Three Girls and a God

by Clea Hantman

  I was trying, I really was.

  I had tried to put a happy spin on this whole thing, but it wasn’t working. I was still freezing cold, dripping wet, and totally exhausted. I was failing. Not just this class, but at finding my own strength.

  I looked at Polly, who still looked angry, as angry as our first day on earth, but now she looked tired and dirty, too. She was trying to run, as was I. But we were barely moving at all. I wondered if I looked that dirty.

  And then I started to cry.

  TWELVE

  While Era and Polly were at that survival class, I decided to surprise them with a genuine home-cooked meal. Like I said, we’d been going out to eat, a lot. More than anything because it was fun to try something new each time. I mean, the food back home was more grand—it tasted sweeter and hotter. But food on earth was pretty exciting. The choices were never ending! Still, we really needed to get the hang of cooking for ourselves like normal people.

  I went to the grocery store and scanned the aisles. It was there that I noticed, on the back of a soup can, the instructions for making something called a mushroom tuna casserole surprise. It sounded fancy but only needed six ingredients, so I decided then and there to make my own adventure. A cooking extravaganza starring mushroom tuna casserole surprise!

  Never mind that it then took me almost two hours to figure out what those six ingredients actually were and then to hunt them down in the store. It would be worth it when my sisters got home and I served them up a seriously gourmet meal. I’d even bought these fancy paper plates to serve it on!

  So after opening cans and mixing things up and making a treacherous mess of the kitchen, I shoved my extremely fancy mushroom tuna casserole surprise into the oven for fifteen to twenty minutes. And then I sat back and waited for the girls. I figured they could clean up. I had had a hard day in the kitchen.

  I sat on the front porch in this old creaky swing and watched the leaves blow around in the yard, but it was really too noisy, too windy, too icky. I miss a lot of things back home, but the very perfect weather may be at the top of my list. (Apollo has dropped a notch or two in the last couple of days. Don’t ask.) I mean, this humid thing that Athens, Georgia, has going on is wretched. It’s hot and wet and sticky, all at the same time. And right now it was raining, hard.

  Just moments before the spectacular mushroom tuna casserole surprise would be ready, the girls stormed in, yelling and screaming at each other.

  “Hey, yo, stop!” I yelled. They’d tracked mud into the house. In one brief moment it was everywhere. They looked horrible. They sounded worse.

  “She embarrassed me to no end today. I mean, screaming and yelling like a—”

  “She got herself into this mess and then she cried because she thinks she looks horrible, not because it was a complete and total disaster, not because we may fail—”

  “And then to blame me when she herself joined the class after I told her no—”

  “Did you know your sister is completely insane—”

  “I bet she had a mirror in her pack all along and was just keeping it from me to be spiteful—”

  “Quiet! Both of you, take off those dirty clothes, clean up, and get ready for dinner, without arguing! I made a very fancy dinner tonight, a beautiful mushroom tuna casserole surprise, and you two are going to sit at that table and at the very least pretend to get along, just tonight, and you’re going to eat my incredibly luxurious mushroom tuna casserole surprise, every last bit of it, and you’re going to make small talk and you’re going to appreciate my incredible selflessness and you’re going to thank me profusely and…and…now!”

  “What’s gotten into you, sis?” asked Era, totally calm now.

  “I slaved over the hot stove to make this fantastic dinner for you two, to surprise you with my generosity and to show you how I can think of others like Daddy wants me to, and gosh darn it, you’re going to enjoy it.”

  “Is there a freaky role-reversal thing going on here that nobody told me about?” Polly asked.

  “Very funny. I just got into it, that’s all, and wanted to surprise you. Now go clean up, c’mon.”

  “Fine,” swooshed Era.

  “Sure, Thalia, and this was very sweet of you, thank you.”

  “You’re welcome. Now go.”

  As they headed for the bathroom, I heard Era whisper to Polly, “You do realize how ridiculous that was coming from her, right?” But I let it go.

