Complete Nothing (25 page)

“What?” I shouted.

“Get down here!”

At that moment the front door slammed, and I heard my mother’s voice. “What is it? What’s happened?”

I ran out of my room and barreled down the stairs. The two of them were situated near the landing, my mother staring at Hephaestus, him looking up at me.

“It’s Artemis and Apollo. They’ve gotten to Hera,” he said, his chest heaving.

My hand grasped the railing. “What? What does that mean? How do you know?”

“Harmonia,” he said. “She warns that they’ve focused their efforts on the queen, doing everything in their power to send Hera over the edge, so much so that Zeus has now banished them to Etna to try to remove them from Hera’s presence.”

“But they can get back from Etna,” my mother said, fiddling with a golden A pendant I hadn’t seen before. “There are the tunnels. . . .”

“Of course they can,” Hephaestus snapped. He wheeled closer to the staircase and looked up at me, desperate. “If they get back to
Hera and she loses her temper, those two will be here in no time.”

“Well, what can we do?” my mother asked. “Appeal to Hera ourselves?”

“How? We can’t communicate with her,” I replied shakily. Then I looked at Hephaestus. “Unless you know of a way.”

“To communicate with the queen? How would I know that?” he demanded.

My fingers closed around the second half of the spy cam in my pocket. I had my suspicions, but as of now they were only that—suspicions.

“We can pray to her,” my mother said bitterly. “Offer a sacrifice. Perhaps that will get milady’s attention. Perhaps she will take pity on my wrongly banished daughter, and that will purchase the time you need.” She walked over and laid her hand over mine. “ ’Tis a dangerous profession, this.”

“Indeed,” I replied with a small smile.

At least I knew that my mother had finally come around. If she was willing to pray to Hera, her archenemy, then she definitely had my back. But with Apollo and Artemis coming after me, I had the awful feeling her pleas wouldn’t be enough.

“Saturday night was pretty sick, right?” Josie said, lifting her legs across my lap at the lunch table. She took out a lollipop, unwrapped it, and then brought it to her tongue. “When are we going to do it again?”

“Which part?” I asked, sliding my hand up her thigh. I felt nervous doing it, which was weird. We’d done a lot more than that on Saturday night. But then again, I wasn’t exactly sure how far we’d gone. We hadn’t had actual sex, though. I was sure I’d remember that. But when I concentrated as hard as I could, my memories were nothing but flashes. Flashes of her closed eyes, her open mouth, and her naked upper body.

After that, nothing.

“Every part,” Josie replied. “God, I wished I lived in the city. This stupid town is
so
boring.”

Oh. So she was talking about the driving-into-the-city part. Not the being-with-me part.

The double doors to the cafeteria opened, and everyone turned to stare. Ten guys in tuxedos walked inside in a straight line and over to a nearby table. They made a semicircle around a couple of
girls, someone blew into a harmonica or something, and then they started to sing. It was the latest boy band ballad that was played every fifteen seconds on the radio, and when they were done, one of the guys pulled out a rose and asked Ashlynn Simone to homecoming.

“Yes!” she screeched, jumping up to kiss him.

Some people applauded, and then the guys split up and went to their lunch tables. I guess they went here, but I didn’t recognize half of them.

“See?” Josie said, sucking on her lollipop. “Boring.”

“You’re not into homecoming?” Gavin asked from across the table.

She lifted one shoulder, and her feet rubbed together on my leg. “It’s not that I’m not into it, if someone wanted to ask me.” She looked away casually, but I could see her trying to check my reaction out of the corner of her eye.

My pulse started to race. Did that mean that she wanted me to ask her, or that she didn’t want me to ask her? Automatically, I glanced over at Claudia’s table. She was eating a yogurt as she talked with her friends. The sunlight streaming through the windows brought out the golden strands in her hair. I started to feel this awful sort of pit open up in my stomach, and I heard True talking inside my head.

Saying that Claudia wasn’t over me. That Keegan Traylor was just her rebound.

But then I saw Keegan Traylor with his tongue down her throat, and the pit closed up.

“I just wouldn’t want them hiring the frickin’ boys’ choir to do it,” Josie finished finally. “I mean, how unoriginal can you be?”

“So you just want something bigger? Better?” I reached over
and tugged her chair closer to mine, forcing her knees to bend. She screeched and laughed as she careened into my side.

