Lifestyles of Gods and Monsters

by Emily Roberson

  “Am I right?” he whispers.

  I nod.

  “Then why aren’t you happy about me ending it?”

  I look up, and on the wall across from us, the video of my mother continues. Now she is sunbathing on her stomach, her bikini top untied to better bronze her back. The camera pulls out, showing the island, the white sand beach, and the endless wine-dark sea beyond.

  For a moment there, I was a girl, talking to a boy. I had forgotten my mother. I almost forgot the maze.

  “I have to protect the Minotaur,” I say.

  “Why?” he asks.

  “I can’t tell you,” I whisper.

  “Can you tell anyone?” he asks.

  “No.”

  He laughs. “We’re quite a pair, aren’t we? I don’t know if there are two lonelier people on the island of Crete, or the whole world.” His voice is light, but his face has the same look it had when I came in the room, of hopelessness. I want to howl in kinship.

  We are sitting so close together.

  My pulse is racing.

  Then we are leaning toward each other, and it’s hard for me to say who touches who first. I am kissing Theseus, and I forget everything else.

  I am lost to everything but soft lips and breath and his arms wrapping around me. It doesn’t stop, until I have to pull away because it is too much.

  Theseus gently touches my lower lip. “I’ve been wanting to do that since I met you.”

  “Me too,” I hear myself saying. “Me too.”

  He leans in and kisses my neck gently, barely tickling my skin. His voice is so soft the microphones might not catch it. “Ariadne, I know you don’t want me to die. Please help me in the maze, and after I win, I’ll take you to Athens with me.”

  I want to be angry with him, but I can’t be. He doesn’t know why it’s so important that the Minotaur stay alive. I don’t doubt that he is telling me the truth. He would take me with him. Take me away from the cameras and The Labyrinth Contest and everything that I hate. But he’s asked me for the one thing I can never, ever do.

  “I can’t,” I say, shaking my head. “I can’t.”

  That’s when the walls start shaking.

  “I have to go,” I say, jumping up, unconsciously pulling the ball of thread out of my pocket.

  “What’s this?” Theseus asks. He turns my hand over and looks at the glint of silver in between my fingers.

  “Nothing important,” I say, slipping the thread back into my pocket, pretending it isn’t the most important thing in my life.

  “I have to go, Theseus. Good night.”

  “When will I see you again?” he asks, following me to the door.

  “I don’t know,” I say. “I don’t know.”

  As I leave the room, he says in a low voice, “You are going to help me. I know it.”

  It’s the last thing I hear as the door slides closed behind me.

  * * *

  I run to the entrance to the maze. Quickly, I get my retinal scan. Hook my thread into its place and wait for the emergency lighting to go on.

  I’m irritated at myself for not having rainboots. My flats are thin and the floor of the maze is wet. The whole time, Asterion’s breathing echoes off the walls around me, making my song small and insignificant against the noise.

  Finally, I hang my silver thread on the last hook, the one that tells the maze I’ve made it through.

  Asterion isn’t here. He’s out in the maze somewhere. He has never not been here by the time I get to his room.

  “Asterion,” I call, fighting to keep the apprehension out of my voice. “Asterion.”

  He is breathing somewhere close, but I can’t tell where he is, and I am frozen.

  My heart beats fast. “Asterion?” I say, and my voice is quiet, frightened.

  When he enters the room, his eyes are red and angry, and he swings his head from side to side.

  I fight to keep myself calm, but I feel like prey.

  “Asterion,” I say. “Asterion, look at me.”

  After a scary second, his eyes clear, back to their own sweet brown color, so sad. He signs, I’m sorry. I’m sorry.

  He makes the signs again and again, and I wrap my arms around him, petting the fur on the back of his giant head. I hold him as we sit together on the floor, and I wish I could cry. I want to cry for the boy he should be. For the girl I was. For everything. But I can’t.

  We are like that for a very long time. Then I stand up. I have to be strong, for Asterion.