  They emerged from the bathroom fifteen minutes later. The mushroom tuna casserole surprise looked a little worse for wear, but I was nonetheless just as excited to serve them in a grand manner. We sat at our little yellow kitchen table. I lit the candles I had found in a drawer. I gave them each an embossed paper napkin (they had swans on them!) and dished them up a heaping portion each. Lastly, I served myself. Era almost dove right in, but I made her wait till we all had a helping.

  Then I said, “Okay, now you can eat, and make sure you tell me how wonderful I am.”

  They each took a bite, and I don’t think I have to tell you what came next. Rave reviews! Era told me it was delectable and said it was tantalizing. Polly gave me a triumphant thumbs-up.

  Only it didn’t look like they were swallowing.

  They were smiling, but I had to admit, their grins looked rather forced.

  I took a bite and understood everything before it had even hit my throat. My mushroom tuna casserole surprise was delectably…disgusting. It had the flavor of wet dirt and salty seaweed combined with a big ol’ bag of worms. It was horrible. Worse than horrible. It was alarmingly atrocious.

  We all sat there for a moment with a mouthful of wormy tuna casserole. And then, at once, all together, we burst into laughter, spraying slimy, gritty mushroom goo everywhere. Era’s mouthful, a particularly large mouthful, hit me squarely in the face, which only made her laugh harder. I picked up my spoon and scooped up a big old wad of the sandy gunk and whirled it her way, hitting her wet hair. Polly fell off her chair laughing.

  Era and I both looked at Polly and grabbed our spoons. Polly, panicking, began to scooch herself backward across the kitchen floor, shaking her head no at us but laughing all the same. Just before we launched our spoons of mushroom sludge her way, she grabbed a new box of Choco-Stars off the counter and blocked our attack. She then opened the box and in one fell swoop grabbed a handful of stars and chucked them our way. Dozens of little Choco-Stars hung from the slimy goop dripping from Era’s curls. We each raced to a different cabinet. I grabbed a can of whipped cream, popped the top, and sprayed away. Era got her hands on the pudding and tried to smear us into a chocolate death. Polly, after going through the entire box of Choco-Stars, grabbed the box of Sugar Os and proceeded to pelt us with sweet and tasty little zeros.

  It didn’t last long. It didn’t have to. The room was annihilated in under fifteen minutes. Our once bright yellow kitchen was now mostly gray gook. There was pudding dripping from the ceiling. We were covered head to toe in a gruesome mixture of sweetness and slime. We lay back on the floor amid our handiwork and giggled furiously.

  “Yum, I love whipped cream,” Era said, wiping a poof of it off her shirt and licking it. “It reminds me of the ambrosia back home.”

  “Who is going to clean this up?” Polly said, still laughing but shaking her head.

  “Not me,” I declared, “I made dinner!”

  Era tossed one last spoonful of muck my way.

  Yeah, I guess I deserved it.

  THIRTEEN

  “Hey, Thalia!”

  It was Dylan. Calling to me from the other end of the hall. Didn’t he know how to be discreet? Anyway, I ignored him but waited for him at my locker so I could give him the camera. We had to turn in the film tomorrow or our project would be late and we’d get a big, stinking F. I think that stands for failure. A word I know all too well. Hence this whole goddess-banished-to-earth thing. I could not get an F. I could not fail, not here, not now.

  I tried not to look, but he was whistli
ng a little tune. Dylan from Denver was always happy. He always had a smile on his face. Even when he was getting hit by a runaway skateboard. And he had such white teeth.

  Just a few feet from my locker, he called out my name again. I looked up—I had to. He had a huge smile on his face as he bent down in football huddle position. (I’d watched a little Sunday football since I was in Athens. Tight football pants.)

  “Twenty-seven, forty-five, fifteen, hut, hut, hut,” and with that, Dylan came charging toward me. “The camera, Thalia, the camera.”

  I assumed he meant he wanted me to pass the camera to him. I handed it over as he breezed on by me. Just past my locker he threw up his hands, camera and all, in a victory dance. He made crowd-roaring noises. People laughed, even cheered a little, even though he hadn’t done anything at all.

  And then he just went down.

