Aphrodite the Fair

by Joan Holub

  “This has gone far enough!” Mr. Cyclops shouted just as Ares chucked a frosted ambrosia fritter at Eros. Unfortunately, the Titan-tall teacher was standing directly behind Apollo. And Ares had aimed too high. Whap! The fritter nailed Mr. Cyclops square on the forehead just above his single eye. Frosting goo went sliding down his face.

  “I said ENOUGH!” Mr. Cyclops bellowed. Instantly, the food stopped flying.

  “Sorry!” Ares said meekly into the sudden quiet.

  But the teacher didn’t hear. “Who started this?” he demanded. His big eyeball swept the room.

  For a moment no one volunteered an answer. But then, eyes gleaming, Eris sidled over to the teacher and whispered something to him. She was even taller than Ares now!

  “Is it my imagination, or has Eris gained weight? And gotten taller?” said Persephone.

  The hem of the floor-length pink-striped chiton she wore–another of Aphrodite’s favorites–barely covered her knees and was tight.

  “Yeah. Seems like it,” said Athena. “Maybe she’s been working out at the gym every day during classes? But that wouldn’t explain her getting taller.”

  “It’s part of her goddess talent,” Aphrodite explained quickly. “Ares told me she’s the goddess of strife and discord. And she feeds off of the power thrill she gets from causing trouble.”

  “Yeah, I heard about her goddess title. But I didn’t know she could actually feed off troublemaking,” said Persephone. “She must be loving this. The cafeteria is a wreck!”

  Athena looked at Aphrodite a bit sheepishly. “She almost wrecked our friendship, too.”

  “But she didn’t,” said Aphrodite. Grinning, she punched a fist in the air. “Down with trophy-tizing, I say!”

  When Athena and Persephone laughed, Aphrodite held up a hooked pinky finger toward each of them. “GGBFFs forever?”

  Athena and Persephone caught her pinkies with theirs and they looped pinkies together too. “Yes! Pinky swear,” they all promised.

  “Aphrodite! Ares! Athena! Heracles!” Mr. Cyclops barked out. “You four report to Principal Zeus’s office. Immediately!”

  Huh? thought Aphrodite as the three girls jumped apart. She looked around for Eris, but the girl had disappeared. “When she whispered to Mr. Cyclops, she must have pinned the blame for the food fight on us!” Aphrodite told Athena.

  “Great,” Athena replied, sighing.

  As Ares and Heracles crossed the cafeteria to the door, Athena and Aphrodite dutifully scrambled out from beneath their table and went to join their crushes at the door. Aphrodite was both hurt and furious at Eris’s likely betrayal. She’d been nice to that girl. She’d wanted to be like sisters with her. She’d shared her room and let Eris borrow her chitons and use her makeup. She’d even cleaned up after the girl! And how did Eris pay her back? By trying to get her in trouble! Grrr.

  As Aphrodite, Athena, Ares, and Heracles hesitated near the door, Mr. Cyclops roared, “Get going, you four. Now!”

  “Don’t worry,” Ares said to Aphrodite as they started toward Principal Zeus’s office. “We’ll make Zeus understand that my sister’s the one who’s really responsible for that food fight. And we’ll get him to put a stop to this competition.”

  “I hope so,” Aphrodite told him, though she had her doubts about that.

  What if Zeus was so pleased with the rise in grades that he was on Eris’s side? And what if they couldn’t convince him that contest tensions were the true cause of the food fight? Maybe he’d even decide to extend the competition. And let Eris enroll at the Academy!

  10

  A Few Complaints

  Ares

  ALL NINE OF MS. HYDRA’S HEADS looked up from her tall desk when Ares and the other three students entered the front office. “Mr. Cyclops sent us here to talk to Principal Zeus about the–” he started to say.

  “The food fight?” Ms. Hydra’s gossipy pink head interrupted to finish. “Yes, I heard about it. Did Mr. Cyclops really get hit in the face with a nectar jelly doughnut?”

  “Actually,” Ares put in, “it was a frosted ambrosia fritter.” How had she found out so fast?

  Aphrodite, Athena, and Heracles stared at him. Too late, he realized that what he’d just said was almost as good as a confession. Because only the person who’d thrown the pastry would be likely to know for sure what it was.

