Only Everything

by Kieran Scott

  “It’s not working!” I said, looking at my mother.

  “Relax,” she told me. “Relax your body, your mind, your soul. Think only of where you want to be.”

  I took another breath. I felt my muscles relaxing. I tried to quiet my brain. I opened my fists, relaxed my jaw, softened my elbows and knees. I closed my eyes and saw myself at Orion’s bedside.

  “Orion,” I whispered.

  Suddenly I felt my hair lift off my shoulders. My skin prickled, and with a blast of heat, I burst into a million tiny pieces. I cried out, anticipating the pain, but it never came. The sensation, instead, was like a pleasant tickle in every inch of my body. And then, just as suddenly, I was whole again. I felt the solidity of the floor beneath my feet. The scent of raw wood filled my nostrils. I opened my eyes. Orion lay before me.

  “It worked,” I breathed, looking up at the heavens. “Mother, it worked!”

  I imagined Aphrodite watching me, laughing at my reaction, but the joy lasted only a moment as Orion gripped his pillow and screamed. I fell to my knees and reached for him. His skin was on fire, and he was bathed in cold sweat.

  “Orion, wake up,” I said gently, laying my hand against his cheek. “Wake up. It’s all right. Everything’s all right. You’re safe.”

  With a jerk, Orion’s hand darted up and grabbed my wrist. He sat up straight and turned, twisting my arm like he was turning the screws on a torture victim. His eyes were crazed.

  “Orion. Please, stop,” I told him calmly, resisting the divine instinct to defend myself even as my fingers hummed, ready to smite him. “It’s me. It’s Eros. You’re alive and all’s well.”

  “Eros?” he breathed. He looked down at his fingers and, as if stunned, released me. He turned and drew his legs up on the bed, resting his face in his hands. “I was having this dream . . . this awful, violent dream.”

  There was a small kitchen against one wall of the cabin. I went to the sink and wet a towel, then returned and pressed it to his forehead. He reached up and touched my hand, holding it against him as if afraid to let go.

  “Do you want to talk about it? Tell me what it was about?” I asked.

  Orion shook his head. “I don’t want to think about it.”

  I knelt at his bedside, considering Harmonia’s theory, that Orion would be haunted by all the earthly crimes and wars and genocides he’d witnessed.

  “I’m here now,” I told him. “And I’m going to help you.”

  “How?” he asked, taking in a broken breath. “How are you going to help me?”

  “I don’t know yet,” I admitted. “But I’ll stay as long as it takes.”

  • • •

  A pair of cawing crows brought me back to Earth, and I found myself standing at the center of the park, at the foot of a marble statue—a tribute to war heroes long gone. I sat down on one of the wide steps and sighed, wishing that Orion’s nightmares were still my biggest problem. Dotted around the grassy, shaded area were groups of friends and couples, gathered on picnic blankets or sitting on benches near the monument. A pair of girls I vaguely recognized from school sat smoking cigarettes and paging through a magazine. Pathetically, when I saw them, it made me think of how nice it must feel to have a friend.

  I needed help, but I couldn’t even tell anyone who I really was or why I was here. And Aphrodite clearly had no interest in being of service. Not these days. The woman didn’t even eat anything unless I brought her a tray, and if I heard her say it was my fault we were here one more time. . . .

  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 ask
ed.

  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.”

  “Not so fast, Darla,” Mr. Chin said, wagging his finger. “Even someone on your salary has to come up with a solid budget and live within their means. Which is what we’ll be talking about today.”

  He distributed the rest of the careers and headed for the board. I saw that there was one handout left and realized True had never shown up today. I wondered what career she’d landed. Matchmaker? I hoped not.

  I glanced at the empty chair in the room and realized I sort of wished she were there. Even though she’d been totally off the mark with Stacey and then Marion, I was curious what she’d think about me and Darla as a couple. I’d never even been interested in a girl like her before. But after hanging out with her most of the weekend, I could sort of see us together. She talked about Veronica a lot, but it made sense since they were best friends. Aside from that, she liked music and she was smart and she laughed at my jokes. Plus, she was pretty and my parents liked her and she was friends with my friends. Or the people who seemed like they were going to be my friends. It made sense to go out with her.