me baked fish like they serve at Athena Hall is the best brain food, and when we disagreed, he got so mad that he and Rhea packed up their stuff and left—though I did notice they both emptied the candy bowls we filled before they got here into their backpacks before departure.
Apparently celery sticks and peanut butter and another three hours of studying material we all already knew was more important to Paris than hanging out with his sister and having just a little bit of fun.
In the end, I went back to my room to study too. Not because I really thought I needed to—I know the information backward and forward—but because the Penelope who came to Anaximander’s several weeks ago would have done just that. The girl who was sure she was an Athena, who hadn’t been sorted into Aphrodite Hall and become best friends with a girl who taught her that sometimes it’s okay to just have fun.
When I’m around Paris, I can find him searching for thatgirl, wondering where she went, and I hate that for him—hate that for us. We’re twins. Aren’t we supposed to know each other better than anybody else in the world?
My guilt only gets worse when I’m alone, because sometimes I can’t help wondering if maybe Fifi and Arjun are right. Maybe there is more to life than knowing every single answer in every single class before anyone else does.
I don’t know if that’s true for me yet, but I know I’m thinking about it, which is something I never used to do. And something Paris obviously still hasn’t thought to do.
I haven’t talked to him since he walked out, even though I tried texting him last night and this morning. He hasn’t answered yet, but that’s fairly typical for him. Instead of exploding, Paris tends to go super quiet when he’s mad. I just hope he’ll talk to me after the exam today and we can figure it out. Even if I don’t quite know what I want to say to him.
“You ready for the test?” Fifi asks Arjun as we walk past the amphitheater on the way to the arts building for our logic class.
A quick glance inside tells me PT is back to work on the cauldron for what has to be the fifth time now. He lifts a hand when he sees me and I wave back, because there’s just something likable about him and his determination to get the job done.
“Absolutely,” Arjun tells her with a truly impressive level of confidence. “Though I was thinking about my paper for myths class when I was in bed last night and I started wondering about why Zeus really locked up the Titans.”
“What do you mean?” Fifi looks confused. “There was a huge war and the Titans did very bad things, so Zeus imprisoned them in Tartarus so they couldn’t do any more damage to the world. He didn’t want them to hurt any more people.”
“But were there actually people to be hurt?” I counter, because this is something I’ve been thinking about a lot too. “Prometheus was a Titan, and Zeus chose not to imprison him because he fought on his side against Cronus and the others. After that, he even charged Prometheus with creating humanity. So what people was he actually protecting when he locked the Titans up? And why was giving humanity fire so bad that Prometheus ended up being punished for an eternity when he had been one of Zeus’s favorites before? If you dig a little, the stories don’t make a lot of sense.”
“I didn’t even think of it like that,” Arjun says after a few seconds of staring at me with his mouth open. “I was just wondering if there was an alternative motive to locking them up. Like, did it help Zeus to get them out of the way? But when you say it like that, things look a lot murkier than I thought.”
