Persephone the Grateful

by Joan Holub

  After opening the closet, Persephone pulled her cheer uniform from its hanger. Though she’d mostly put Minthe out of her mind since she and Hades had returned from the Underworld, her concern that the naiad was crushing on him suddenly pushed its way into her head again, like a sprout poking up through soil. While she changed into her uniform, it occurred to her that she could ask Aphrodite for advice on what, if anything, she should do about Minthe. After all, Aphrodite was the goddessgirl of love (and beauty, too), as evidenced by all the hearts decorating her side of the room. She was an expert on this sort of thing!

  On the other hand, Persephone wasn’t sure how much she wanted to reveal about her “problem.” She was a private kind of person, which meant that she didn’t always feel comfortable discussing personal stuff. Even with friends. Still, she could really use Aphrodite’s advice.

  She shifted her eyes toward her friend, who had flopped down on her bed to pet Adonis while waiting for Persephone to be ready. “If you thought someone was crushing on your crush, what would you do about it?” she asked in a casual tone.

  Aphrodite sat up fast, her blue eyes wide with alarm. “Someone’s crushing on Ares? Who? What have you heard?”

  “No! No one’s crushing on him. Calm down,” said Persephone, giggling a little at her friend’s reaction.

  Aphrodite sank back down among her pillows. “Okay, well, that’s a relief. But I’m guessing this isn’t a general question?” Petting Adonis again, she arched an eyebrow at Persephone. “Out with it. Who’s crushing on Hades?”

  Persephone dropped her head back and sighed toward the ceiling. Then, while getting on with getting ready, she came clean and told Aphrodite all about Minthe, repeating what that beautiful nymph had said and how she’d acted around Hades. “Hades doesn’t seem to like her back,” she hastened to add. “He did call her a ‘sweet girl,’ but then he said that she could be kind of needy sometimes. And I could tell he wasn’t happy about that.”

  “Hmm,” said Aphrodite. “So it appears to be a one-sided crush.” On her lap now, Adonis purred loudly and flopped on his back so she could stroke his black-and-white belly. Although not all cats liked belly rubs, Adonis adored them.

  Persephone nodded as she hung up the salmon-colored chiton she’d been wearing till now.

  “Then I wouldn’t worry,” Aphrodite said. “Without any encouragement, she’ll give up on Hades after a while.”

  “You’re sure?” asked Persephone. Aphrodite’s response surprised her. Especially since her friend could become quite jealous if she thought anyone was flirting with her crush. (Note her earlier reaction!) Not that long ago, she’d actually cast a spell on a goddessgirl named Eos who she’d suspected of crushing on Ares. The spell had made Eos fall in love with bugs!

  As Persephone began digging around in their closet for her pom-poms, she recalled how sorry Aphrodite had been to discover she’d been completely wrong about Eos’s feelings toward Ares. (And vice versa!) So maybe that experience had tempered her jealousy, at least somewhat?

  As if she’d guessed what Persephone had been thinking, Aphrodite said jokingly, “Well, I’m mostly sure. Hard to say definitely, since I don’t know Minthe. If I’m wrong, you can always cast a spell on her and turn her into… um… a plant or something.”

  “Ha-ha,” said Persephone, finding and grabbing her pom-poms at last. She was quite certain she would never do anything of the sort. She was not a jealous person.

  Purr. Purr. Their kitten’s loud rumble made her remember a time when she and Aphrodite had been super jealous of each other’s attentions to Adonis, though. They’d even argued over who would own him till Principal Zeus got them to share. So, okay. She was not usually a jealous person, Persephone silently corrected.

  “C’mon, let’s get going,” said Aphrodite, standing now that they were both in uniform.

  As they headed into the hall, Persephone wished she could rid herself of her jealous feelings altogether, but she simply couldn’t help herself when it came to Minthe. The best she could do, she decided, would be to not let them get out of hand. Because then she might act on those feelings. So, in addition to her vow to be more grateful, she now made a second vow. From now on, whenever jealous feelings arose in her, she would try to curb them.

  Right then, Artemis and Athena, who were also on the cheer squad, came out of their rooms. Joining together, the four girls went off to practice on the Academy’s sports fields. First they stretched out, and then they did some simple cartwheels and handsprings before moving on to routines and stunts.