  “Hooligans,” muttered Ms. Hydra’s grumpy green head.

  Her sympathetic blue head just clucked its tongue. “I hope you don’t get into too much trouble. Or expelled.”

  Expelled? He saw Aphrodite and Athena exchange looks of horror. He was pretty horrified by the possibility too. You just never knew with Zeus. Would he be understanding and helpful, or angry and in thunderbolt-throwing punishment mode?

  Ms. Hydra’s efficient gray head pushed the guest book across the desk toward them. “Sign in, please. Principal Zeus has a visitor right now. But he can see you in a few–”

  Just then, the door to the principal’s inner office was flung open so hard it ripped loose from one of its hinges to hang at an angle. Since Zeus constantly misjudged his own strength, this happened a lot, of course, but especially when he was in a bad mood. Like now. His brows were drawn together and his muscles bulged, electric sparks popping from all over his skin.

  Pheme scurried out of the inner office ahead of the principal as he stood to one side of his wobbly door.

  Well, that explained Zeus’s bad mood, thought Ares. Pheme had probably used those orange wings of hers to zip up here from the cafeteria to tell the principal and Ms. Hydra about the food fight two seconds after Mr. Cyclops ordered Ares and the others to the office. This goddessgirl of gossip liked to be the first to spread news. However, she often got some of the details wrong–like the type of pastry that had hit Mr. Cyclops in the eye. Ares wondered what else Pheme had gotten wrong in what she’d told Zeus.

  Of course, whether the Hero-ology teacher had been hit by a jelly doughnut or a frosted fritter would make no difference. If the principal was of a mind to punish the perpetrators of the food fight, he’d do just that. And though neither Ares nor Heracles had started the fight, they had been involved in it. He braced for the worst.

  Pheme’s orange-glossed lips had twisted into a grimace of concern when she saw the four students waiting. “Good luck,” she mouthed as she fluttered past them.

  Zeus glowered at them. “YOU FOUR! ENTER!” he boomed. Everyone ducked as a spark of electricity shot from his fingertips. Zzzt! It hit the wall behind Ms. Hydra’s desk and harmlessly fizzled out. Her heads were so used to such things by now, none of them even bothered to glance over.

  Ares led the way as he and his companions headed to their doom. Behind them, he heard Ms. Hydra on the intercom, summoning a custodian to fix Zeus’s door. It happened so often, they probably stocked boxes of replacement hinges in the supply closet.

  As usual, the inside of Zeus’s office was a mess. His filing cabinet, which he often used as a barbell, lay tipped over on its side in the middle of the floor, and they all had to walk around it to cross the room. Ares almost tripped over an empty, smashed can of Zeus Juice and a discarded Thunderbolt Crunch cereal box as he and the others made their way to the row of chairs facing the principal’s enormous desk.

  “SIT!” Zeus barked at them when they stood before his desk.

  Ares swept several Opposite-Oracle-O cookie wrappers and the lid to an Olympus-opoly game off the seat of a padded blue chair and sat between Aphrodite and Heracles. His chair had scorch marks on its cushions, like all the chairs in Zeus’s office. Just how many students had been sitting in the very same blue chair each time it got zapped was a question he preferred not to think about.

  Zeus moved behind his desk. As he lowered himself onto his huge golden throne, Ares couldn’t help noticing a large abstract painting done in shades of white, blue, and brown on the wall to the right of the throne. No, wait, he thought, studying it more closely. It wasn’t an abstract after all, but a poorly
executed picture of . . . something. A cloud? A gob of ambrosia? Though Ares was no artist himself, this painting looked to have been done by a five-year-old using finger paints. He noticed the others were staring at it too.

  “Like it?” Zeus asked, brightening as he followed their gazes. He hooked a thumb over his shoulder at the picture. “Did it myself. Been feeling kind of tense lately, so I needed a creative outlet.”

  Aphrodite nodded. “Good idea, Principal Zeus. You’ve really captured something.”

  “I agree, Dad,” Athena added quickly. “Good job.”

  Had Zeus been tense because of Eris’s presence at MOA? Ares immediately wondered. He didn’t ask. Instead he commented on the picture too. “Yeah, the lines just seem to . . . um . . . gallop across the painting.”

