“I thought Athena was the goddess of war.”
“You don’t think Tyrovolas could kick some ass?” Nicole laughs. “I’m just teasing. War is only part of Athena’s domain. She’s also the goddess of wisdom, which makes her a big busybody with everything that goes on at the Academy.”
Navigating this school is going to be a lot tougher than I ever imagined. I thought at least the teachers would be normal, but no luck there.
I need a new student handbook.
And the classwork? Let’s just say I’ll be struggling to maintain the B average I need to get into USC. Ms. T’s syllabus looks like a work of world literature itself and we’ll be reading more books in one year than I’ve read in my entire life. So much for Cesca’s fantasy of me lounging on the beach—I’ll be spending all my free time reading Kafka and Orwell and writing a twenty-five-page term paper.
She even teaches for the whole period—on the first day!—diving into the influences of Freud and Einstein on modern thought and the ramifications on everything from literature to war. By the time she dismisses us—the Academy doesn’t have bells at the end of class—my brain is fried.
Only three more classes until lunch.
We walk out into the hall and there are students everywhere.
Unlike the hall inside the front entrance, the rest of the building looks pretty much like a school. The halls and floors are typical off-white and lined with lockers. Classrooms branch off on both sides, with big windows that look out over either the hills surrounding the school or the inner courtyard. All of the upper-grade classes meet on the second floor, while the lower grades take up the first. I guess that’s so the younger kids can have recess out in the courtyard.
“Who do you have next?” Nicole asks.
I glance at the schedule Damian made for me. “Algebra II with Mr. C—”
“Cornball,” she says and snatches the schedule out of my hand. “Me, too.”
“—Cornelius,” I finish.
“Look.” She waves a finger at the schedule and the bottom half glows for a second. “Our afternoon schedule is the same.”
Leaning in, I read the last three classes. Physics II, Art History, and Philosophy. “I’m supposed to be in Computer Applications and Biology,” I argue. “I hate Art and I never had Physics I.”
“No worries,” Nicole says. “I’ll get you through. Science is my thing and Mrs. Otis gives all As for art appreciation.” She frowns at the schedule. “We’ll just have to suffer through Dorcas together— no one gets out of here without Philosophy.”
She shrugs and hands me back the schedule, as if she can’t do anything more about it. Should I be upset? Should I go have Damian change my schedule back?
Or should I be thankful that someone seems happy to have me here and that maybe, just maybe, I’ve actually made a friend?
Folding the schedule, I stuff it in my pocket.
“Wow,” I say. “How’d you do that?”
Nicole looks at me like I’d said the dumbest thing on the planet. “You really are neo, aren’t you?”
“If that means out of my league, then yes.”
“Don’t sweat it, you’ve got me.” Nicole takes my hand and pulls me over to a bare section of wall, out of the crowd’s path. “I didn’t start at the Academy until Level 9. It’s pretty rough if you don’t have help, and most kids here aren’t into going out of their way to help a nothos—or, as some will call you, a kako. There are some basic rules you need to know.”
This morning, Damian had seemed single-mindedly focused on gushing about the school’s impressive history, leaving me to figure out the social stuff on my own. The only help he had offered me was having Stella as a guide. Not that I don’t think she knows every last in and out, but spending all day trailing after her is not my idea of a good time. I had respectfully turned him down.
If Nicole had to go through this just a few years ago, then she is a lot more appealing as a mentor. Even if she is part descendant herself.
“What does kako mean, anyway?” I ask, remembering how Stella had called me that when we met. “It’s not good, is it?”
Nicole shrugs. “It’s a tactless way of saying you’re not a descendant. Nothos is more politically correct.”
I have a feeling that when she says “tactless” she really means “insulting.”
“First of all,” she says, moving on, “cliques at the Academy are a little different. There’s almost no way to break in—not that you should want to—because they’re pretty much determined by your association.”
Association? I don’t understand what she means and decide not to say anything, hoping I’ll figure it out, but she must sense how clueless I am.
“Your family.” She gives me a pointed look. “Your god.”
Still not clear, I look around.
The second floor hall is full of students, and from the outside they all look fully normal. I see all the standard cliques. Populars here and nerds there. Jocks in a huddle and cheerleaders all around them. Freaks glaring at everyone from the corner and geeks trying to avoid getting knocked down. Stoners, burnouts, prudes, and skanks. Nothing unusual.
“Look at that group.” Nicole points across the hall.
Clustered around a set of lockers, a group of girls with perfect hair, heavy makeup, and suggestive clothing cling to boys with metrosexual taste in fashion and gel-spiked hair. Miniskirts and tight T-shirts abound. Not so different from the populars at PacificPark.
“Steer clear of them,” Nicole warns. “The Zeus set. Power, privilege, and partying. They make Paris Hilton look like a Vestal Virgin.”