  Like all of a sudden he was standing in oil. His feet just slipped out from under him. And down he went onto the school hall floor, a nasty concoction of sweat, dirt, and old gum. But that wasn’t the half of it. The camera, our camera, came flying out of his hands, flew ten feet at least, and landed hard on the floor, shattering into dozens of pieces.

  I screamed. A little scream, something like, “Ahhhhhh!”

  Dylan’s smile was gone.

  “Oh, no! It’s ruined!” I was still screaming. I dove to the ground. I tried to pick up all the little pieces, but several had shot halfway down the hall. It didn’t matter. The film was rolled out, unspooled, across the floor, exposed for good.

  “F, for failure,” I said to myself, sitting on the floor in the hall amid the shattered camera. “F for freaking finished.” I sank. I couldn’t fail this class. Hera would never let us come back home.

  Dylan was still splayed out on the floor from his fall. He slowly pulled himself up to a kneeling position and began to crawl my way. “Thalia, I’m so…”

  “Save it,” I said.

  C’mon, he ruined my project.

  And then I saw them. The three little witches from Hades, the Backroom Betties, the very vicious Furies stood at the end of the hall, whispering to each other and giggling.

  I got up slowly and just stood there in shock.

  I then looked at who was still on the ground. He looked so sad, so wounded, so sorry—picking up the shattered pieces of our project. I couldn’t be mad. But I wasn’t gonna hug him, either.

  I looked back down the hall again. And suddenly I knew it was them. I knew it was all their doing, the Furies. But what could I do, stand here in the middle of the crowded school hallway and accuse the little witches of black magic? I’d only end up looking the freak. They weren’t anywhere near Dylan when he fell.

  The fact is, I wanted desperately to use a little magic—on the camera and on the Furies. But we could get in a lot of trouble for it. Anyway, how would I explain it to Dylan? “Oh, by the way, I’m a Greek goddess from another time, so don’t worry about this. I’ll fix everything.”

  “I can’t believe I did this, not here, not now. I can make it better, I will make it better,” Dylan said sadly, quietly.

  “How?” I asked hopefully.

  “I could…” Dylan opened his mouth to reply but then seemed to think better of it and just shook his head.

  It wasn’t his fault. “What’s done is done. Hey, I’ve got to go. You’re okay, right? Probably a good thing you had that helmet on,” I said.

  “Yeah, I’m fine. I mean, you, are you all right?”

  “Sure,” I said. But I wasn’t all right. I had an inexplicable urge to get the heck out of Dodge. It wasn’t the humiliation or even the looming F on my academic horizon. It was the complete and total urge I had to kiss one Dylan from Denver and make it all better.

  Hurrah! Our plan worked! Thalia looked so disgusted.

  Poor Dylan’s to blame that their camera is busted.

  Since she now hates him, he’ll soon just go home.

  Now, someone please get us a small pocket comb.

  Era’s hair is a mess, not pretty in the least, like something all hairy…a wild wildebeest!

  And despite all her efforts, she’s getting no tougher,

  While Polly continues to act like her mother.

  They’re failing their challenges and their class, too.

  It’s so easy, we almost have nothing to do.

  So let’s take a break and go celebrate in style,

  Let’s coerce Mr. Hawkins to make his class run ten miles!

  FOURTEEN

  I thought about him throughout Bio. Which was hard, considering my very shy lab partner, Wilma, and I were dissecting a frog. Well, I wasn’t dissecting a frog. I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I have a pet frog back home named Wilbur who helps me with my most foolish charms. I took the F. This was becoming a habit of mine.

  Still, Mr. Z. made me watch and participate even though I wouldn’t actually take knife to hand. Trying to figure out why I had wanted to kiss a goofy football jock in the middle of the school hallway while watching someone remove frog gizzards with a rusty pair of tweezers wasn’t easy. Yet I wasn’t all that distracted by the toad.

  At lunch I slowly made my way to Claire, across the quad. But before I could reach her and the bench, I saw him. Dylan was sitting alone in the courtyard, and he was sulking. Or at least that’s what it looked like. He most certainly wasn’t smiling like his usual self. Could he be this upset over the F?