  During practice, Persephone was pleased when she aced a toe touch, which was basically a side-straddle air split with pom-poms punched outward at shoulder height. It was possible she was feeling a bit too confident when they got to thigh stands, though. As Artemis and Athena stood next to each other in a lunge pose, Persephone hopped up to brace one foot each on their angled thighs, raising her poms in a high V. At least, that was how the move was supposed to go. Instead she caught her foot on Artemis’s thigh, lost her balance, and sprawled onto the ground.

  “You okay?” Aphrodite asked as all three of her BFFs looked down at her with concern.

  Persephone wiggled her ankle in a circle, relieved to note that she hadn’t sprained or strained it. Then she leaped to her feet. “All good.” With an embarrassed grin, she added, “Maybe Kydoimos was right though. I am a klutz!”

  “Huh?” chorused Athena and Aphrodite.

  “What are you talking about?” Artemis asked at the same time.

  Persephone explained what had happened on her way to Science-ology class earlier that afternoon—how the handle of her scrollbag had torn, causing her textscrolls to roll out. And how Kydoimos and Makhai had tripped over them and then basically insulted her and Hades.

  “You are not a klutz,” Athena assured her.

  “That kind of thing could happen to anyone,” Aphrodite added.

  “Yeah,” echoed Artemis. “Why would you believe anything those boys say? They’re just name-calling bullies.”

  “Thanks, you guys. You’re the best,” said Persephone. Bumping hips with Athena, she also sent smiles of gratitude toward Aphrodite and Artemis. She could always count on her friends to defend her. Which was definitely something to be grateful for!

  Remembering what she’d said to the boys in response, however, she admitted, “I wasn’t very nice to them, either, though.” Cringing a little, she told her friends what she’d said to Kydoimos and Makhai in the heat of anger, and how she’d caught them sniffing their armpits after she’d stalked off.

  At that, her BFFs dissolved in laughter. “That’s just too funny!” Artemis roared.

  “Can’t you picture it?” giggled Athena, elbowing Aphrodite.

  “Yes, I can! And I love it!” Aphrodite replied. Persephone’s BFFs laughed so hard they wound up rolling on the ground. Persephone couldn’t help joining in. Thinking back on it, she really could see the humor in the story.

  When the four goddessgirls finally managed to get their giggles under control, Aphrodite gave Persephone a quick one-armed hug. “You shouldn’t feel bad,” she told her. “Those boys deserved to be scolded back.”

  “Yeah,” echoed Artemis and Athena, nodding.

  Persephone shrugged. She still believed she could’ve handled the situation better. Being mean was really never worth it in the end. She always wound up feeling guilty and worried she’d hurt others’ feelings.

  Toward evening the girls finally climbed the granite steps to the Academy’s bronze front doors, their talk moving on to the topic of the geo-dashing competition. “It sounds like so much fun. I wish I was taking Science-ology,” Aphrodite remarked after Persephone and Athena described how the competition was going to work.

  “Me too,” said Artemis. “Apollo will get to play, that lucky dog. He takes Science-ology third period.” Apollo was Artemis’s twin brother. Although they weren’t identical, they did look a lot alike, with their glossy black hair and dark ey
es.

  Persephone nodded. “I forget which team he’s on, but I saw him during the meeting.” As the girls entered the Academy and then started up the marble staircase to their fourth-floor dorm, she turned toward Athena. “Sorry you got stuck with Kydoimos on your team,” she said.

  “S’okay,” Athena replied. “I imagine Ares and Heracles will be able to keep him in line. Makhai’s on your team, though, huh?”

  Persephone sighed. “Yeah. I’m glad he and Kydoimos are on different teams, at least. Without Kydoimos to egg him on, Makhai might not be so awful.”

  “I bet you’re right,” said Athena. “Makhai does seem to follow Kydoimos’s lead—like he’s some kind of sidekick. Maybe it’ll be good for him to have to do a little teamwork and make decisions for himself without Kydoimos around.”