  “Totally,” Heracles put in.

  Zeus sprea both arms wide and beamed at the godboys. “Exactly what I was going for!” he said. “Pegasus in action!”

  Ares struggled to keep his face from betraying his surprise. Pegasus? Zeus’s winged horse? That was what the painting was supposed to show?

  “See?” said Zeus, pointing. “He’s flying above the roof of the Academy.”

  “Yeah, sure. It’s genius,” Ares fibbed. The others added admiring comments as well.

  “Thanks,” Zeus replied modestly. Then a frown came over his face, as if he’d just remembered why they were here. After shoving aside several issues of a scrollazine titled Great Principals Quarterly, he plucked a papyrus scroll from a stack of papers on his desk. “Aha! Here it is.”

  Snap! He gave the scroll a single hard shake, causing it to unroll. “Look at this,” he said, holding the chart up so all four students could see. It was a vertical bar graph, showing the results of the competition so far. What did that have to do with the food fight? Ares wondered. Well, the contest did have something to do with it, actually, but Zeus didn’t know that, did he?

  “This chart shows total points per team in the grades competition.” Zeus pointed to the tallest bar, which was colored red. “Red is Theeny’s team,” he said, using his nickname for Athena. Then he pointed to the blue bar next to it, which was only a tiny bit shorter. “Blue is your team, Aphrodite.”

  “What are those two green bars next to the red and blue ones?” Athena asked. The green bars were only about half the height of the other two.

  “The green bars,” Zeus said grandly, “represent the lower projected team scores that MOA students would have made, based on quizzes and tests over the last two weeks, if Eris hadn’t come to the Academy. Overall, grade point averages have increased by fifty percent, as you can see from the red and blue bars.”

  Heracles gave a low whistle. “Wow. That’s incredible!”

  “Great,” Athena and Aphrodite said at the same time.

  “Yeah,” Ares agreed, but with a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. With this kind of success, Eris was that much closer to getting the permanent place at MOA that she wanted so badly.

  Zeus dropped the chartscroll back on top of his stack of papers. “Great? It’s stupendous!” he declared. Then a cloud came over his face and he slammed a fist on his desk. “And I don’t want anything to happen that could undermine these results.”

  “If you’re referring to that food fight,” Ares dared to say. “We didn’t start it–”

  “Yeah, I mean, Ares did throw that fritter,” Heracles put in, “but he was aiming for Eros, and–” He stopped, looking flustered.

  “–and it was actually Eris that–” Athena started to say.

  “Yeah, she–” Aphrodite said over the top of Athena.

  Bam! Zeus slammed his big hammy fist down on the desktop even harder, making his stack of papers fly and all four students jump. “Enough about the food fight!” he thundered. “Pheme told me all about it. Said it was already in progress before you four entered the cafeteria. Said it was impossible to know who really started it.”

  He paused, eyeing them carefully. “I had Mr. Cyclops send you here so I could ask you to help keep a lid on any more trouble until final grades are in on Friday.”

  Huh? Ares looked at his friends, seeing the same confusion on their faces.

  As often happened, Zeus’s mood abruptly changed lightning fast. Suddenly he was all smiles again. “And speaking of Eris,” he said to Ares. “When it comes to improved academic results, your sister is the best thing to ever happen to this school.” His eyes lit up as he added, “And professionally speaking, she’s done me a huge favor.”

  He tapped the top copy of Great Principals Quarterly, sending several sparks flying. Leaning forward, Aphrodite discreetly stamped out a spark that had landed on the floor with the toe of her pink sandal. Fortunately, the rest of the sparks sizzled out almost instantly.

  Meanwhile, the principal produced a new can of Zeus Juice from his desk drawer and popped open the top.

  “Such a huge increase in grades will help put me over the top when the editorial board of Great Principals Quarterly meets to name their very first Principal of the Year in just two more months,” he gloated. Then he took a big glug of the juice.

  Aha! thought Ares, as all had become clear. He should have known that Zeus would have a personal reason for wanting to keep Eris here these past two weeks despite the trouble she was causing among students. But did the principal really expect the four of them to somehow prevent further tensions? And if the editorial board of the scrollazine wasn’t meeting to choose their Principal of the Year for two more months, did that mean–?

