Artemis the Brave (3 page)

Artemis hurried down the hall to her locker, weaving among students who were chatting and visiting their lockers between classes. Her dogs romped at her heels, tongues hanging out, as they dashed and darted among sandaled feet. The hall was like an obstacle course to them, and Dodge-the-Students was one of their favorite games. Artemis tossed out a few “sorry’s” and “excuse me’s” on their behalf. But the dogs were completely oblivious to the startled and sometimes annoyed looks they were getting.

“Number one thirty-three, please open for me!” she called to her locker from a dozen feet away. She heard the click of its combination lock. Just as she skidded to a halt before the locker, its tall, skinny wooden door flew open.

Before she could catch them, the red textscroll from Hero-ology class and her sparkly pink
Goddess Girl Guide
both tumbled out.
Thunk! Thunk!
They hit the marble floor. She picked them up and tried to stuff them back into her already overflowing locker.

Thwack!
A big bag of dog treats slipped from her locker, past her elbow, and just missed landing on her toes. The bag split on impact, sending colorful bone-shaped treats skittering in all directions. Suez and the other two dogs scampered after them, claws slipping and sliding on the slick floors. Soon they were chomping away, their bodies twisted together in a jumble of legs, noses, and tails that resembled a pooch pretzel.

“Yikes!” someone exclaimed from behind her. Glancing over her shoulder, Artemis saw a blond boy she didn’t recognize skidding on the dry treats. Arms windmilling, he fought to regain his balance as her big hounds bumped him from all sides. Textscrolls and a bag flew from his hands, and he fell to his knees.

“Sorry!” she called to him. “Are you okay?”

“No!” Frowning darkly, he got to his feet. Treats crunched under his sandals as he started collecting his stuff from the floor.

“I
said
I was sorry,” Artemis muttered. Since he looked unhurt, she turned her attention back to her locker. Holding a mound of stuff in place with one hand, she dug through the pile as best she could with her other.

“Beauty-ology textscroll? Are you in here?” she demanded. She cocked an ear to listen, but the scroll didn’t reply. “Where could I have left that thing?” It better not be in her dorm room, she thought. No way she had time to dash up four floors to get it.

Behind her, the blond boy headed for a locker just down from hers, but she didn’t pay much attention. Stretching her neck to look past him, she managed to glimpse the sundial in the school courtyard through the window opposite the row of lockers. Only five minutes left till class started!

Didn’t teachers understand that the trip from Earth to MOA took awhile? Students should get extra time between classes on the days when they had Beast-ology hunts, but of course they didn’t. Sometimes school rules stunk.

She sniffed the air. Something else kind of reeked too. She stuck her head inside her locker. Yuck. Was that the smell of an old lunch she’d stowed and forgotten? Well, she didn’t have time to do anything about it now. Sooner or later it would stop smelling anyway—right?

Suddenly a dog she’d never seen before bounded up to her from out of nowhere. It was small, about the size of a cat, with long, glossy white fur. It raced around and around, barking.

Immediately forgetting her haste to get to class, she knelt and stroked its silky coat, which had a little blue bow tied in it. A feather pen and a few papers slid from her locker and fell unnoticed to the floor around her. “Oh! You’re adorable. But who are you?” she asked, trying to get the dog to hold still long enough so she could read the star-shaped tag attached to the collar at his neck. Chiseled into the tag were the words
I BELONG TO ORION.

She flipped the tag over, but there was no more information. “Hmm. I don’t see your name.”

“Sirius,” said a voice from close behind her. It was the boy who’d slipped on the dog treats.

“Yes, I’m serious. His name is totally missing from his tag.”

“No, I mean that’s his name. Sirius. He’s mine.” Reaching down, he gave the dog a fond pat and it began wiggling all over as if glad to see him.

“He’s so cute.” Straightening, Artemis stood to hand over the dog. She hadn’t really looked at the boy properly before. But now, as she stood with his little dog in her arms, she looked up . . . and up, into a pair of pale blue eyes framed by the longest, darkest eyelashes she’d ever seen on a boy. He was taller than her by at least six inches, and buff. “So I guess you must be . . .”