  After changing out of their cheer uniforms, the girls met up again and headed downstairs to the MOA cafeteria for dinner. While eating her nectaroni, celestial salad, and ambrosia pudding, Persephone kept glancing over to the table of boys where Hades usually sat, but he never showed up. Maybe he’d had to return to the Underworld to take care of some new problem? Wait! Could Minthe have made up some kind of crisis to lure Hades back to the River Cocytus? Humph. She wouldn’t put it past the nymph to do something like that!

  Persephone’s stomach began to tighten with jealousy. But then she remembered vow number two—to curb those kinds of feelings. Taking a deep breath, she mentally pushed them away.

  Though Hades probably was in the Underworld, there could be any number of reasons he’d been called there, she reminded herself as she took a sip from her carton of nectar. Maybe those stinky-feet shades were quarreling again, for example. Yes, it was sometimes annoying that Hades wasn’t around as much as she’d like because of his godboy duties. Still, she could be grateful for the time he did have to hang out with her, right? Right. Thinking this way immediately made her feel a bit better.

  When she glanced over at Hades’ usual table one last time, she noticed that Poseidon wasn’t eating dinner there either. Which meant he might be somewhere with Hades. She also noticed two boys, seated side by side at their table, who she was pretty sure were not MOA students. One was a boy with dreadlocks. She recognized him from somewhere. Oh yeah! From that class trip they’d taken a while back to an amusement park on the island of Crete, just south of Greece.

  Leaning over to Athena, she pointed to the boy and asked, “Isn’t that Heracles’ cousin Theseus—the one he brought on our class trip to King Minos’s aMAZEment Park? Did Zeus invite him here?”

  “Yup,” Athena replied as she twirled some nectaroni noodles around her fork. “My dad gave him and his friend permission to visit Heracles for a couple of days. So they’ve been hanging around the boys’ dorm all afternoon.”

  Suddenly the other non-MOA boy sitting beside Theseus jumped up from his seat. Long blond hair flying, he leaped onto the table. Cutlery, plates, and glasses clattered loudly as he began to act out a fight scene, thrusting and swishing a fork (aka a pretend sword) here and there. “Take that! And that!” he yelled with each thrust.

  “Who’s he?” Artemis asked, squinting at the boy.

  Athena rolled her eyes and giggled. “Pirithous. Some friend of Theseus’s. You wouldn’t guess it from the way he’s acting right now, but according to Heracles, who heard it from Theseus, the guy’s a genius. Especially when it comes to technical gadgets and stuff.”

  Huh, thought Persephone. She really wouldn’t have guessed that from the boy’s antics. Then again, before she and other students at MOA had really gotten to know Hades, they’d all had him pegged as a “bad boy.” Most students (except for the ones who had bullied him) had tried to steer clear of him. It just went to show how easy it was to misjudge someone until you got to know them better. Because now she knew Hades was awesome! Most other students agreed. And, unfortunately, one nymph did too. No! she reminded herself again. She would not let jealousy in.

  A while later, the girls finished their meals and took their trays to the tray return. “Bye! I’m off to meet my mom,” Persephone called to her friends as she hurried toward the cafeteria door.

  Unfortunately, she couldn’t wait around for Hades to get back from wherever he was. In a few minutes her mom was picking her up in her chariot to fly home. Too bad. Besides wanting to spend time with him, she was bursting with curiosity about what Muse Urania had wanted to talk to him and Poseidon about after class that afternoon. Looked like she’d just have to wait to find out till tomorrow morning when their team met to begin geo-dashing.

  After exiting the cafeteria, she headed for the bronze doors at MOA’s entrance and then raced down the granite steps to the courtyard below.

  5

  Disappointment

  HAVE A GOOD DAY!” DEMETER called to Persephone when she dropped her off at school the next morning. Afterward her mom took off in her horse-drawn chariot for the Immortal Market, where she owned and managed a florist shop called Demeter’s Daisies, Daffodils, and Floral Delights. Sometimes when things were really busy, Persephone got to help out working there.

  It turned out that Persephone was the first member of her team to arrive at the Science-ology classroom that Friday. She was even better than on time—she was early! And this was despite the fact that she’d had the longest commute of all her classmates, since she didn’t live in the dorm full-time. Score!