  He is bloodied and cut from whatever he’s done in the maze.

  I go to the cabinet and get the towel and the bandages.

  I try to raise his spirits and mine. “The drawing is tomorrow,” I say. “They will get their numbers…”

  I can’t go on. Now that I know that Theseus will be one of them.

  My voice trails off.

  There’s nothing to say.

  When he’s finally calm, sitting on his bed, he sets the pottery bull beside him and looks up at me, searching and sad. Why? he signs, and then points at himself.

  “I don’t understand,” I say.

  He makes the sign again, then points at himself.

  “Why you?” I ask.

  He nods, making the signs again and again. Why me? Why me?

  “I don’t know, buddy,” I say. “I don’t know.”

  Asterion finally lays down on his bed. Don’t go, he signs.

  “No,” I say, “I’ll wait till you’re asleep.”

  As his breathing settles, I ask myself the same question over and over—is there anything that I can do to help him? Anything to end this?

  EIGHT

  The next morning, I wake up starving. I am still in my clothes from the night before, and I can barely remember coming upstairs, making my way down the hall, and stumbling into my bed.

  Checking my phone, I see that I have about twenty missed texts from Icarus. Must be something about the party last night. I’ll read them after I’ve washed off the grime of the maze.

  I look at Icarus’s messages while I eat the toast that arrived while I was in the shower.

  Call me—the first one says, from 9:15 pm, which must have been a few minutes after I went down to see Theseus. The party would have barely started.

  I wouldn’t have thought my sisters had much time to get into too much trouble.

  Seriously, call me—9:30.

  Oh my gods, Ariadne, call me—9:45.

  It goes on from there in escalating levels of excitement and profanity.

  I dial Icarus. He picks up after half a ring.

  “Oh my gods, Ariadne, where have you been?” he shouts.

  “Good morning to you, too, Icarus, did you have a good time at the party last night? Something exciting happen?”

  “I don’t want to talk to you about it on the phone. You have to see it,” he says.

  “When?” I ask.

  “Now. Right now. Seriously.”

  “Okay,” I say. “Let me get some shoes on.”

  I pull on jeans, a T-shirt, and some sneakers, then throw a bit of my breakfast toast into the fireplace as an offering and utter my usual prayer: Please remove the curse from my brother.

  I say it to the ceiling as I close my door. Maybe today someone is listening.

  I ride up to the 161st floor distracted. There are so many things on my mind—Theseus volunteering, Asterion’s suffering, Theseus’s lips on mine.

  I go through the retinal scan and then open the door to the control room, where I am met with a truly horrifying scene.

  The walls of the darkened room are covered in screens, and they all show the same scene. Me and Theseus. From every angle.

  Icarus is in his rolling chair, and he looks like he got exactly what he wanted for his birthday.

  Walking into a room with twenty big-screen televisions showing pictures of me? Not my favorite thing. And that’s in a normal situation—one that doesn’t involve a hot guy and whatever happened between us. Or did
n’t.

  Icarus spins toward me and stands up. He’s shaking his head, holding his arms wide in amazement.

  “Why didn’t you tell me you were going down to see Theseus?” he says, throwing his arms around me. He’s so happy. “If you’d told me, I could have sent a style team. I could have gotten you some better clothes. Some lip gloss…”

  I duck free from his hug. “It was an accident. It’s not what you think.”

  “An accident? An accident? A freaking gold mine, Ariadne, that’s what this is!”

  He runs to the keyboard, pushing his hair off his forehead. “Look here.” He points to a screen to his left, where he pulls in on a tight close-up. It’s when Theseus whispered in my ear. He kissed me there, right before he asked me to help him in the maze, and my neck tingles now, remembering his lips. I’m ashamed of myself, because he was asking me to betray my brother, and what I remember is that his lips felt nice on my neck.

  Stupid neck.

  “And this!” Icarus says, running over to another screen where you have a clear look at Theseus’s face when he was holding my hands, telling me that he knew me. Yeah, it’s intense.

