Aphrodite the Fair

by Joan Holub

  “It felt like a plain ol’ trophy to you.” A plain ol’ trophy to . . . him! Him–a guy. And probably to other guys, as well. But maybe for some unknown reason it was more than that to girls!

  It had been a trick answer. Eris hadn’t exactly lied about the enchantment. She just hadn’t been completely truthful. Question was, now that he knew what he thought he knew, what could he do about it?

  9

  Meow!

  Aphrodite

  AFTER CHEER PRACTICE APHRODITE STOMPED upstairs to the girls’ dorm, steaming mad. She and Athena had gotten into a big argument over nothing just now. Over a silly cheer move. Artemis and Persephone had tried to calm things down, but finally they’d just ended practice early. Her stomach was all jumpy now, and she felt horrible that she was on the outs with one of her best friends. That never happened! Till recently.

  What was going on around here? she wondered as she threw open the door to her room. Lately, she hardly knew herself at times. Could Eris’s influence as the goddess of strife and discord truly be affecting her behavior? She didn’t think so. But it was almost like one of Pandora’s trouble bubbles had bonked her again, changing her personality. Only that box of troubles was long gone now. So that couldn’t be it. Must be the stress of this contest, that’s all.

  Hey! Her eyes narrowed. Maybe Athena was trying to upset her on purpose so she wouldn’t be able to study. They both had a quiz this Friday in their first-period Hero-ology class. And naturally, Athena would want to get the best possible score on it since that would be the last day of the contest. And it wouldn’t hurt if Aphrodite’s score was subpar because she’d been too wound up to study, right? Opening her closet, she carefully stashed her pom-poms in their box on the shelf. She was mad, but that didn’t mean she was going to be messy!

  Mew! Adonis had awakened from his nap on her bed and padded over to see her. “Hi there, cutie,” Aphrodite said to him as she sat down at her desk. She grabbed her Hero-ology textscroll and a pen. After opening the scroll with one hand, she dangled the pink feather end of her pen over the side of her chair. Adonis went wild, batting at the feather with his snowy white front paws and making her giggle.

  “I’ve missed you,” she crooned to him. Which was so true! Because the normally friendly kitten disliked Eris so much, and because Eris was spending every other night here with Aphrodite, Persephone had been keeping him at her house ever since Ares’s party.

  “It was so nice of Persephone to bring you for a sleepover with me tonight, sweetie petey,” she cooed, lifting the kitten onto her desk. Eris was sleeping in Athena’s room tonight, so the coast was clear for her to keep him.

  Absently, she played with the kitten as she tried to study. But her thoughts kept returning to the contest. To pull a win out of the bag–and win the trophy out of Eris’s bag–her team was going to have to do really, really well between now and Friday. Athena’s team was ahead. Only by a few points. Still, it had her worried.

  “Think I should have organized my team into study groups like Athena?” she asked Adonis. He rolled onto his back so she could rub his white tummy. “Too late now, anyway, with only two days to go. Maybe my pep talk earlier today will motivate them to step up their study efforts the next couple of days, though, right?” She sure hoped her team members weren’t as stressed out as she was from all the tension around MOA.

  Sighing she picked up Adonis and set him on her spare bed to take a nap. Back at her desk, she forced herself to concentrate on her textscroll and study notes.

  Two hours later, the door flew open. Startled, Aphrodite looked up as Eris barged in without knocking.

  “Pandora and Medusa had a little tiff or something, so Pandora’s back with Athena tonight,” Eris informed her. “Which means you and I are roomies again till Friday. Hope you don’t mind.” Without even looking around, she tossed the bag containing her trophy onto Aphrodite’s spare bed.

  Adonis reacted to Eris’s arrival–and her bag almost landing on top of him!–with a loud scaredy-cat screech. “ME-OW!” He leaped from the bed to Aphrodite’s desk to the shelf above it, knocking off two bottles of nail polish.

  “Adonis! You’re back!” Eagerly, Eris reached up to grab him.

  Sssst! The kitten arched his back and hissed until she withdrew her hands. Looking freaked out, he took a series of jumps over to Aphrodite’s bed, then burrowed under the coverlet to hide.

