by Anne Ursu
Charlotte nodded primly. “I didn’t want to miss math.”
With that, she took her seat, the whole class watching her with the wide-eyed respect with which we regard those who have survived a brush with death.
After class Zee stood by the door and waited for her, an anxious expression on his face. Charlotte gathered her books and headed toward him.
“Hey, Miels-sweat-ski!” a voice called from behind her. Charlotte recognized the dulcet tones of Chris Shapiro, who was as short as he was obnoxious—and he was plenty short. Chris had been calling her Miels-sweat-ski since the fourth grade, which was apparently when he first learned how to rhyme. Charlotte rolled her eyes and ignored him. She used to be bothered by Chris, but once you’ve faced the King of the Dead, the school bully isn’t quite so scary anymore.
“What happened?” Zee asked hurriedly when she reached him. “You had an accident? Are you all right? Is Aunt Tara all right?”
“Oh. No,” Charlotte said, looking around surreptitiously. “I was just late.”
Zee rolled his eyes. “You couldn’t have thought of that one when we were gone all night?”
“Hey, Zee!” someone called from down the hall. Zee waved over Charlotte’s head, and she turned to look. It was Jason! She turned back to her cousin.
“You know him?”
“Yeah. He’s on my soccer team. Just moved here.”
“Really?”
A sly smile crossed Zee’s face. “Yeah. Why?” he asked, in a way that indicated he already knew the answer.
Charlotte narrowed her eyes. “No reason.”
The cousins walked through the hallway together, moving resolutely against the endless tide of middle school students. Charlotte rarely got to see Zee these days. Even though he was family, she couldn’t hang out with him any more than she could with Maddy—since her parents had decided she was clearly a bad influence on her cousin. (Which was absolutely ridiculous, by the way. Charlotte had never sneaked out of the house before Zee came along, so if you just looked at the facts objectively, exactly who was a bad influence on whom? Hmmm?) He had all the same classes as she did, but those weren’t really a good time for meaningful communication, and Zee was too British to talk in class anyway. Charlotte could rarely catch Zee alone between classes because a pack of people always surrounded him, and seating was assigned at lunch. It was hard to do too much talking about the plight of the Dead when you were spending the whole hour passing Jim Foti the ketchup.
Still, whenever there was a chance, the cousins gravitated toward each other, huddling together instinctively, in the manner of two people who shared one awful secret. Maddy once asked Charlotte what she and Zee were always whispering about so portentously. Charlotte said Zee just took his science homework very seriously.
“How’ve you been?” Zee asked, lowering his voice conspiratorially.
“Same,” Charlotte said with a shrug.
“Yeah. Have you heard anything from Mr. Metos?”
Zee and Charlotte asked each other this question every few days. It was silly, of course; if one of them had heard anything, they would have told the other right away. But still, they asked. And the answer was always the same.
“No.” Charlotte shook her head.
There wasn’t anything to say, really. They’d been over it a thousand times with each other; they were stuck. There were things to fix in the world, and no one was going to let them even try to fix them because they were kids. Except they were kids who had defeated a coup in the Underworld; none of the grown-ups had done that. As far as Charlotte was concerned, it was the Prometheans who should be forced to endure algebra, cruel and unusual groundings, and school bullies with major Napoleon complexes, while Charlotte and Zee worked to save the Dead.
Zee glanced at Charlotte furtively, as if he were trying to make a decision about something. “Look, Char,” he said, his voice even more secretive. But then he stopped himself and, shaking his head dismissively, said, “Ah, nothing.”
“Oh, come on, what?” Zee went all reticent at the weirdest times.
Zee opened his mouth, but before he could speak, a melodious, dual-toned “Hi, Zee!” came floating down the hallway. Approaching them were two of Charlotte’s classmates, Ashley and Ashley, who did just about everything in unison. Charlotte didn’t know why they bothered being interested in Zee; they’d either have to share him or he’d need a double.
