“Why are you being like this?” I asked Ari.
“What? Are you two besties now?” Ari set her hands on her hips. “Maybe your bestie can figure out what ‘small boot’ means so that we can get on with it.”
I spotted Maris in the distance, weaving around other kids with ease, even though she was staring at a page.
“You know what? I bet she can help,” I said. “If you get any ideas, you know where to find me.” I left Ari standing outside the camp doors, looking a little surprised, as if I’d just dumped cold water on her head.
Back in the poetry room, Mr. Theo had covered every wall with colorful butcher paper. “Public poetry,” he announced. “In the tradition of masters like Tu Fu and Li Po, China’s most important classical poets, we will be papering all of Corona Arts with public poems!” He had a paintbrush behind each ear, and a grin that lit up the room. I couldn’t help but be a little excited.
“Original poems? Or previously published ones?” Maris asked very seriously.
“Both!” Mr. Theo said. “Which means you need to find your favorite poems to share, plus write a few of your own.”
We got to work. I chose a large piece of blue butcher paper, a pot of purple paint, and a fresh paintbrush. I started by painting a border.
Maris set up her paper beside me, so that we were standing side by side as we painted. “So what were you and Ari talking about this morning? It looked serious,” she said.
I stopped mid-brushstroke. “Oh. Nothing, really.”
“I knew it,” Maris said without looking up from her paper. She was writing out Emily Dickinson’s “I’m Nobody” poem with the kind of seriousness most people saved for funerals.
“Knew what?” I asked with a sinking feeling.
“It’s okay if you were talking about me,” Maris said, dotting an i with a frowny face.
“We weren’t,” I lied.
“Sure,” Maris said.
“What is it you wanted to tell us? Something about tomorrow?” I asked, hoping it would make Maris feel better. She was probably planning some poetry reading or something.
“Oh. Nothing,” Maris said, echoing me. Her lips were a straight line, and I could see that she was grinding her teeth.
We were quiet for a while until Mr. Theo turned the radio on, and then we painted in silence to the sounds of an easy listening station. “How long have you known Ari?” I asked after some time had passed, and Maris seemed less angry.
“Let me think,” Maris said. “You know her aunt owns the Queen of Corona bodega, right? The shop opened right before Thanksgiving. I remember because they raffled off a turkey, which my mom won, but then we returned it because it wasn’t organic.”
“Maris, she didn’t!” I said.
Maris nodded and rolled her eyes.
Thanksgiving, I thought. Right before then, in fact. I’d just learned I was a muse at that time last year. It was probably a coincidence. It had to be. Because if it wasn’t, that might mean that Ari’s fate was tied to mine in some way. That my becoming a muse and Ari getting her human form back were linked somehow.
And that was way too much pressure.
“What’s she like? Ari’s aunt, I mean.”
“Nice, I guess,” Maris said.
“Gorgeous,” Mr. Theo said dreamily, then wandered around the room to look at the poems.
“What in the worl—” I started to remark.
Maris nodded. “Yep. Ari’s aunt has that effect on most grown-ups. Half of Queens is in love with her.”
“And the other half?” I asked.
“They haven’t met her yet,” Maris said with a giggle and a shrug.
We painted six signs by the end of the day. It wasn’t enough to “paper the walls of Corona Arts,” as Mr. Theo suggested, but it was a good start.
“Maybe this year the poets will have something memorable to present at the Student Showcase,” Maris said as we stood back to admire our work. The poems were colorful and inspiring, too. I especially liked the concrete poem Maris had painted. It was about her love of pizza but was in the shape of Italy.
“I’m suddenly craving a pineapple pizza like you wouldn’t believe,” I said.
“Ew. Pineapple is the worst,” Maris said. “Have you had a slice of real New York pizza yet?”
I shook my head.
“That’s just criminal,” Maris said. “Have your dad take you to Little Italy at once.”
“Okay,” I laughed. After that, Maris kept right on talking as we worked. I learned that she ate peanut butter sandwiches almost every day, with the occasional serving of macaroni and cheese in a faded Wonder Woman thermos. She also happened to own over two hundred Wonder Woman comics, and she planned to give herself the middle name Diana, after her favorite superhero, when she turned eighteen. She’d been to Lebanon to see her grandparents twice and was hoping to visit again soon.
The bell rang for lunch so Maris and I gathered our things. She hurried out, saying something about returning a book at the library before eating.
“Help me roll up the dried ones?” Mr. Theo asked.
We went around the room, taking down the poems that were safe to roll up, making new wall space for tomorrow’s poems. As I worked, I thought about the clue. Small boots, small boots, I said to myself.
“What’s that, Callie?” Mr. Theo asked.
“Oh, sorry. I didn’t know I was thinking out loud. Just a riddle I heard about ‘small boots.’”
Mr. Theo thought for a moment. “Well, I don’t know about that, but here’s a big boot!” he said with a chuckle, pointing at Maris’s pizza poem.
That’s right! Italy was shaped like a boot! So a small boot could mean . . .
“Little Italy!” I shouted.
Mr. Theo clutched his chest, startled. “Um. Okay there, Callie?”
I jumped up and down. I’d figured it out! With Mr. Theo’s and Maris’s help, of course, even if they couldn’t know it.
The second piece of tapestry was in Little Italy. It had to be. And I couldn’t wait to tell everyone.
Mr. Theo went to his desk drawer and pulled out a sandwich with a wrapper on it that read “The Queen of Corona.” He was humming happily to himself as he walked out of the room, cradling the sandwich.