“Orion,” he finished for her. Taking his dog, he set him on the floor, where he joined Artemis’s hounds in snarfing down treats. Then, with a flick of his wrist, Orion undid the lock on the locker two down from hers. “I’m new here, as of today.”

That explained why she’d never seen him before.

Orion swung his locker door open and stowed the five textscrolls he’d been holding. His skin shimmered slightly as he moved, as if he’d been powdered with a fine golden glitter. Only immortals, including Artemis and her goddessgirl friends, had skin that shimmered like that. So he was obviously a godboy.

Feeling strangely drawn to this good-looking boy, she took a half step toward him. “I’m Artemis, goddess of the hunt.” Why was he looking at her so oddly, as if something was wrong with her? Then he glanced sideways and eyed her open locker critically. She turned to stare at the jumble inside it too. “Um . . . I was looking for my Beauty-ology textscroll. Goddess of the hunt, so I’m always hunting for stuff, you know?” Her little joke fell flat. Feeling embarrassed at the mess, Artemis tried to shut her locker door. It wouldn’t close. Leaning her shoulder against it, she pushed with all her might, and finally the lock caught.

“If you cleaned it out once in a while, you might be able to find things,” he said.

“I did clean it out,” protested Artemis. Then she laughed. “Once. In second grade.”

Again, Orion didn’t join in her laughter. She toyed with the GG charm necklace she and her friends all wore, as he neatly arranged the scrolls he’d stowed in his locker so they stood on end like two-foot-tall papyrus columns. As she watched, he pulled a mirror out of his bag and hung it on the inside of his locker door at eye level. Gazing at his reflection, he began styling his hair with his fingers, repairing the damage from his fall. His blond hair stood up in spikes. How did he get it to do that? she wondered, fascinated.

Ruff! Ruff!

Her dogs had finished eating and were running up and down the halls, playing a game of chase with their new dog friend. “Quiet, guys! You’ll get us all in trouble,” she said, doing her best to shush them.

Orion was too busy studying his class schedule to notice. Tucking it in his pocket, he pulled a lavender-colored textscroll from his locker. Two small masks, one smiling and one frowning, dangled from the ends of the purple ribbon tied around it. They were the symbols of the theater—comedy and tragedy.

As he shut his locker, Artemis nodded toward the scroll he’d chosen. “You’re taking drama class?”

“Uh-huh.” His eyes brightened with sudden enthusiasm. “I’ve got quite a reputation as an actor and an orator back home. Maybe you’ve heard of me? Orion Starr? I’m here at MOA as a foreign exchange student. Invited by Principal Zeus himself.”

“No, sorry. I don’t really go to the theater much except for sporting events,” she admitted. Then, worried she might have hurt his feelings, she rushed on. “But I’m sure you must be an amazing actor if Zeus thinks so.”

In response, Orion put a hand over his heart. A faraway expression came over his face.

“Are you okay?” Artemis asked, suddenly a little worried about his health.

Instead of answering, he swept his other arm out in a move as graceful as that of an Apollonian dancer. Gazing into the distance, he began to speak. “And now, Socrates, as you rebuked the vulgar manner in which I praised astronomy before, my praise shall be given in your own spirit. For every one, as I think, must see that astronomy compels the soul to look upwards and leads us from this world to another.”

He stopped and grinned at her. “That’s from
The Republic
, written by the philosopher Plato. Like it?”

Momentarily dazzled by his beaming white smile, Artemis mumbled, “Um, yeah.” Though she wouldn’t know a good actor from a bad one, what she’d just heard had sounded pretty impressive.

Ping!
The final bell rang out. Class was going to start soon.

Orion half turned away, glancing down the now empty hall. “Guess I’d better get going,” he said.

