At last, Zeus stopped pacing and stood up straighter, glancing at each of us in turn, the way he did every time he was about to say something important. “We need to inform the rest of the gods about what happened today, and from now on we’ll keep an eye out for anything unusual in the forest. Report everything suspicious to me,” Zeus finished, looking pointedly at Hermes.
“I’ll tell everyone,” Hermes confirmed, and then he shot off like a bullet, going east toward Main Street. Even though it was late and he should have been home already, delivering this message was way more important. Saving the world comes before dinner, after all.
Still trying not to worry about Hades, the rest of the Monster Watch and I headed back to our own houses. We had just stepped out of the quiet forest when I heard the familiar sound of yelling come from my house. I sighed glumly, knowing that my parents were fighting again, and that my dad was probably drunk.
Zach squeezed my shoulder and whispered, “Hey, Ash? You can come over to our house anytime, you know.” Luke nodded in agreement, although he was frowning in deep thought.
“Yeah, mine too,” Connor offered sweetly, like any good friend would do.
“Thanks, guys, but I’m fine for tonight,” I assured them. The three of them exchanged dubious glances, not totally believing me, but they didn’t say any more. They knew it was better not to press me.
I reluctantly waved goodbye and then stood there quietly for a minute, just staring at the yellow light emanating from inside the house. I could see the shadows of my parents projected on the wall, waving their arms around crazily, like the vicious monsters I fought fearlessly every day. But now I just felt alone, debating whether or not to go inside the house. After all, I could always just turn around and go back into the forest to find Alec. I knew he would welcome my company anytime.
I must have stood there, in the dark across the street from my house, for five whole minutes before I finally decided to climb up to my balcony and into my room, so that I could avoid my parents’ wrath. When I reached my dark room, I lay back on my bed to try to rest, but instead I found myself listening to my parents screaming at each other from downstairs. It was awfully hard to sleep when they were being so loud. They usually started fighting about money, even though I was pretty sure we had plenty, but their arguing always wound up being about the fact that my father was constantly drunk. Today their fight was different; they were fighting about me, specifically about why I had been staying out so late recently.
“Ashley can do whatever she wants to! She’s been doing that since the day she was born!” my father slurred angrily as I frowned and closed my eyes.
“But she could be killed! No one even knows what’s in that terrible forest,” my mother told him. She usually tried to keep her cool during these fights, but I could tell she was way past that point. I wondered how long they had been at it so far.
“Well, the Monster Watch knows, and they’re obviously fine,” my father retorted in a raised voice.
I raised my eyebrows, not believing what I was hearing. For possibly the first time in my life, I was agreeing with my drunken father. He continued, “Ashley can take care of herself! Hell, she’s probably the smartest kid her age in the entire world! She doesn’t need us! She never did!” Now my father’s voice broke, and there was a long pause before my mother spoke again.
I felt horrible, thinking that my father was right. I never really did need my parents, except for the use of their money and when I was a baby, of course. I had been making my own meals, walking to school, and spending as much time out of the house as I could since I was five or six. Frowning to myself, I wondered what my life would have been like if I were a normal girl, since the forest really was the reason my friends and I found out at such a young age that we were gods. Would my parents have formed a closer bond if they had had to take greater care of me and give me more guidance throughout my life?
“It’s all because you’re such a bad father! Always drinking and disappearing, she never would have gone into that wretched forest with those … those silly boys if it weren’t for you!” my mother screamed. At this, my jaw dropped, and I glared at my ceiling.
Now my mother was ragging on my father about the fact that my best friends were guys? I was partly the goddess of war, for crying out loud! Of course some of my friends were guys! And I had to prove myself to every single one of them, or else they would still be sexist jerks like half of the other guys from outside the Woods that Katie described to me. Hell no, I didn’t go into the forest because my parents didn’t give me the care I wanted. I had first gone in to save my friends, and if given the chance, I wouldn’t have changed anything I had done.
Not in the mood to listen to any more of my parents’ fight, I silently stepped out into the hallway, then walked to the end of it and climbed up into the attic, where I often hid from my arguing parents when I was little. I could always think better up there, without all the noise from my parents’ shouting.
Standing quietly for a minute, I breathed in the musty smell of the attic and frowned at the rafters draped in silver cobwebs. I saw nothing but old, beige bed sheets on the floor, and I figured that no one had been up there in years, until something in the corner of the room caught my eye. It was a shiny golden picture frame that had obviously been dusted off recently, but I couldn’t see what the painting was because it was facing the dark wall. Feeling curious and knowing it was probably one of the many antiques my dad had bought for my mother, I walked over to it and picked it up carefully.
Staring back at me was an old painting of my mother and father standing under clear blue skies in front of the Eiffel Tower in Paris. Minus the beer belly, my father looked pretty much the same—grumpy expression, thinning hair—but my mother was wearing a fancy black dress, and she looked much younger, wearing a big smile, her brown eyes shining. I hadn’t seen her smile like that in years, which led me to believe that my father was the one who had been looking at the old memory.