As the girls passed, they flashed huge smiles at Zee, and he blushed. He did that all the time. When he first came to the school he had happily interacted with every member of the female contingent of the eighth grade—until Charlotte mentioned that half the girls had a crush on him. She was trying to be nice at the time; she had had no idea that he turned into Zachary-the-Stammering-Nincompoop around any girl he liked or who liked him. And, since Zee didn’t know which girls belonged in that dread half, he had had no choice but to be embarrassed by all of them. As weird as it was, Charlotte found the whole thing rather reassuring, because it meant he would never, ever have a girlfriend.
They arrived in the hallway outside the gym, and Zee let out a small sigh and pulled Charlotte aside. “Look, Char,” he whispered, “this is probably nothing, but…I saw something….”
Charlotte’s eyes widened. “What?”
“I mean, I didn’t really see it, but—”
“Char! Zee!” The cousins moved apart as Maddy came hurrying toward them, wide-eyed. Zee gave Charlotte a dismissive wave of his hand, as if what he had to say really wasn’t that important. “Char, are you okay? I heard you got hit by a bus!”
Maddy and Zee listened while Charlotte reassured them of her safety. She couldn’t really explain why she’d been late that morning; what was she supposed to tell them, that she had a bad feeling and was distracted by an old guy in an aqua suit? Maddy would think she was nuts, and Zee might get a little too concerned.
At least Zee could be around Maddy. She was the exception to Zee’s girl weirdness—maybe because she was Charlotte’s best friend, Zee just had never thought of her romantically. Charlotte was glad, as it would be mighty uncomfortable if Zee went all social anxiety disorder every time Maddy was around. Plus he would probably freak out around Charlotte, too, and she didn’t know what she’d do without Zee.
“Come on, we’ll be late,” Maddy said, motioning to the locker rooms.
“That’s all right,” Zee muttered.
“Oh, you’ll be great,” Charlotte said with a grin.
“Oh, yeah, brilliant.”
On this day Zee was the one dreading gym, while Charlotte quite looked forward to it. For the last two weeks they’d been doing a gymnastics unit, and for once Charlotte was actually better at something athletic than Zee. Much better. (Gymnastics was one of the few units in eighth-grade PE that everyone had to do, boys and girls, and Charlotte thought that it was because Ms. Pimm enjoyed watching the boys try to do pirouettes as much as she did.) Her cousin, while he was able to manipulate a soccer ball like a virtuoso did a violin, performed a cartwheel with all the agility and grace of a morbidly obese grizzly bear.
After dressing, Charlotte strode out of the girls’ locker room wearing her school-issue scratchy Hartnett T-shirt and polyester shorts with pride. Maddy, too, had a degree of saunter in her walk—she was no gymnast but had had some years of ballet and would acquit herself quite nicely. They settled themselves cross-legged on the mat.
The boys emerged from their locker room, not in the usual parade of small groupings arranged by social status, but rather in one large group—united, at last, in fear. Zee, who usually wore athletic gear like another skin, suddenly looked gangly and awkward. Charlotte grinned and motioned him over.
“Hey!” she called. “Sit with us!” She patted the empty space next to her.
Zee looked sideways at her. “I’ve never seen you so happy to be in gym.”
“I’m just a naturally happy person,” she said.
“Uh-huh,” said Zee.
But in truth, his routine pr
oved to be not half-bad, though he couldn’t be said to be any good, either. He stumbled a bit on his split jump, and his cartwheel was really more of a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree spaz, but it could have been worse. In fact, for most of them it was worse. Lewis Larson got stuck trying to work his legs down into an attempt at a split. His twin brother, Larry, seized up during a back somersault and had to be helped out of position. Dov Stern leaned too far forward during a front fall and hit his face on the mat. Jack Liao spent a good thirty seconds trying to kick himself up into a headstand before rotating all the way over and falling on his butt.
As for Charlotte, she sailed through her routine, landing her front handspring perfectly (which she didn’t always do), and when she sat down, Maddy grinned at her.
