Only Everything (23 page)

What I would have given to speak to Harmonia right now. Even for a minute. She always knew the best advice to give. Always.

A cool autumn breeze tossed my hair back, and a piece of paper came flying toward me—an advertisement for ten-dollar pies at some place called Pizza City. It flattened against the statue behind me and I stared at it, feeling a small spark of recognition inside my gut. In a rush, it hit me.

“Of course!” Suddenly I was on my feet. “The center of town!”

Harmonia had led me here. I was sure of it. This was where her powers were most potent, at the epicenter of a town or city, the traditional meeting place of the people. I quickly dug in my bag for the small notepad and pen I’d taken from the shop’s office earlier today and scribbled a note to my sister.

Harmonia,

I am in desperate need of your advice. Working without my powers has proven near impossible. How do I connect with these people when they have no desire to connect with me? Please send help if you can, and word of Orion.

Your loving sister,

Eros

I tore the note from the pad. Now I needed to burn it so that the winds could take the message to her.

“Hey! Do you have a match or a lighter I can borrow?” I asked the smoking girls.

They looked up from their magazine and one of them paled. “Hello, Vomit Girl.”

My stomach turned. Right. That was why I knew them. They’d been in the bathroom that morning I’d thrown up. When Katrina had saved me. They were Katrina’s friends. Or not, considering how they’d avoided intervening in her sparring match with Ty the other day. That girl had a hard time noting the true colors of the people around her.

“Vomit Girl, Farmer Girl. What other incredibly original nicknames are going around?” I asked.

The girl with the orange hair smirked. “Darnell calls you psycho-bitch.”

“Ah. That’s right. I think I like that one the best.” I held out my hand. “So. Lighter?”

“Sure.” The girl with the huge eyelashes shrugged and handed over a black lighter.

“Thanks.”

I walked back to the monument, held the note over the marble, and lit the bottom corner. An unusually large flame flashed, and the paper burned rapidly. I held on to it as long as I could without singeing my fingers, then let the rest of it fall and stamped out the ashes.

The acrid scent of the smoke still curling through the air, I closed my eyes and said a prayer. “Please answer me, Harmonia,” I whispered. “I will patiently await your reply.”

Then I handed the lighter back to the two bewildered girls and headed for home.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

True

Waiting patiently was not my strong suit. I had sat at the window most of the night next to that awful sand timer, which was at the halfway mark and seemed to be moving faster with each passing day. Unsure of what form Harmonia’s message might take, I’d kept watch on the sky until my eyes had finally closed and my head had hit the desk. Painfully. Unwilling to risk further injury, I’d crawled into bed and passed out, still sporting the gray shirt and brown pants I’d worn to work. When Monday morning dawned and I’d heard nothing from Harmonia, I found I couldn’t lift my head from my pillow. Outside, cars whooshed by. I heard the rumble of the school bus, the squeal of its brakes. Someone laughed. A dog barked. The bottom of the sand timer was almost two-thirds full. I turned my face into the cool cotton and groaned.

This wasn’t Earth. It was Hell.

When the doorbell rang, I was so startled I nearly fell out of bed. I gripped the sheets, hoping my mother would actually lift herself off her beautiful ass and answer it, but then it rang again. I screeched in frustration, knowing she would hear, and trudged down the stairs.
When I yanked open the door, I found a ridiculously handsome guy with cocoa-brown skin in a sleek, chrome-wheeled wheelchair looking up at me with merriment in his dark-brown eyes. He had a duffel bag in his lap and another latched to the handles on the back of his chair. A large flat package wrapped in plain brown paper was tucked into the mesh pocket on the seat, wedged securely in place by the second duffel.

“Hey, E!” he greeted, wheeling himself inside and narrowly missing my black-socked toes. “Heard you’re having some kind of breakdown, so I’ve come to put you out of your misery.”

“I don’t remember inviting you in,” I snapped, still standing near the door.

“Oh, come on! Is that how you treat your old friends?” he asked.

My brow knit. “I’m sorry, but who the hell are you?”

“You don’t recognize me?” He spread his arms wide, his brown leather jacket opening to reveal a black T-shirt with some sort of crazy skull art on the front. He wore red mesh gloves, black wristbands, and cobalt-blue nail polish. “I’m crushed.”