“More creative,” she clarified. “Why? You have someone in mind?”

I shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe not. I’m not sure I’m creative enough for you.”

Josie’s smile slowly curled across her face. “Oh, I think you’ll do fine.”

I grinned back. So there it was. Like a pre-asking. I was going to homecoming with Josie Morrissey. Not Claudia Catalfo. And knowing that for sure felt like a true ending. Like it was really over and there was no going back.

“Is this something I can get arrested for?” Wallace asked.

The receiving end of my spy camera was in his hand, the connector hovering right next to the side of his laptop. Classes had just ended for the day, and we sat in the back corner of the library, my palms itching like crazy.

It was a fair question. Most likely, if Hephaestus and I were actual members of the human race and documented citizens of this country, then yes, we could probably get arrested for what we were about to do. Suddenly my senses were heightened by an exhilarating sizzle of impending danger.

“Probably?” I ventured.

Wallace, to my surprise, smiled. “Cool.” And then he plugged the thing in.

A small camera-shaped icon appeared on his computer screen. Icon was a word Wallace had taught me that morning, when I’d kept referring to the buttons on my phone as illustrations. Wallace clicked it and typed something into a box, and then a spinning wheel appeared.

“This could take a minute. This was my laptop three laptops ago.”

“I really appreciate you lending it to me,” I told him. “I swear I’ll find a way to pay you back.”

“You got me Mia’s number,” he said, blushing slightly. “Now I just have to get the guts to use it.”

“I’m sure you will.” I smiled. “And if you don’t, I’ll figure out a way to get you guys in the same room.”

“Yeah?” he asked hopefully.

I tilted my head. “It’s what I do.”

A box opened up on the screen. “Here we go.”

Wallace clicked something and a new window opened—a pure color picture of Hephaestus’s room, angle on the mirror. My breath caught.

“It works!”

“Yep. You’ve just started recording,” Wallace said, leaning back in his chair. “Why are you spying on your own cousin again?”

I opened my mouth to reply, not knowing what I was going to say, but then two figures walked up behind us, their shadows reflected on the screen. I quickly reached up and slapped down the screen on the laptop.

“True,” Lauren said. “We need to talk.”

I turned around in my chair. Lauren stood with a handsome hulk of a guy in a varsity jacket. He had a low brow, deep-set eyes, and a broad, open face.

“This is Gavin Dunnellon,” Lauren said. “He’s Peter’s best friend.”

I stood up. “Oh. Nice to meet you.”

“Yeah. You too,” he said. He nodded at Wallace. “What’s up, Wall-E?”

“Not much, Gap Denim,” Wallace replied.

“We need to talk about Claudia and Peter,” Lauren whispered, leaning toward me as the librarian walked by, pausing for a bit longer than necessary to eyeball us. “Everything’s going to crap.”

“Yeah, you mentioned that yesterday,” I said, recalling the vise grip she’d put on my arm at Goddess.

“Well, now it’s even deeper in the shitter,” Gavin said. “Peter’s gonna ask that Josie girl to homecoming unless we do something about it. And Lauren says that for some reason, you’re the person to talk to.”

At that moment, Orion and Darla walked in, their hands clutched between them as they whispered together. They glanced around furtively, then went directly into the back corner, where I could only imagine they were going to suck face some more. My heart shriveled at the edges, and I could see it in my mind’s eye, drying up and turning black inside my body cavity.

I took a deep breath and focused on Lauren and Gavin. I had allies here. I could either retreat inside and feel sorry for myself, or I could work with them to get their friends back together and get one step closer to my goal. Three couples and Orion would wake up and forget about Darla. Three couples and he’d be mine again.

“So you guys are certain—one hundred percent certain—that Peter and Claudia are meant for each other? That these people they’re currently with are wrong?”

“Totally,” Gavin said with a nod.

“Beyond totally,” Lauren added acidly.

I heard Darla giggle and the sound of something hitting the floor. My teeth clenched.

“Fine. Then what we need to do is show them how very wrong these people are for them,” I said. “Once we get them broken up
with their respective mismatches, we can concentrate on getting them back together.”

“Okay,” Gavin said. “How do we do that?”

The sound of slurping, clear as day, sent a disgusted shiver down my spine. I pressed my fist into my palm and told myself to concentrate.
Do your job and this will be over. Do your job and everything will be fine.