The Zeus set? I guess I can see how being related to the ruler of all the gods would come with extreme popularity. Who would dare to cross them when you might wind up with a thunderbolt in the back?
One of the boys shifts, opening my view to the other side of the group. Stella stares back at me, willing one of those thunderbolts to hit me, I’m sure.
“Stella’s one of them?” I ask, looking away before those gray eyes turn me to stone or something.
“Not exactly.” Nicole flicks a sneering glance at the group. “She’s one of Hera’s.”
“So then why—” I begin. Then I remember Hera’s role on Olympus—Zeus’s consort.
“There are alliances,” Nicole explains. “Zeus-Hera is the strongest.”
Figures. Not only is Stella a colossal evil, but she’s got the popularity and the genes to back it up. I am more than thankful her powers are grounded right now. Otherwise Nicole would be carrying me to class in a baggie.
Looking around for something other than the evil stepsister to talk about, I ask, “What about them?”
Another group of students, all with sun-bleached hair, is gathered around a water fountain. They look like they washed up in the last wave. A lot of pooka shell necklaces and flip-flops. The guys are wearing brightly colored boardshorts and Hawaiian print shirts.
Some of the girls are in sundresses, some in camisoles and breezy skirts. One of the girls looks just like a picture I saw once of Cameron Diaz surfing.
“That,” Nicole says, pointing at the surfer crowd, “is Poseidon’s posse. Most of their brain cells have burned off from too much time in the sun.”
At the center of the circle I notice a guy with white-blond hair that looks a little like Heath Ledger in A Knight’s Tale.
“Forget it,” Nicole warns when she sees me looking. “Deacon’s dumb as a box of rocks.” She tilts her head, as if considering him for a second. “Actually, that’s an insult to rocks.”
From the other end of the hall I hear a boy squeal, “I got it! I hacked into the Olympic mainframe!”
He’s obviously a geek—complete with thick black-framed glasses and high-waisted pants. He’s clutching a calculator-sized PDA in his hand, jumping up and down and revealing a total lack of coordination as he practically trips over his own feet and falls into the rest of his group.
“Geeks?” I ask.
“Hephaestus,” she replies with a sigh. “I think he’s embarrassed by them. I know I would be. Not one of them has a chance of scoring an Aphrodite like he did, but I bet one day they make Bill Gates look poor.”
I always thought it was romantic how the deformed god of fire married the beautiful goddess of love. Kind of like a mythological Beauty and the Beast. Looking at his descendants, however, I’m thinking more along the lines of Weird Science—but these guys don’t look coordinated enough to build the perfect woman.
Seeing all the cliques grouped according to ancestral god makes me wonder about Nicole. Seems like she doesn’t hang out with anyone but herself—and now me. But she’s part immortal, too.
“So, which god are you—”
She suddenly jerks me across the hall toward an open door, almost sending me sprawling on the floor.
“What the—”
“The Hades harem,” she explains. “You do not want to mess with them.”
And, peeking back out the doorway, boy can I see why.
The group just rounding the corner look like your average Goths—black hair, black clothes, black eyeliner—but with an edge. Pretty fitting for the god of the underworld’s descendants.
Shoulder-to-shoulder, they stride down the hall, daring anyone to get in their way. The Zeus set stares them down, but most of the other students in the hall scamper out of their path. As they pass the doorway, a tall, thin girl with pale skin, shoulder-length black hair, and piercing pale blue eyes, stares at me with intimidating intensity. I know I must be a novelty and all, but she really doesn’t need to look like she wants to melt me with her eyes.
“Who is that?” I ask, my voice barely a whisper.
“That,” she says, grabbing my shoulder and dragging me into the classroom, “is Kassandra. Trouble on a cosmic scale.”
I don’t need her warning to know that.
“This is Cornball’s class,” she says, flopping into a desk in the last row. “Make it through this and it’s all downhill until lunch.”
“Great,” I say, dragging my fascinated thoughts back from Kassandra and the Hades harem and following her to the back of the room.
I can do this. With Nicole’s help I’ll be in sync with the social patterns in no time, and all I have to do is get my Bs. No prob—
“I assume you all practiced the quadratic formula over the summer holiday,” the big, beefy teacher at the front of the class says. “Take out a sheet of paper, solve for x and graph the solution.”
He turns to the board and writes a list of ten equations, each one longer than a long distance phone number. Crap. Maybe USC will accept a solid C average.
Maybe I should have sat in the front row.
“How has your day been thus far, Phoebe?”
I look up at the sound of Damian’s voice. What a question. It’s a miracle I’ve made it to lunch, and the last thing I need is his interference in my half-hour of education-free time. My brain seriously needs to decompress.
“Fine,” I say.
Really, though, my brain is on fire. I made it through Algebra on sheer luck—and a few answer prompts from Nicole. Cornball might have gotten his nickname from all the stupid jokes he makes during class, but when it comes to math he’s as serious as an 8.0 on the Richter scale.