Suddenly feeling as if I had intruded on my father’s personal thoughts, I quickly put the picture back exactly how I had found it, then started to return to my room. While I was in the hallway, I narrowly avoided running into my father, but he was so drunk that he hardly noticed. He just grunted something unintelligible, and I nervously inched around him, making a beeline for my room, where I collapsed on my bed, ready to get some sleep.
___________________
I woke up and quickly got dressed in jeans and a simple teal V-neck, eager to get into the forest. The appearance of Hades the day before had completely changed the equation, and I still wanted to find out why he had been up in our realm. Therefore, I met up with the rest of the Monster Watch in the meadow, where we all sat on a red-and-white-checkered picnic blanket, to discuss a new plan. Alec, Pan, and Persephone arrived a few minutes later, and we started eating our breakfast of berries and granola bars. It wasn’t much, but it was better than eating with our parents inside on a nice, sunny day like this.
“So,” Zeus started, munching on some blackberries, “what was up with your parents last night?” He was trying hard not to express his deeper worries.
“Yeah, that sounded horrible,” Apollo chimed in.
I shrugged, not really wanting to talk about the whole thing, and answered blandly, “Just my mom complaining about how I’m always in the woods, and how my dad’s always drunk.” Alec shot me a concerned look, as this was the first time he had heard about my parents’ less-than-perfect marriage, but I just bit my lip and looked down at the lush, green grass to avoid his gaze.
I continued eating my granola bar, and thankfully, we switched topics and started discussing what to do about Hades. The rest of the gods were going to sneak into the woods later to meet up with us so we could talk about separating into groups to patrol the forest every day. We knew we had to do something to stop whatever Hades was doing.
After we ate, we all tossed around a volleyball for a while and chatted about different monsters. E
ventually, the other gods showed up one by one, and our volleyball circle got bigger and bigger until Hera and Demeter, the last two gods, finally arrived.
Zeus clapped his hands together to get everyone’s attention and waited for Pan to catch the volleyball. When we were all silent, Zeus ordered, “All right, we’re splitting into patrols. Patrol one will be me, Hestia, and Hera. Athena will be leading patrol two, along with Artemis and Apollo.” He paused to let us take in the information, but I was happy with my team; for the most part, we all worked well together.
“What about me?” Ares questioned impatiently.
“Ares will be leading patrol three, with Aphrodite and Dionysus,” Zeus continued as Ares gave a nod of approval, “and patrol four will be led by Poseidon, with Demeter and Hermes. Hephaestus is at home working on … well, whatever he’s working on, and Alec, you can pick whatever patrol you want. Persephone and Pan are heading back to their hideout.”
Alec nodded and, not unexpectedly, walked over to join my team, high-fiving Apollo on the way. “Yes!” Apollo grinned and exclaimed enthusiastically, “We can call ourselves the A Team. Athena, Apollo, Artemis, and Alec—mighty protectors of the forest!” I simply rolled my eyes as some of the other gods chuckled, and then we split up, my patrol heading north.
___________________
My walkie-talkie crackled to life and Zeus’s voice said, “A Team, have you seen anything yet?”
I sighed. We had been searching for almost two hours already, and no one from any patrol had seen anything suspicious. Honestly, the most interesting thing that happened to my patrol was Apollo tripping over a large tree root and falling flat on his face. “That’s a negative,” I replied into the walkie-talkie.
“Patrols three and four?” Zeus asked.
“Nothing here,” Ares grumbled unhappily. I guessed there wasn’t enough action for him so far.
“Hey, how come my patrol doesn’t get a cool nickname?” Poseidon complained. Artemis and I only exchanged disapproving glances.
“Just answer the question!” Zeus told him over the radio.
“You’re no fun,” Poseidon stated bluntly. “But no, we haven’t seen anything.”
Another two hours passed with no better results. We had scoured the entire forest, including around the Oracle’s camp, but none of the patrols had even seen a monster, which was also suspicious. It was as if they were all missing or had disappeared from our forest. Until then, there hadn’t been a single day I spent in the woods when I hadn’t run into a monster. Maybe this too had something to do with Hades. All the monsters did come from the Underworld, after all.
Eventually, the rest of the patrols met back up with mine in the meadow. Since no one had found anything, it seemed absurd to stick around for the entire day. Everyone except the rest of the Monster Watch, Alec, and I went back to their houses to relax, but we agreed to keep our walkie-talkies on at all times, just in case something terrible happened. Long-term emergency protocol, as Poseidon called it.
___________________
Alec, Zeus, Apollo, and I had just found Poseidon hiding by the river in yet another round of reverse hide-and-seek when our walkie-talkies came alive with Hermes speaking in Greek. His deep voice was low and quiet, so I knew he was probably out in public, and he sounded more than a little worried as he informed me, “Athena, I’m here at the Fire Pit for lunch, and apparently your father’s missing. Your mom is really freaking out.”
“Yeah, so?” I said, not really caring. I automatically assumed that my father had just left the Woods again, like he usually did after having a huge fight with my mother. He always came back after a few days.
But I was wrong this time.
“No, I don’t think so. I mean, he packed up all of his clothes and things … and just left,” Hermes restated. “He’s gone, Athena. And I’m not so sure he’s coming back.”