“Let’s sit.”

They both pulled chairs over to surround the small study carrel Wallace still occupied. We looked at him. He stared back.

“Should I go?” he asked.

It was clear from his hopeful expression that he didn’t want to. He was obviously intrigued, and for once the kid wasn’t playing games on his phone. He was engaging in life. I saw no reason not to let him stay.

“No,” I said. “Maybe you’ll have some ideas.”

Wallace beamed.

“Okay,” I said, looking at Gavin and Lauren and doing my best to ignore the sighs of pleasure coming from the far corner. Where the hell was that snooping, suspicious librarian when I needed him? “Tell me everything there is to know about Peter and Claudia. What do they do for fun? What do they want? What do they need? And most importantly, what was it about their relationship that worked, and what didn’t?”

Gavin and Lauren looked at each other cagily, as if they didn’t want to answer that last question.

“I need you to be completely honest for this to work,” I told them. “Can you do that?”

They each sucked in a breath and nodded. “I can,” Lauren said.

“Me too,” Gavin replied. “But we gotta make this quick. I’ve got practice in fifteen minutes.”

Wallace opened up the laptop again and clicked open an empty document. “What’re you doing?” Gavin asked him.

“Taking notes,” Wallace said matter-of-factly.

I smiled. “Perfect. Now let’s do this.”

“Nice work out there today, man,” I said, and slapped Gavin on his shoulder pad.

He doubled over, hands over knees, and gasped for air. We’d just finished postpractice laps, in full pads, which Gavin hated. He sometimes even threw up afterward. Remembering this, I took a step back. Puke would be tough to get out of cleats.

“Thanks, Pete.” He stood up, arching his back. “I felt like cracking some skulls.”

“Well, you definitely did that.” I glanced over my shoulder as the stragglers came across the finish line and either collapsed on the grass or made a move for the water jug. “I think you might’ve given Chen a concussion.”

Gavin shrugged with a small smile. “Occupational hazard.”

We laughed and loped over to the water. Gavin cleared his throat. “So how’re things going over at the soup kitchen lately?” he asked. “They made that announcement at church this weekend, about needing more volunteers?”

“Yeah, Marcy roped me into a few shifts this week,” I said, shaking my head as I remembered how she’d cornered me after services.
Her frizzy gray hair had been pulled back into sort of a puff ball behind her head, and I was so out of it I’d found myself staring at it the whole time she talked. She wanted me to do four shifts, and considering the guilt I was carrying over my Saturday night activities, I’d immediately said yes. Usually I barely squeezed in one or two. I had no idea how I was going to manage four.

“What if I come with?” Gavin asked, leaning down to pull off his cleats.

My face lit up. “That’d be awesome.”

“Cool. And maybe we could ask the girls to come with us,” Gavin suggested. He pulled off his sock and stared down at his red, sweaty foot as if he’d never seen one before.

“The girls?” I asked, thinking of my sister Michelle and his sister Mary, who was away at college, so that didn’t make sense.

“Yeah.” He pulled off his other cleat and sock and tossed them on the grass, then sank onto the bottom bleacher. “Josie and Tara?”

“Oh.” I blinked. Somehow I had a hard time putting Josie together with anything church-related. It was as if it didn’t add up. When I thought of Josie, I instantly got turned on. Church was exactly the opposite of that. But what would it hurt to ask her? “Um . . . sure. You think Tara would want to?”

Gavin pushed his sweat-soaked hair back from his face. “She volunteers at the animal shelter, and she does a lot of outreach work with her synagogue. I think she’d be into it.”

“Okay. Cool,” I said, surprised that he knew so much about Tara Schwartz’s life. I thought about the conversations Josie and I had had, and I realized I knew practically nothing about hers. Was she religious? Did she go to church? Did her parents? Did she even have parents?

Well, of course she had parents. But did she live with one or
the other or both or someone else entirely? I had no clue. And suddenly I felt morbidly ashamed. I’d been inside their house. I’d done things with their daughter. And I’d never even given them a second thought. When it came to Claudia’s family, I was an expert. I knew that her dad lied about his golf score, that her mom had a thing for mint ice cream, that her sister recorded every makeover show on TV, and that her brother kept a plastic worm farm in his closet.