“Drama’s that way. In the next wing,” she told him, indicating which way he should go. Then, after a moment’s hesitation, she added, “Want me to show you?” His class was in the opposite direction from hers, so she wasn’t sure why she made the offer. But in spite of their rocky beginning—with him slipping on the dog treats and all—she had a feeling he might just turn out to be the most interesting boy she’d ever met, aside from Apollo. She wanted to keep talking to him, and she didn’t care if that made her late for her own class.

“Sure, thanks.” Orion whistled and his dog came bounding over. He scooped him up and the dog began licking his chin. He grinned, patting Sirius’s furry white head, and set him back down. “He adores me—what can I say?”

It was kind of cool that he liked dogs as much as she did. She wondered what else they might have in common. As they walked down the hall together, their four dogs trotted along beside them.

“I forgot to introduce my hounds,” said Artemis. “This is Suez. That’s Zeus spelled backward. And the beagle is Amby, named after ambrosia, my favorite food. And this is my greyhound Nectar, named after—well, nectar.” She pointed to each dog in turn as she spoke.

“Interesting,” he said, but he didn’t sound like he was really listening.

“What kind of dog is Sirius?”

“A Maltese.” He started walking a little faster.

“Oh.” She sped up too and began to speak more rapidly, trying to hold his attention. “I’ve never seen a belt like that before,” she said, pointing to the three stars on his buckle.

“These are actually acting awards.” Slowing a bit, Orion touched each star in turn. “This is the Alnitak, next is the Alnilam, and finally the prestigious Mintaka award.”

Though she’d never heard of those awards, Artemis nodded politely. “Nice.” When he didn’t say anything else, she filled the silence, babbling all the way to his classroom. She didn’t know why she had such a strong urge to make herself interesting to this boy, especially since he didn’t seem all that interested in
her
.

“Well . . . ,” he said as they reached the drama room. Again he studied her face and hair, as if he thought her odd. What was he looking at, exactly? Did he think she was cute? And why did she care? She’d never felt like this before around a boy—sort of jittery and excited and not sure why. Had he put some kind of “liking” spell on her? If he had, it was working.

Beside the door, Artemis noticed a poster about the upcoming school play, called
The Arrow
. She gestured toward it. “Are you going to try out?”

“Of course,” he said. “I was the lead in every play in Larissa Middle School back home. I’ve been acting since kindergarten, when I was the lead mushroom in
Boy Heracles
.”

Sirius began barking as Orion started to open the door. He sighed and picked up his dog, then turned back to her. “Hey, would you mind keeping those midnight blues pinned on my dog for a while?”

“Huh? Midnight blues?”

“Your eyes—they’re the color of midnight. Not quite black, not quite blue.”

“Oh.” Artemis felt her cheeks burning sunset pink. No one had ever said that about her eyes before.

“So I was asking if you’d watch Sirius? It’s my first day, and I’ve got a lot to do. I don’t really have time for him.” Orion smiled at her with his twinkling eyes. How could she say no?

She sighed, feeling a silly smile curving her lips. “No problem,” she heard herself say.

“Thanks.” He winked and handed Sirius to her. “Catch you later.”

Artemis and the four dogs just stood there, watching him disappear inside the classroom. The little Maltese whined when he could no longer see his master. “I know how you feel, boy,” she told him. Orion was like bright fireworks, mesmerizing and spectacular. The hallway seemed somehow dimmer with him gone. “Looks like you’ll be hanging out with me and my hounds today. Let’s go.” She gave him a pat and set him on the floor.

Then she remembered she’d never found her Beauty-ology textscroll. Maybe her teacher wouldn’t notice if she went to class without it. And by some miracle, maybe she wouldn’t notice that Artemis was late, either.

Crushing

Y
OU’RE LATE, ARTEMIS DEAR. AND WHERE’S
your textscroll?” a voice asked the minute she entered Beauty-ology class. Her teacher, Ms. ThreeGraces, spoke in elegant, soothing tones, even when she was annoyed. And she was impeccably groomed as always, her hair, chiton, and makeup as perfect as if she had dressed for a fashionable dinner party instead of to teach a class.