When Maddy got up to do her routine, it was Charlotte’s turn to grin. Maddy was awfully graceful for someone who studied so much, and suddenly it seemed they were in an auditorium somewhere with velvet-lined curtains instead of in the Hartnett gym with its pervading odor of feet. Charlotte looked casually over at the rest of the kids, making sure they were paying attention. Her eyes landed on her cousin, who was certainly watching Maddy. In fact, he seemed to be watching her rather intently. In fact, he had a very odd expression on his face. At first Charlotte thought maybe he noticed something wrong with Maddy, but he didn’t have a there’s-something-wrong look on his face. No, he had a there’s-something-right look on his face, as if he had just seen Maddy for the first time.
Oh no.
CHAPTER 3
Charlotte Junior, Fish at Large
CHARLOTTE DECIDED SHE SHOULDN’T PANIC. MAYBE she hadn’t seen what she thought she’d seen. Maybe Zee was just really appreciating the wonder of gymnastics. Maybe he wasn’t going to turn into a complete freak around Maddy and make Charlotte’s social life even more pathetic than it already was—which you wouldn’t think would be possible, given she was grounded until she was thirty, but apparently it was.
She studied Zee carefully for some sign of change. She’d never seen him interested in a girl, so she didn’t really know what sort of changes might manifest. Still, there should be symptoms. Was his face flushed? Were his eyes dim and unfocused? Were there little cartoon birdies flying in circles around his head?
But Charlotte couldn’t get close enough to Zee find out. He bolted into the locker room after gym and always seemed to be with someone else between classes. Charlotte did notice that at lunch he very distinctly did not meet her eye, but she decided that that could be because of the pimple, which seemed to still be growing. She was surprised it didn’t throw off her balance during her routine.
Charlotte decided not to think too hard about the fact that Zee was acting exactly how you might expect someone who’d just realized he had a crush on your best friend to act—at least, if that someone were Zee. In addition to the fact that he now had to be terrified of the last girl in school that he could talk to, Zee would be all neurotic about Charlotte and how she’d feel about the whole thing. Honestly. The girls were always complaining that guys weren’t sensitive enough; Zee had enough sensitivity for the whole school, maybe the whole city.
And then, before English—which was the only class the three of them had together besides gym—Charlotte and Maddy were standing outside the classroom door talking (Charlotte may have waylaid Maddy there just to see what would happen, but she’d never admit it) and Zee came walking down the hallway. He was deep in conversation with Charlie and didn’t see them, so as he got closer Charlotte whispered to Maddy, “Hey, call him over.” Maddy complied, and as her voice reached him, Charlotte could see Zee’s cheeks darken and his eyes turn into small moons. He stood for a moment, frozen in full fight-or-flight mode, and then called back, “Um, I—I gotta go,” and made a break for the classroom.
Maddy looked at Charlotte, eyebrows raised. “What’s with him?”
Charlotte shook her head. “Nothing.” Maddy would figure it out soon enough. She’d be all excited, too, and Charlotte was going to have to break it to her that Zee was never going to speak to her again.
To make the day even more annoying, Charlotte had therapy after school. Every Thursday she had to miss gymnastics, which was the only fun thing in her life, so she could take a bus across town and have some woman in a pantsuit ask her about her feelings for fifty minutes. But since Charlotte had no intention of talking about her feelings, they didn’t have very much to do.
As Charlotte walked into Dr. Sorenson’s office that afternoon, she found herself in an even worse mood than usual. Today was the last gymnastics meet of the year and she’d be missing it. And the whole Zee/Maddy thing was going to be a complete nightmare. Plus it bothered her a little that Zee was acting weird around her—they’d survived the Underworld together, they couldn’t survive his crush on her best friend? He had to realize she couldn’t do any of this by herself.
In other words, instead of being defensive and sullen the way she usually was when she walked into therapy, today Charlotte was defensive and crabby. She wondered if Dr. Sorenson, as a highly trained adolescent psychologist, would notice the difference.
Charlotte plopped down in the overstuffed blue chair and crossed her arms. Next to her was a small table on which always sat a box of Kleenex. After several weeks, Charlotte finally figured out that this box was there in case she needed to cry. Like that was going to happen. Charlotte Mielswetzski wept for no one.
Perched carefully on a high-backed armchair, Dr. Sorenson gave Charlotte a businesslike smile. “How are you this week, Charlotte?”