  “Don’t be a fraidy cat, Adonis! Calm down,” Aphrodite scolded in a soft voice. Going over to her bed, she gave him a pat through the covers.

  “S’okay,” Eris said, shaking her head. But there was hurt in her voice as she added, “I have a bad effect on animals.” Then she added more quietly, “And people, too. I had a few friends at Corinthian, though. Before the roof incident, anyway.” The word “incident” made Aphrodite smile to herself.

  “What?” asked Eris, frowning at her.

  “Oh, nothing,” said Aphrodite. She went back to her desk to roll up her textscroll and stow it away. Glancing over her shoulder at Eris, she said, “It’s just that my friends tease me about that word–‘incident.’ Apparently, I use it for every occasion, from something that happens at a party to something that starts a war.”

  A smile tugged at Eris’s lips. As she shifted her black bag so she could sit on the spare bed, a blue letterscroll with her name on it in big block letters slid out and onto the floor, drawing both their gazes.

  “What’s that?” Aphrodite asked. “A message from some admirer, perhaps?” As the goddessgirl of love, she was always on the lookout for signs of romance. Though in this case she was probably way off base. Given Eris’s troublesome nature, not many boys would likely be drawn to her.

  However, to Aphrodite’s surprise, Eris blushed. Then, recovering herself, she snapped, “It’s nothing. Just because you’re the goddessgirl of love, don’t suppose there’s love everywhere you look!” After grabbing the letterscroll, she stuffed it back in her bag. Then she took out the trophy and began to polish it.

  The second she caught sight of the trophy, Aphrodite’s fingers itched to hold it. However, for the first time, she noticed that Eris herself seemed enamored of the trophy too. She wasn’t going to change her mind about giving it away as a prize, Aphrodite hoped. Maybe she was just polishing it now to soothe herself after Adonis’s rejection. Though she’d acted as if she was used to that kind of thing happening, it still had to hurt. Everyone wanted to be liked. Especially by babies and pets. It would certainly hurt her feelings, not to mention embarrass her, if Adonis treated her like he did Eris.

  She wondered what it would be like to be Eris, feeding on turmoil and strife most of the time. Seemed like it would make a person unhappy. Miserable, in fact. And people who feel miserable sometimes create misery for others. Kind of a vicious cycle.

  Aphrodite left her desk and went to sit cross-legged on her bed, opposite Eris on the spare one. She put one hand on the lump that was Adonis and petted him through the covers. With her other hand, she grabbed a heart-shaped red pillow and hugged it to her chest.

  “So what did you do today?” she asked Eris brightly. Maybe she could make up for Adonis’s rejection by giving the girl some positive attention. In all the turmoil lately, she hadn’t had much chance to buddy up to Ares’s sister as she’d originally intended to. She still held out hope they’d become more sisterly.

  Eris just kept rubbing the golden apple at the top of the trophy until it shone as bright as a torchlight. “Keeping track of team scores takes time,” was all she said. “I told you that Athena’s team is several points ahead of yours, right?”

  Aphrodite clutched the pillow she held more tightly and nodded as worry filled her once more. Had she studied enough for Friday’s test? Should she go around the dorm and spot-check that her team members were studying for their tests too?

  “So what do you think?” Eris asked, holding the gleaming trophy out to Aphrodite at last. “Really awesome, isn’t it?”

  Aphrodite drop
ped the pillow and eagerly reached out. As soon as she grasped the trophy, her desire to possess it forever seized her anew. “It really is the most beautiful trophy imagineable,” she crooned. “Oh, I just have to win it!”

  Running her fingers back and forth over the words “For the Fairest,” she gazed dreamily at an empty spot she’d cleared on her shelf. She planned to display the golden apple trophy there where she could see it every morning when she woke up. Or maybe Principal Zeus would want to put it in a place of honor in the display case down on the first floor of the school. No! Then she wouldn’t be able to hold it and–

  “I’m tired. Let’s hit the sack,” said Eris. When she snatched the trophy back, Aphrodite felt an overwhelming sense of loss.

  Eris bent to stuff the trophy back in her bag. “Rip!” At the small sound, a tear appeared in the seam of the chiton she wore. It was the cotton-candy pink one that Aphrodite had worn especially for Ares’s birthday party. It used to be one of her favorite chitons, but now there were a half dozen similar rips in it. She remembered that her chitons had all seemed a bit large and long on Eris the first few days she’d worn them. However, now every one of them seemed a little too tight and short.