  “So first thing this morning, before breakfast, I met with Eris and told her I’ve decided to continue the competition. Instead of ending it tomorrow,” Zeus added, “it’ll go on for another two months. Maybe longer. I’ll likely be inviting her to enroll.”

  As Zeus took another big swig of Zeus Juice, Ares felt his insides seize up. He jumped to his feet. “No! You can’t let her stay that long. She’s got to go!”

  Juice sprayed from Zeus’s mouth and anger filled his face.

  Uh-oh, Ares thought, sinking down to his seat again. You absolutely did not tell the King of the Gods and Ruler of the Heavens what he could or could not do. Not if you knew what was good for you, that is.

  “And exactly why must she go?” Zeus demanded. At the same time, Athena leaped from her chair and ran from his office, returning seconds later with a cloth she must’ve gotten from Ms. Hydra.

  “Because she’s trouble with a capital T,” Ares insisted as Athena began wiping the drips of juice from her dad’s desktop. “Just her presence in the cafeteria was probably enough to spark that food fight!” Helped along by Heracles and the two girls, he told Zeus about all the bad feelings between students leading to the fights that had been going on lately.

  “And the fighting’s not just between team members. Even members of the same team are arguing,” Athena added once she’d finished mopping up the juice.

  Frowning, Zeus propped his feet on top of his desk and leaned back in his chair. His forehead wrinkled in thought as he steepled his fingers together on his chest.

  “There have been a few complaints from teachers in the last few days,” he admitted. “Coach Triathlon came to see me last night, in fact. He was concerned about contest tensions carrying over to the sports fields.”

  The principal’s crossed feet began to wiggle in irritation atop his desk. “And Muse Urania is worried about students cheating. She said that the answer key to a recent Science-ology quiz she gave disappeared from her desk drawer.” He shifted his weight on his throne. “I sent her back to her room to search again, figuring she’d just misplaced her answer key. She hasn’t reported back to me, but just before you got here, a little bird told me there are a couple of suspects in the possible theft.”

  No need to guess who that “little bird” was, thought Ares. Pheme, of course.

  “Suspects? You mean Makhai and Kydoimos?” Athena asked. Then her hand flew to cover her mouth. Ares figured that she hadn’t meant for their names t
o slip out. The two boys were on her team, after all. Still, Athena wouldn’t approve of them cheating.

  Whomp! Zeus dropped his sandaled feet to the floor again. He leaned across his desk, arching an eyebrow at Athena. “You and the little bird seem to be in agreement concerning the culprits.” He grabbed a sheet of papyrus from his desk. After scribbling a note on it, he folded it in quarters and motioned for Athena to take it from him.

  “Give this to Ms. Hydra, please, Theeny. She’ll know what to do with it.”

  Athena jumped from her chair to take it. Ares and the others stared after her as she left the office, though she was soon back again. Ares wondered what had been on that sheet of papyrus. That it had something to do with Makhai and Kydoimos seemed clear enough, however.

  “There’s another thing you should know,” Aphrodite chimed in.

  Zeus’s blue eyes peered at her sharply. “Oh? What’s that?” He stood and began to pace back and forth behind his desk, as if he couldn’t take any more bad news sitting down.

  “Eris has a special trophy,” Aphrodite informed him. “And we think it’s enchanted.”

  “But it seems to only affect girls,” Heracles added.

  “And women,” Athena said. “Maybe even Hera. Like at Ares’s birthday party. Remember how reluctant she was to stop playing that game?”

  “A trophy?” Zeus echoed in surprise.

  “She carries it around in that black bag of hers,” Athena supplied.

  “Oh?” said Zeus. “The black bag.”

  Eris hadn’t shown the trophy inside her bag to him, Ares realized. Hera had seen it, but she must not have told Zeus about it.

  Aphrodite was squirming in her chair. “The trophy’s pull is hard to resist. Every time I touch it, I want it more,” she admitted.

  “Me too,” Athena said earnestly.

  A strange expression came over Zeus’s face as they were telling him this. “Hmm,” he said, pausing in midstride. “That might explain why Hera keeps asking me to invite Eris to have dinner with us and to make sure she brings her black bag with her when she comes.”