Chapter 11:
RETURN OF THE MONSTERS
When I finally reached the Fire Pit, I saw my mother sitting outside, alone at a round table set for two. I sighed and sat across from her, then pushed my bangs out of my eyes and asked cautiously, “Are you okay, Mom?”
She dabbed her big brown eyes with a napkin before looking into my narrowed gray ones. “I’ll be fine, sweetie.”
I gritted my teeth and leaned back in my chair, slightly annoyed. Anyone could clearly see that she was not fine at all.
“Don’t give me that. Just go home, and I’ll close up the antique store today,” I told her, hoping she would do what I asked and feeling even more like a parent than usual, as I often did when I had to keep the gods from doing something stupid. My mother shook her head and opened her mouth to respond, but I interrupted, “Mom, just go home. Please.”
“Oh, I guess I can go.” She nodded reluctantly, slowly got up off the chair, and started the short walk home. I stood up when she left and was about to walk next door to close the antique shop for the day when my other mother popped her head out of the Fire Pit.
“Will Catherine be okay?” Martha asked me, her eyebrows knit together with worry. Not really wanting to talk to anyone, I simply nodded and bid her a polite farewell.
I walked into the antique shop next door, ignoring the ring of the tiny bell, and turned around to flip the sign in the display window so that it read closed instead of open. Then I weaved my way through the maze of antique chairs, tables, and miscellaneous items and sat down at my mother’s cluttered desk in the back of the store, facing the quiet entrance. I flipped through the many papers on the desk, but I didn’t find anything interesting or worth reading, so I just leaned back in the chair and allowed myself to drift, deep in thought.
Eventually, after spending quite a long time staring blankly off into space, I picked up the phone on the desk and dialed my father’s cell phone number automatically, almost like a robot. I wasn’t sure why or how I had memorized it, since I had never bothered to call him before, so I figured it was one of those unexplained, godly things that came with being Athena and therefore knowing almost everything.
I waited while the phone rang, and rang, and rang, until a monotone voice told me to leave a message, so I barked angrily, “Where the hell are you? And why did you just leave without warning? I can’t believe you’re giving up on Mom! She needs you. Can’t you see that? I’m not even sure why she cares about you, but she does. So call me back when you get this message.” I didn’t even bother to leave my name or number.
After that, I went outside and locked the wooden door behind me before heading home, mindlessly kicking tiny rocks as I strutted along, bored out of my mind. Within a few minutes, I reached my empty house, which, due to the lazy summer heat, seemed to sag slightly in its foundation, like most of the others in town, but its gray color just made the house look sad. Shaking off my depressed thoughts, I went straight up to my room and did nothing but homework for my online art history class the entire afternoon. I didn’t even care that I had not eaten lunch yet. I wasn’t particularly hungry, to be honest.
Around six o’clock, I realized that my mother was probably going to stay in her room crying the whole night unless I made some dinner, so I lazily stumbled down the stairs and cooked some mac ’n’ cheese. I sat at the kitchen table alone, finishing up my dinner while staring at the phone on the granite countertop, waiting for my father to call. He certainly had some explaining to do.
After another couple of hours of staring at the phone some more and reading my newest book, I determined that my father was going to keep being a jerk and not even bother to call. Sighing, I got up off the chair and started my way up the stairs. “Mom! Dinner is in the kitchen,” I yelled toward her bedroom door before I walked through mine.
By then it was around ten, so the sun had set and most of the stars were out shining through the black night. Eager to get some fresh air, I climbed up to the roof and sat on the rough surface, staring randomly at the sky out over the woods and thinking quietly to myself. The view seemed especially spectacular tha
t night.
I hugged my knees, wishing my father would just call me already. He at least owed my mom and me that, I thought. After fifteen years of marriage, you would have hoped that they had learned to compromise and work together, but apparently not. Having a child probably made their lives worse, even if I didn’t bother them very much. It was for this reason I often wondered what my parents’ lives would be like if my mother had never given birth to me, since I couldn’t even remember a time when their marriage wasn’t on the rocks due to their ongoing arguments.
The maladaptive daydream faded quickly, however, when a rustling noise made its way up to me from down on the ground. I knew it had to be Alec. He was the only person who never asked for my permission to come up to my thinking place, and I realized his visits were probably going to become more regular over the course of the summer. When he easily pulled himself up onto the rough roof, I purposely avoided his enchanting gaze and continued to glare out at the sky, still angry with my father. That night, I was not in the mood to socialize, so I hoped Alec would realize this and leave quickly.
I expected Alec to try to get me to talk to him, but he seemed to know me well—apparently better than either of us had originally thought—even though we hadn’t known each other long. He silently but nervously sat down next to me and watched the stars with me, not making any move to speak at all. But I was grateful; I hadn’t realized his company would be so quiet and refreshing.
About half an hour later, still neither one of us had said anything, and it was quite late. “I should probably go inside now,” I whispered awkwardly in English, pausing to fix my ponytail.
I started to stand up, and Alec did the same. With a sly smirk on his handsome face, he offered jokingly, “Let me walk you home.”
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