There was a creak at the top of the stairs, and we both looked up. My mother hovered a few steps down, wearing a flannel nightgown, her blond hair in a million knots. It was clear by the stunned look on her face that she did recognize our visitor.

“In the name of Mount Olympus, woman!” the boy barked. “What have you done to yourself?”

“Hephaestus?” she intoned. “What are you doing here?”

“Harmonia sent me to help you two ladies get your shit together,” he said with a laugh. “Imagine my surprise when she told me that between Eros and Aphrodite, you couldn’t even manage to earn a proper wage.”

“Hephaestus!” I cried, recognition flooding through me. I hadn’t seen the god in several centuries, but if memory served, when last he’d been banished from Mount Olympus he’d been sniveling and half-mad and not this attractive. In fact, he’d been flung from Mount Olympus so many times, his legs had been permanently damaged, so that when he did come back he’d had to use a set of crutches he’d fashioned for himself, which, I supposed, was the reason for the wheelchair on Earth. As the divine craftsman, Hephaestus was always working with fire and metals. When last I’d seen him, his skin was constantly caked with grime and smelled of sulfur and melted steel. Now he smelled of leather and something spicy, and it was pretty clear he hadn’t sniveled in decades. “You look so different.”

He lifted one shoulder. “I put on some muscle, got myself a style going.” He adjusted the lapels of his jacket, clearly pleased with himself. “Unlike you two,” he said with a wrinkle of his nose.

“You’re in communication with Harmonia?” my mother demanded, descending the rest of the stairs. “How?”

He wheeled himself farther into the living room, his expression guarded. “We’ve found our ways,” he said vaguely, wisely choosing not to trust us. “The point is, she knows I’ve been here long enough that I’ve learned how to play the game.” He turned his wheels to face us. “So consider me your new professor.”

“In what course?” I asked dubiously.

“Life on Earth 101,” he replied. His discerning gaze quickly flicked over the two of us, my mother in her ankle-length gown, the buttons misfastened, her hair a rat’s nest, me in my frosting-stained work clothes—the baggy gray shirt, the ill-fitting pants. “And lesson number one will take place on a field trip. Get yourselves together, ladies. We’re going shopping.”

“But we have no money,” I told him.

Hephaestus reached into the side pocket on his chair, drew out a wad of cash that could have purchased a hundred Darnell-approved cell phones, and grinned.

“Leave that to me.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

Katrina

You’re not tired. You’re fine. You’re fine and your notes make perfect sense.

I stared at the pages of notes in front of me on Monday afternoon, the moment I had dreaded all night and day finally here. Mrs. Roberge had set up a podium for me to stand behind at the front of the classroom, which made me feel less exposed, but also more official. Like I was supposed to say something that actually mattered. As the students filed into the classroom, they looked more awake than usual. More interested. It was like they were excited to see me crash and burn.

Cara and Stacey walked in together. Stacey sneered as they passed me by, but Cara paused.

“Break a leg,” she said, almost shyly.

I tried to smile. “Thanks.”

“I’d die if I had to go first,” she added, biting her lip.

And suddenly I felt like I really had to pee, even though I’d gone right before class.

“Are you ready, Katrina?” Mrs. Roberge asked, taking a seat front and center as the bell rang. Her wide shoulders dwarfed everyone else in the first row.

I glanced at the seats normally occupied by Charlie and True, which were empty. The only two semi-friends I had in this class, and they’d both deserted me in my time of need. Butterflies rioted inside my chest. Every time I breathed in, they scattered again, filling my ribs and choking my throat, then reconvened around my heart to make it pound even harder.

No. I’m not ready,
I thought.
I will never, ever be ready.

Then the door opened, and Charlie slipped in wearing a brand-new varsity jacket, the white leather sleeves so bright they were blinding. As he dropped into his chair and shot me a smile, he looked exactly like he had in that dream I’d had yesterday afternoon. Okay, so maybe it would have been better if he hadn’t shown, because now I was seriously going to throw up.

“Um . . . I guess,” I said.