  Her gaze met Eris’s. The girl’s eyes were gleaming even brighter than the trophy! And it seemed to Aphrodite that Ares’s sister grew a couple of inches taller right then and there. It was her sense of power that fed her growth, Ares had said. Did that mean she thought she had some power over Aphrodite?

  • • •

  When Aphrodite awoke the next morning, she was lying on her back and Adonis was sitting on top of her, cleaning his soft white paws. He’d spent the whole night in her bed, probably so she’d “protect” him from Eris.

  “Morning, cuddlykins. Just one more day till we win that trophy-wophy,” she cooed to him. Hugging him, she stared at the empty spot on her shelf again.

  Eris was already gone. The spare bed was a mess, covers half off the mattress and pillows every which way. After cleaning Adonis’s cat box and filling his water bowl from the bathroom sink down the hall, Aphrodite poured fresh cat food into his food bowl. Then, with a sigh, she cleaned up the mess Eris had left behind: crumpled chitons strewn on the closet floor and, scattered across her spare desk, open pots of makeup and a spilled bottle of nail polish.

  “See you later, cutie wootie,” she sang out to Adonis as she left for breakfast a half hour later. After blowing him a kiss, she started down the hall.

  “Hey, Aphrodite, wait up!” Ares called to her as she moved down the marble staircase a minute later. She watched him take the stairs two at a time from the boys’ dorm a floor above. When he caught up to her, he announced, “I think that trophy of my sister’s is enchanted after all!”

  “What?” scoffed Aphrodite. “That’s crazy. You held it yourself and said it was just a regular trophy, remember?” Flipping a hand as if to brush away the silly notion, she continued downstairs.

  “No, listen,” Ares said, keeping pace with her. “It’s the only thing that makes sense. It’s true it had no effect on me. But why else would you and Athena be so gaga over it?”

  “Gaga? I don’t think so.” The notion nagged at her mind, but she pushed it away at the same time that she pushed a lock of her golden hair back over one shoulder. “Anyway, how can you blame us? It’s the most amazing trophy I’ve ever seen. The way it gleams. That apple. In fact, it’s the most enchanting–” She broke off in confusion when she realized she’d been about to use essentially the same word Ares had just used to describe the trophy.

  Ares gave her a crooked smile. “Yeah, exactly. I think its enchantment only works on girls, though. Girls who touch it. You and Athena.”

  Hmm, mused Aphrodite. But no! She didn’t want him to be right about the enchantment. She just wanted the trophy to be hers, and she didn’t want him spoiling that. “Then why doesn’t it work on Eris?” she countered. “She touches it all the time.”

  Ares shrugged. “I’m not sure.”

  Even as he said this, however, Aphrodite was remembering how enamored Eris had seemed of the trophy last night as she was polishing it. At the time Aphrodite had thought the girl was only consoling herself after Adonis’s rejection, but if the trophy really was enchanted, maybe it was having an effect on her, too, though she might not be aware of it.

  “Hmm,” she said, considering Ares’s idea. “During your birthday party, Hera picked it up, too. By accident, though. Eris didn’t invite her to hold it like she did Athena and me.” Had Hera also been affected? That might explain her strange behavior during the party, Aphrodite thought uneasily, remembering how Hera had insisted on joining the students’ game. How she’d seemed determined to win the trophy for herself.

  “Has anyone else touched it?” Ares asked.

  Aphrodite slowly shook her head. “At your party Persephone asked me if she could hold it. I hesitated to let her. Before I could change my mind, Eris grabbed the trophy from me and stashed it away.” Ares’s suspicions began to seem more and more plausible. “But why would your sister target Athena and me with her trophy?” she asked, confused and also a little hurt.

  “Maybe because I like you and she wants to punish me for being invited to attend MOA when she wasn’t. And Athena is Principal Zeus’s daughter. Even though I think Eris admires Zeus, maybe she can’t help being mad at him, too, for not inviting her to enroll at MOA all these years. What better way to punish both Zeus and me than by creating trouble between the two of you?”