  Icarus pulls up the same view from the other camera, where you can see me. He pauses the tape. “Look at your face,” he says. “Your face…”

  I do look at myself, and I have to look away because it’s embarrassing. How into him I am is as clear as can be, readable by any audience.

  “Girl,” Icarus says, “I didn’t even know you could look like that. I mean, that … That’s sexy—distill it, bottle it, and sell it, and you’d be a billionaire. Wait, you already are…” He holds out his arms in wonderment. “I mean, seriously, you get done talking to me and immediately go down to make out with him? Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I didn’t plan to go down to see him,” I say. “Also, I wasn’t making out with him. It was one kiss.”

  “One really intense, long kiss—” Icarus starts.

  I interrupt. “If you watched the video, you can see I went down there to ask him some questions, to see what he’s up to. Why he’s pretending.”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Icarus says. “Sure. That’s definitely why you went down there.” He rolls his eyes. “I should have guessed when I saw the first shots from day before yesterday … Look at these.”

  He pushes a few buttons and calls up video of me and Theseus in the VIP box.

  Theseus and I are having some pretty serious eye sex.

  “It’s going to take some careful editing, let me tell you,” Icarus says. “I’ll have to add some makeup to your face in post, but it will work for a setup. I could have done a much better job with the coverage if you’d told me.”

  I’m so confused. “If I’d told you what?”

  “That you wanted to be a plotline.”

  Oh no. This is not where I was going. I cross my arms over my chest. “Icarus, I don’t want to be a plotline. I went down to find out if I could change Theseus’s mind.”

  He sinks down into his chair, the happiness draining from his face. “You meant that?” His voice is matter-of-fact.

  “Yes, of course I meant it. What did you think I meant?”

  “I thought it was an excuse for you to go and see him. You must have wanted to be in a plotline.”

  “No,” I say. “I hate plotlines. You know that. That’s something my sisters do. Not me. They’re on the Paradoxes. Not me.”

  He stands and starts to pace. “You’re telling me that you thought you could waltz down to the accommodations and have a flirt-off with a competitor and not have that be turned into must-see viewing? You thought you could avoid the show? Because you don’t want to be on it?”

  “Icarus, you have to delete these,” I say.

  “Delete them? Delete them?” He’s shouting now. “I can’t delete them. We don’t delete video.”

  I have my hands on my hips. I’m not giving up.

  Icarus is still pacing and shouting. “There is one place, one place, in this whole Panopticon of a city, where you don’t have cameras on you. Do you know where that is? It’s right here, in this room.”

  There are not cameras at the center of the maze, either, but there’s no reason to mention that.

  “You have to listen to me—this is serious,” he says. “Anything you do that is interesting in this palace will be made into a show. The only reason that hasn’t happened to you before is that you’ve never done anything interesting before now. You went to see the prince of Athens, who volunteered to be a competitor. You two have stellar sexual chemistry, and he asked for your help on The Labyrinth Contest.”

  “You heard that?” I thought maybe he was quiet enough the microphones might have missed it.

  “Yes, yes, I heard that,” he says. “Of course I heard that.”

  He sits back into his chair, then presses a button on one of his screens, and there’s Theseus’s voice, whisper-soft. “Help me in the maze, and after I win, I’ll take you to Athens with me.”

  “I mean, what a great story!” Icarus says, spinning in his chair.

  The consequences are cascading through my head. The most basic rule of life on Crete is that we don’t betray Daddy. Not ever. That’s why Daedalus signed a lifetime contract. He has as much money as he ever needs for his projects and inventions, but he and Icarus can never not work here. When Icarus’s mother didn’t want to come to Crete, they left her behind.

  “Does Daddy think I’m going to help Theseus?” I ask. “That I’ll help our enemy?”