“Good.” Mrs. Roberge nodded curtly. “You may begin.”

I cleared my throat. The printed pages in front of me blurred.

“
Great Expectations
, chapter one,” I said.

“Can you speak up?” Stacey asked. “I can’t hear you.”

My heart constricted and I reached for the sides of the podium. I stared at the pages. “Sorry. Yeah. Chapter one.” My raised voice sounded like a shout to my ears. “In chapter one we meet Pip, who never knew his father or his mother.”

“Because his father died, right?” Stacey said loudly.

“Stacey!” Cara admonished under her breath.

I froze. My eyes flicked up and I stared at her. How could she say that?
Why
would she say that?

“Miss Halliburn! Inappropriate,” Mrs. Roberge snapped. She shifted in her seat, straightening the lapels of her blue jacket. “Continue, Miss Ramos. And there will be no more asides from the class until the question period at the end.”

I tried to breathe, but my breath came in broken. My eyes stung and fogged over. My face felt tight. I was never going to make it through this. I was going to get an F and get booted back to my old class. At least Raine would be excited. She’d have someone to cheat off again.

Breathe,
mija, I heard my dad say in my ear.
Breathe.

But somehow, hearing his voice right then made everything worse.

“Miss Ramos?” Mrs. Roberge said delicately.

I gripped the podium. I saw myself gathering my notes and walking out the door. I felt my feet start to turn. Then there was a loud rap. Someone had knocked on their desk like they were knocking on a door. Everyone glanced around, wondering where it had come from. My eyes caught Charlie’s. He gave me this look. This mischievous look. And when the class turned to face me again, he held up a notebook. On it, in black pen, he’d written:

All you have to do is get through the next 40 minutes.

He flipped the page.

No one in this room is as smart as you are.

I blushed. He flipped the page again.

Also, every last one of us is naked.

I laughed through my nose, and my hand fluttered up to cover it.

“Any time, Miss Ramos,” Mrs. Roberge said with a sigh. I had
a feeling she was seriously reconsidering the sagacity of letting students run the class. I looked at Stacey, imagining that she was not only naked, but covered in nasty boils. Somehow, it calmed the butterflies. A tiny bit.

“In chapter one of
Great Expectations
, we meet Pip, who never knew his parents,” I said again. “This is the single most defining aspect of his character, and will be a part of every decision he makes from page one on.”

Mrs. Roberge’s lips flicked into a smile. Charlie gave me a double thumbs-up. The clock behind me ticked. Forty minutes. Maybe, just maybe, I could get through this. Maybe it would even turn out okay.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

Charlie

I didn’t get a chance to talk to Katrina after English. She bolted right to the bathroom and didn’t make it to econ until after the bell. I was already sitting next to Darla, and Katrina stared at the floor as she passed between us on her way to the back of the room. I hoped she was okay and not worried about her presentation. Because as I had written on my last note to her toward the end of class—she was awesome.

“These are the jeans I was telling you about yesterday,” Darla told me, slipping a square catalog onto my desk. On the cover was some shirtless guy in jeans, sitting on a rock at the beach, staring blankly into the distance. “Check out page ten. I think the Ramones are totally you.”

“Everyone grab a seat, please!” Mr. Chin shouted from the front of the room. He yanked a stack of papers out of his black briefcase and held them up. “I have here your careers!”

I idly flipped through the catalog. Every guy inside was half-naked. It was like soft porn. I shoved it into my bag as Mr. Chin arrived at my desk.

“Charlie! Congratulations. You’re a music teacher!” He
dropped the two stapled pages on my desk as a few people around me laughed. Apparently, teaching music wasn’t the most coveted job. But my salary was $52,000 a year. Not bad.

“Katrina, your test pegged you as an author, so I gave you the benefit of the doubt and made you a bestseller. Congratulations, you’re the second-highest earner in the class.”

Katrina’s face lit up. She was so beautiful it made my heart hurt.

“Who’s the highest earner?” Veronica asked.

“That would be Darla,” Mr. Chin announced. “CEO of a major international fashion corporation!”

Darla squealed and clapped her hands. “NYC, here I come. Bring on the penthouse suites, Mr. Chin.”