  I stood there for a moment. Maybe three. Trying to figure out what to do, if anything. I mean, an F. I have to get good grades, or I don’t have a chance of getting home. But Dylan looked like he had as much to lose as I did. He looked devastated. Maybe he’s got parents who will be furious with him over something like this, like Claire’s, I thought.

  I walked in his direction. I still didn’t know what I was going to say. Till I said it.

  “Hey. Who cares about a silly documentary on some ancient camera for a hippie teacher, anyway, right?”

  “I’m real sorry, Thalia. I didn’t mean…”

  “I know,” I said. “No problem. Really. An F, hey, we’ll live, right?”

  “I didn’t want to let you down.”

  “You didn’t let me down. It was an accident.”

  “A colossal one. Really, I am so very sorry….”

  “Stop with the apologies already.”

  “But it was such a good film. I know we would’ve gotten an A-plus. I mean, your bee stuff was great, and my human star burst! And I’d shot footage of that Komodo dragon, although admittedly the thing was a bit smaller than I’d expected.”

  “Look, maybe we can talk to Mrs. Tracy and—”

  “Tried it,” Dylan interrupted. “She heard all about the accident and how it happened. She won’t give us any extra time, and she said we’re lucky not to get an automatic F just for breaking the camera in the first place.”

  “Oh. Okay, then, um…” I racked my brain for a few seconds. Dylan’s shoulders slumped about an inch more, if that was possible. “Hey! Claire mentioned something about having a video camera and computer and making movies. Why don’t I see if I can borrow Claire’s video camera? Maybe we could throw something together quick. Claire said this project would only take a day on her camera. It wouldn’t be on Mrs. Tracy’s precious sixteen millimeter, but she might appreciate our resourcefulness. It’s worth a try, no?”

  “Wow. That would be great. You’re a genius.”

  “Sometimes.”

  “Well, thanks for including me, Thalia. I know you could probably do this on your own and just leave me to hang in Tracy’s class. It’s very sweet of you.”

  “Don’t thank me. I need your help. I couldn’t pull this off by myself. And besides, you are my partner. I’ll meet you here after school, okay?”

  “Sure. You want to join me for lunch?”

  “Well, um, see, Claire’s waiting for me over there. I gotta go. But right here, after school, okay?”

  “Wouldn’t miss it for anything in the universe,�
�� he said with a very, very mischievous grin.

  FIFTEEN

  Claire and I met Dylan at the bench. He looked eager, sweet, gorgeous. It was awkward, the walk to Claire’s house. We didn’t talk much. Dylan asked a few questions; I gave one-word answers at best. It just felt weird somehow with Claire there. Less comfortable. Stiff.

  When we got to her house, Claire loaned us her video camera without much instruction besides pointing out the big red button (that means record) and the smaller button that allows you to zoom in on someone’s nostril hairs if you so desire. After that, we were off.

  First stop: the park. We chased birds and interviewed the old men who were playing chess out by the fountain. Dylan asked them, “What was the best day of your life?” And one man in a fuzzy-collared shirt said, “Why, today, of course!” He asked another to tell us about the best adventure he had ever been on, and this man with a big red nose told us this incredible story about how he met his wife of forty-two years in a Paris café. But there weren’t any teenagers around, so after a while we left.

  We then headed on over to the Pile, this crazy used clothing store that literally has piles of clothes. All the people working there were our age.

  We asked if they would be in our movie. They just sort of shrugged yes. But then, when we turned the little camera on them and asked them questions like, “What do you do after work, with your friends?” or, “What is the most important thing you own?” they totally loosened up and talked endlessly.

  After we shot tons of footage of the customers and the employees, we shopped!

  When no one was looking, I climbed up on the biggest pile of all and then sank down in the mountain of clothes. We tried on loud shirts and crazy ties while filming each other. Dylan’s hair kept falling in his eyes, and he brushed it away each time with this little smirk. And he bought this velvety, raspberry red scarf for me, and when I tried to tell him no, he said I had to take it, I looked too good in red not to.