Every week, Dr. Sorenson started the session by asking her how she was, and every week Charlotte said the same thing, “Fine.” Which wasn’t a lie, really—she was totally fine, if “fine” meant she was grounded for eight million years, her parents treated her like a degenerate, and she was awash in her own helplessness in the face of evil. It all depends on your point of view.
The trouble is in normal conversation, when someone asks you how you are and you say “Fine,” or some such, the first person usually says “Good,” or something like that and moves on. But apparently no one had ever told Dr. Sorenson the way normal conversations work, because every week, after Charlotte said, “Fine,” Dr. Sorenson just looked at her as if Charlotte was supposed to say more than that. Charlotte got pretty hip to that game quickly—the doctor knew Charlotte didn’t like silence and would eventually start talking just so someone was saying something, and then Charlotte would let something personal slip.
It was a devious plan, but Charlotte had outwitted far greater foes than Dr. Melinda Sorenson this year. If Dr. Sorenson wanted to play games, games Charlotte could play. So the first few moments of her therapy appointments were always spent in uncomfortable silence while Charlotte proceeded to stare at the goldfish on the psychologist’s desk and think of the many places she would rather be.
In her first session, Dr. Sorenson went into a big speech about how Charlotte should feel comfortable talking to her. “This is a safe space for you, Charlotte,” she had said. “You can say whatever you want. We can talk about whatever you want. You should think of it as blowing off steam, like writing in a diary or something, except I’m even better because you can bounce things off me and ask me questions. I’m on your side here—I’ll never tell your parents or anyone else what we talk about. I can assure you of that.”
Uh-huh, Charlotte thought.
“And,” she continued, “if you decide you want to tell me what happened to you last fall, I promise you that that, too, will remain between us.”
Right. All her parents had wanted since Charlotte had come back was to find out where she’d been and what she’d been doing—because obviously it had been something deeply awful, possibly criminal—and they were clearly paying this woman to find out so they could learn precisely how much of a juvenile delinquent their daughter was.
“So,” Dr. Sorenson asked after the requisite minute or so of silence, “how was your day? Did anything interesting happen?�
��
Yes. “No, not really.” The goldfish did a lazy lap around the bowl. Charlotte sympathized greatly with the fish—swimming around and around and getting absolutely nowhere. In her head, she thought of Dr. Sorenson’s fish as Charlotte Junior.
“Nothing at all?”
This was usually the time in the session where Charlotte thought of something completely random to talk about. Because, really, you had to fill the hour somehow.
“Have you ever seen anyone wear an aqua suit?” Charlotte asked.
Dr. Sorenson blinked. “A…what?”
“Aqua suit. Like aqua-colored?”
“No, I haven’t. Why?”
“There was a really old man outside school today. He must have been someone’s grandfather. He was wearing an aqua suit. An old-fashioned one with a vest and everything. And a bowler hat. An aqua bowler hat.”
Dr. Sorenson raised her eyebrows skeptically. “Really,” she said in an unconvinced voice.
Charlotte narrowed her eyes. “Yes, really!” She couldn’t believe it. Her highly prized psychologist didn’t believe her. What was that supposed to do for her self-esteem?
“Charlotte”—Dr. Sorenson sighed a long-suffering sigh—“I know you can be somewhat…colorful in the things you say. And I think sometimes you do that to mask what’s really going on inside your head. It’s a defense mechanism. But I think if you told me what you’re really thinking about, you’d find it would feel really good. It can be a relief to tell the truth.”
“Really,” Charlotte said flatly.
“Really! I promise!”
Fine. Charlotte straightened in her chair. “Well, I think I’d like to tell you what I was doing when I was gone all night.”
“Oh, Charlotte, that’s great. I really think you’ll be glad you did.”
Charlotte folded her arms. “I was saving the world.”
“You…what?”
Charlotte smiled and leaned forward, wide-eyed. “You see, Greek gods are actually real. Zeus and all that? Real. I know, I know, who knew, right? And there was this guy, Philonecron was his name. And he wanted to overthrow Hades, so he took kids’ shadows to make his army.”