Modern Greek had been a little easier—being a first-year language class and all—but I was the only one in the class on the downhill side of puberty. You don’t know how immature fourteenyear-olds can be until you’re stuck in a room with a bunch of them for an hour.
The only thing that made World History, my last class before lunch, bearable was hunky Mr. Sakola. He looks like some fifties movie star, with a bright white smile, perfectly combed hair, and a really cute dimple in his left cheek. He’s also as charming as Will Smith—with an equally beautiful wife, if the framed pic on his desk is any indication. The class, however, was another dumpload of information. I took enough notes to fell an entire forest.
So, by fine I mean exhaustingly rotten, but I don’t say it.
“Good.” He smiles like a principal—wide and proud, his sophisticated face cracking into sophisticated lines at the corners of his mouth and eyes. “Any problems or questions?”
“No . . .” I say, but even that’s not true. “Actually, there is one thing.”
He nods, encouraging me to clarify.
Though I have seriously considered not telling him this, I think it’s in my best long-term interest to be as forthright as possible. After all, I don’t want him out to make my life more miserable than it already is. So, I suck it up and say, “I, um, tweaked my schedule a little. . . .”
He nods again. “In what way?”
“Well—” I swallow, hoping he doesn’t question my prerequisites. “I traded Computer Applications and Biology for Art History and Physics II.”
More nodding. What’s with all the nodding?
“As long as you keep up with your assignments, I don’t foresee a problem. I just want to see you happy in your time here.” Now his smile is more parental, small but still reaching his eyes to crinkle up the corners. He leans across the table to Nicole and whispers, “Miss Matios, the last student who tried to zap Philosophy out of their schedule spent a week as a pile of sand.”
Then, without another word, he stands up and walks away, surveying the lunchroom like a General watching his troops.
“Man,” Nicole says when Damian’s out of earshot, “I’m glad I’m not you. I wouldn’t want Petrolas for a dad.”
“He’s not my dad,” I snap. I feel instantly guilty. It’s not her fault I’ve been tossed into this little dysfunctional family. “Sorry. My real dad died a long time ago. Damian is just my stepdad.”
She shrugs like I haven’t just bitten her head off or she could care less that I did. I’m just relieved she doesn’t make a big deal of the dead dad thing. I’m not always so touchy about it—therapist Mom head-shrank me through the whole grieving process—but I’ve been thinking about him more than usual since the whole stepdad thing started. Having a fake dad makes me miss my real one more. Great, another thing to look forward to for the next nine months.
At least Nicole doesn’t seem to care if I’m a moody psycho. Something over my shoulder catches her attention. “Travatas!” she shouts across the dining hall, waving her arm in the air to catch someone’s attention.
At the head of the lunch line is a cute boy—blond and wholesome in a Chad Michael Murray kind of way—with dark gold hair and wearing a MY CHEMICAL ROMANCE T-shirt. He looks up at Nicole’s shout and smiles.
“Hey Nicole,” he says, carrying his tray over to our table and taking the seat next to mine.
“Phoebe,” she says, pointing her fork at cute boy, “this is Troy.”
“Hi.” I wave in greeting.
He smiles, showing straight white teeth and says, “Hi back.”
“He’s pretty much the only person in this school worth knowing.” She starts to take a sip of her Dr Pepper, but then adds, “Besides me, of course.”
Nicole is not short on confidence.
“Has Nicole been showing you around?” he asks, his mouth curling up at the corners.
“Yeah.” I nod.
Nicole is way better as a guide than Stella would have been. I can just imagine my day as Stella’s puppy dog, forced to trail after her and lick her boots when she got a scuff.
Even across the crowded dining hall, I can feel her glare.
She is at a table at the opposite side of the hall—far, far away from ours—sitting with the rest of the Zeus-and-Heras. She’s sitting next to a boy with short, rusty blond hair who, from the confident way he is holding himself, is the leader of their pack. Tan, slick, and arrogant, he looks like her perfect match.
Troy must see me staring at her because he says, “I hear Stella’s your stepsister.” He takes and swallows a bite of vegetable lasagna. “Sorry.”
What, did they have a school-wide briefing about me? It seems like everyo
ne knows who I am, where I came from, and how I got here. Right now, about half the cafeteria is looking at me while trying not to look like they’re looking. I’m like a celebrity, but not in a good way.
Don’t they have better things to talk about?
“Am I the school’s only gossip?” I ask.
“Pretty much,” Nicole says.
I shrug. Great. “Then trust me,” I say to Troy. “Stella is the least of my challenges.”
“Yeah, I guess it would be hard to get dropped into this world.” His eyes—a really pretty green with bright gold flecks in the center—are warm with sympathy. “Don’t worry. . . . you’ll get through.”