  “I guess you’re saying makes sense,” Aphrodite admitted reluctantly. “In fact, I’ve noticed that when I don’t touch the trophy for a while, I don’t care about it so much. But then Eris offers to let me hold it again, and suddenly the wanting is stronger.” She stopped on the stairs and looked at him. “I hate to admit it,” she said, “but I think you are right!”

  “So maybe the trophy’s power to enchant loses some strength over time and has to be refreshed with a touch,” Ares said, as they continued on down.

  “I’d better tell Athena about this,” said Aphrodite.

  “Yeah and Heracles, too,” said Ares. “Let’s find them.”

  They sped up, hurrying for the cafeteria now. When they arrived, Ares pulled open the door and . . . splat!

  Someone hit him right in the face with an ambrosia cream pie! In fact, the entire cafeteria was a mess, with students hurling bits of breakfast and snack foods this way and that.

  Aphrodite ducked as a carton of nectar sailed over her head. It slammed into the door behind her and exploded, splashing nectar everywhere. Luckily, her chiton didn’t get wet. Ares hadn’t been so lucky, though. There was pie dripping down the neck of his tunic.

  “What the–?” he yelled. But some of the pie must have made it into his mouth, because then he licked his lips. “Mmm. That’s pretty good,” he murmured.

  “FOOD FIGHT!” Heracles yelled, racing up to them. He shoved a basketful of pastries into Ares’s arms. “Have some ammo!” he shouted over the noisy hubbub that filled the room.

  “Thanks!” Ares shouted back. And just like that, he was drawn into the fight.

  “Wait!” Aphrodite called. “What about the trophy? What about telling Athena and Heracles?” But Ares was already gone, swallowed up in the brawl.

  Athena spotted Artemis in the thick of the action too. But her dogs seemed to be having more fun than anyone, delightedly scarfing up every scrap of food that landed on the floor.

  Well, good for them, thought Aphrodite. However, she had no wish to spoil her hair or her chiton, thank you very much. Quickly, she looked around for Athena.

  “Over here!” called a voice. It was Persephone! She and Athena were crouched underneath the table where they, Aphrodite, and Artemis usually sat at lunch.

  Skirting a gloppy slick of oatmeal, then ducking just in time to miss getting nailed with a wad of nectaroni, Aphrodite somehow managed to safely make her way over to them. She huddled under the table too, staring out at all the cha
os.

  “What started this?” she asked.

  “We don’t know,” said Persephone.

  “Seemed like tensions just sort of exploded, and then everyone was throwing food,” Athena added.

  “It probably has something to do with Eris!” Aphrodite proceeded to share Ares’s theory about the trophy and why only Athena and herself had been encouraged to touch it. And how Eris had a troublemaking effect wherever she went.

  As she spoke, Athena’s blue-gray eyes widened. “Ye gods!” she exclaimed. “If you guys are right, that would explain a lot. Heracles keeps telling me I’m obsessed with that trophy, but until now, I didn’t really believe it.”

  “Yeah, I’ve been obsessed with it too,” Aphrodite admitted. “Still am, really. Even though I know it has probably enchanted me, I still want it. But maybe the feeling will fade if we don’t touch it again.”

  Athena nodded. “Okay, I’ll try not to.” But then she frowned. “You’re not just saying that so I won’t want it, are you? So you can have it for yourself?”

  “What? You don’t even trust me, your own friend?” Aphrodite retorted hotly.

  “Wait, you guys! Listen to what you’re saying,” Persephone urged. “You are not yourselves. You’ve been trophy-tized. As in hypnotized by an enchanted trophy!”

  “Sorry,” said Athena.

  Aphrodite nodded. “Yeah, me too.” She peeked out to see if she could find Ares. However, she spotted Eris instead. She was standing in a corner of the cafeteria farthest from the action, cradling the trophy in her arms. And she was also wearing another of Aphrodite’s pink chitons. A frilly one, with satin bows at the neck and hem. And, as usual, she hadn’t asked to borrow it. She looked serenely happy as she gazed at the mayhem going on around her.

  Before Aphrodite could point her out to the others, a red-faced Mr. Cyclops burst through the open door of the cafeteria. He was a long way from the Hero-ology classroom where he taught.

  “A cafeteria lady must’ve summoned him,” said Persephone, sounding relieved.