  Now Icarus is laughing. “You’re worried about your father? He’s over the moon. He knows you’ll never betray him. He thinks you’re a genius. He thinks you did this to build ratings. The Labyrinth Contest has been losing viewers. You know the problem as well as anybody. After ten years, people have stopped believing that it’s possible to beat the Minotaur. They’ve stopped believing that the competitors can win. But now? You’ve fixed it! People will believe…”

  “Because they think I’m helping Theseus,” I say.

  “Exactly! Forbidden love? The Keeper of the Maze unmasked? The chance the Minotaur will be beaten? Our ratings are going to be through the roof! By the time Theseus manages to get in your pants, the whole world is going to be talking about you two.”

  I can envision the storyboard Icarus is planning, and where it heads. I’ve seen this movie before, but it stars my sisters.

  “No,” I say, shaking my head. “He’s not getting in my pants! I don’t even want him there.”

  Icarus spins and looks at me hard. “Don’t give me that. I saw your face. You want this as much as he does.”

  Icarus and I have been friends for years. We’ve made fun of my sisters since The Cretan Paradoxes premiered. How can he believe that this is what I want? “Being attracted to someone and wanting to hook up with them on camera are not the same thing, don’t you know that? Stop, Icarus … Just stop. I can’t do this.”

  “Oh, you can, and you will. This is happening, Ariadne. So you’d better get ready. The advertisers are already lining up to increase their sponsorships for tonight’s show.”

  “For tonight?” I’m shouting now. “For the drawing? How do they know? You told them? Without asking me?”

  He stands up, putting his hands on my shoulders. “You’re wigging out,” he says, keeping his voice calm, “and you’re probably going to break a blood vessel in your eye, which makeup cannot cover, and looks like crap, so calm down.”

  He grins at me, turning on his charm, but I fight it, standing straight as a statue.

  “How could you?” I say through gritted teeth.

  His laugh is brittle. “You think I make these decisions. Adorable. Ariadne, I’m not in any position to say no. If you cared so much about your privacy, you shouldn’t have gone down there.”

  “What are they going to do to me?” I ask him quietly.

  “Turn you into a story.”

  I make it back to my room in a daze. I don’t know how to get out of this
. I am buzzing with anger. I want to smash the walls, I want to knock everything down. I wish I could cause an earthquake like the Minotaur, but I can’t do that. It wouldn’t help me anyway. A plotline?

  I can’t be in a plotline. That’s not a thing I do.

  I have to clear my head. For that, I need to move.

  I head out for a run, taking a different route than yesterday, avoiding everywhere I went with Theseus.

  I put on my headphones, turning the beats up loud enough that they can block out the voices in my head. Unfortunately, the volume dial doesn’t reach infinity.

  * * *

  Back in my room after my run, I stand under the stream of water in the shower, washing off the sweat and dirt of the road. I don’t know how long I’ve been in here. The steam fills the space around me, hiding me from myself. My eyelids droop. I was up way too late last night.

  A sharp rap on the shower door snaps me out of my daze.

  “I’m here!” My mother. She opens the shower door and turns the water off, like I’m a child.

  This isn’t normal for us.

  “Okay…,” I say, reaching out of the shower for the hook where my towel hangs. She holds it out of my grasp. She is smiling, which is not generally the expression her face wears when she is looking at me.

  “I’ve been waiting for this day for years!” She is ebullient.

  She still has my towel. I’m dripping wet and naked.

  “Can you explain everything after you give me my towel?”

  “Not until I have a look at you.” She looks me up and down, frowning. “Gods, Ariadne, you look like a satyr. When was the last time you depilated your legs?” She leans in closer. “Or your eyebrows?”

  “Mother…,” I say, working to keep my voice calm and grabbing my towel from her hand. I tuck it around myself, trying to regain some dignity.

  “Don’t be sullen, Ariadne, it doesn’t become you.” She stands next to me, looking at us both in the mirror, and tucks my wet hair back behind my ear. “I have longed for this day—the moment in a young girl’s life when she is ready to become a woman. I’m so pleased that I can be here to help you.”