  She nodded at Muse Urania, who was carrying a box full of some kind of identical gadgets to set on her desk. Scroll-gadgets, she realized after a moment. They’d used some of those during the Temple Games to get clues about places to go and to receive important messages from Zeus. These looked like fancier, more updated versions, though. Shiny and white, they were sleeker and slimmer than the Temple Games scroll-gadgets had been.

  Like the dependable person she was, Persephone had come prepared for the day’s adventure. Before leaving home, she’d counted out some pomegranola bars and thrown them and some apples into her backpack. Soon after she took a seat, other students began to arrive. When Hades finally came in the door, she stood, smiling brightly and waving to him. “Yoo-hoo! Over here!” she called in his direction.

  He flipped his long, dark, wavy hair out of his eyes, but he didn’t return her smile as he came toward her.

  “Hey, why so gloomy?” she asked as he sat down at the desk next to hers. “More stinky-feet shade trouble? When you weren’t at dinner yesterday, I guessed you must have had to make an unexpected trip to the Underworld or something.”

  Hades rubbed the back of his neck. “No trouble in the Underworld,” he told her. “In fact everything’s calm there for once.”

  “Then cheer up, grumpy guy,” said Persephone. “This competition is going to be fun!” Grinning with enthusiasm, she nudged his shoulder with hers. “Before I forget. What did Muse Urania want to see you and Poseidon about after class yesterday?” she asked.

  An anxious look flashed across Hades’ face.

  Uh-oh, thought Persephone. Maybe it was something bad. Something he’d rather not share. Like a failing grade on an assignment or quiz. “Of course, if you’d rather not say what it was about, that’s fine,” she said quickly. “It’s really none of my business.”

  Hades opened his mouth to respond, but before he could get a word out, Poseidon entered the classroom, trident clasped in one hand. “Dude!” he called out to Hades, raising his trident. It looked somewhat like a pitchfork, only way cooler. “Did you get your geo-location clue set up?”

  Hades nodded. “Yeah. You?”

  Poseidon gave him a thumbs-up, then ambled over to Muse Urania and began to speak to her about something.

  Looking at Hades, Persephone tilted her head in confusion. “Geo-location clue?”

  Hades sighed. “Muse Urania asked Poseidon and me if it would be okay to include the realms of the sea and the Underworld in today’s competition. I wasn’t sure I wanted people traipsing around in the Underworld, but she was pretty persuasive. So last ni
ght Poseidon and I each wrote up a clue for teams to find something in a certain location in each of our realms. Muse Urania did the other two clues to make four in all.”

  “How exciting!” Persephone exclaimed, wiggling happy fingers at him. Then an unhappy thought occurred to her, and she abruptly stilled her fingers. “So it won’t be a problem that you’re on the same team? On our team? Could give us an unfair advantage, since you’ll know where—”

  “Exactly,” Hades interrupted. “And that means Poseidon and I aren’t on your team anymore. We won’t be on any team. Our clues are our only contributions.”

  “Oh!” Persephone couldn’t help feeling disappointed. She’d really been looking forward to her and Hades geo-dashing off together.

  Hades seemed to guess how she was feeling. He almost always could. It was one of the many things she liked about him. He took her hand and squeezed it gently. “I’m sorry. I wanted to play on your team too. But just like it was an honor when you helped set up the Temple Games, it’s been my honor to take part in planning this competition.”

  “Right. S’okay,” she said, though it really wasn’t. “Hey! Maybe I could help too. I could ask Muse Urania if we could go spruce up the Underworld a little before teams arrive. Someone else could take my place on Team Four.”

  Hades cocked his head at her and frowned. “ ‘Spruce up the Underworld’? What’s wrong with it the way it already is?”

  “Oh, not a thing,” Persephone said quickly. For a moment she’d forgotten that Hades never seemed to notice the smells in the Underworld that made others wrinkle their noses. Things like stagnant water and sulfur, which Kydoimos and Makhai had obviously smelled on her sandals yesterday. And she couldn’t remember the last time she and Hades had given his three-headed dog, Cerberus, a bath. He was kind of smelly too. Then she thought of something else. “Wait, if you and Poseidon can’t be on our team, we’ll be two members short.”