With Mr. Theo gone, I took the opportunity to call the rest of the Muse Squad. I glanced at the clock on the wall. It was noon in New York, which meant it was eleven in the morning in Chicago, where Nia was, five in the afternoon in London, Thalia’s home, and after nine o’clock at night in New Delhi, where Mela lived. Being a muse meant knowing your time zones pretty well, I’d learned.
“Mela, Thalia, Nia, anybody out there? I figured out the clue!” I shouted into my bracelet.
“Shh,” Mela answered first. “I’m watching a play with my mum and Nani. I’ll catch up with you soon.”
“Shush!” Thalia said.
“Excuse me?” Mela and I both answered at the same time.
“Sorry. I’m at the library and they’ve got a C. S. Lewis exhibit on. I’ve died and gone to Narnia heaven. Gotta go,” Thalia said, signing off.
Well, Thalia was busy, and Mela was, too. As for Nia . . .
“Here!” Nia called, out of breath. “I . . . was . . . practicing . . . backflips. . . .”
“Like, real backflips? In the air?” I asked, confused.
“Yeah,” Nia huffed. “I made the gymnastics team last week. Practice . . . ends in . . . a bit. We can talk then?”
“Okay,” I said. They were busy, though I’d hoped they’d be a bit more enthusiastic about me figuring out the next part of the quest. All I could do was wait, I supposed. My eyes rested on Maris’s poems on the wall. She was so good at coming up with poetry ideas. They just seemed to pop into her head. That was another way Maris reminded me of Maya, and her love of all things scientific. Maya was always dreaming up experiments. That made me think of my best friend, Raquel, who loved performing. Then I thought of Mela, who loved the theater and went to
plays all the time. Nia had just made the gymnastics team, meanwhile I couldn’t even touch my toes without bending at the knees. And Thalia was having a blast volunteering at the library.
They all had their passions, the things they loved to do outside of muse stuff.
But what did I love to do?
I could see them now—Raquel onstage, Mela directing plays, Thalia heading the British Library, Nia in the Olympics, Maris reading her poetry to big crowds, and Maya, of course, coming up with solutions to climate change.
What was my future going to be like? Thinking about it was like opening your eyes in a dark room and not being able to see beyond the tip of your nose.
Mr. Theo wandered in again, the sandwich wrapper crumpled in his hand. He stood a few feet from the wastebasket and tossed the ball in the air.
“Nothing but net,” he said when the garbage fell into the basket. Then he noticed me. “Oh, hey there, Callie. Don’t skip lunch, now. Poets have to eat.”
“I won’t,” I said. Mr. Theo nodded, then left the room once more.
Suddenly, I had another idea. Mr. Theo’s sandwich had reminded me.
Whoever Ari’s aunt was, she couldn’t just be any old human. Ari had told us herself that her aunt was the one who had suggested that Athena could use us against her. And whoever she was, she was very beautiful, if Mr. Theo’s dreamy face meant anything.
Ari had said we would have to ask her aunt ourselves if we wanted to know anything about her.
Everyone else was busy doing cool things, and I had time to kill.
I guess it was time I got to know the Queen of Corona.
Chapter 18
The Queen of Corona
The Queen of Corona was slammed when I got there. The bell over the door rang again and again as kids from Corona Arts and other nearby day camps, or kids who got to hang out at home all day in the summer, filled the shop. I checked the ice-cream counter, but Ari wasn’t there.
Perhaps her mysterious aunt would know where she was.
I walked over to a store employee wearing a polo shirt and a name tag that read JULIO.
“Excuse me,” I said.
He held a can of tomato sauce in each hand. “How can I help you?”
“Where can I find Ari’s aunt?” I asked.
Julio pointed toward the registers with his chin. There was a woman behind the counter, chatting with customers as she scanned and bagged their items. One by one, I watched as the people in line turned and left, clutching their brown bags, wearing huge smiles on their faces.
I grabbed a pack of gum and stood in line. It moved quickly enough, and I could hear Ari’s aunt’s voice as I got closer to the counter. She spoke quietly, but sort of musically. And everyone she talked with ended up laughing at some point. She told each person to “have a marvelous day,” or “un día maravilloso,” or she said something in a language I didn’t understand, making me wonder how many she spoke.
When it was my turn, I put the pack of gum on the counter.
“Hi,” I said. Ari’s aunt was, as expected, very beautiful, and people in the store couldn’t quite keep from getting fixed to the spot where they stood whenever they looked at her. She was Black and her skin seemed to glow from the inside out. She had long brown hair with streaks of gold in it. Though she wasn’t very tall, whenever she spoke to someone, they seemed a little shy around her, as if they were talking to a giant. Round cheeks filled out her face, and when she looked down at me, she gasped.
“Calliope. What an honor. Come, darling, we really should chat.”
“H-how do you know who I am?” I asked anxiously, but Ari’s aunt just gave me a wink. She waved at Julio, who came skipping over to manage the register. “Follow me,” she said.
Ari’s aunt led me through the store to the back, where a little blue curtain hid a small, dark hall and a series of doors. She unlocked one with a key that dangled from a rubber bracelet she was wearing.
“Entrez,” she said, presenting her enormous and totally glam office.
Every inch of the walls, and the ceiling, too, was covered in what looked like pink silk. There was white shag carpeting under our feet. A crystal chandelier dangled above a glass desk. A pair of glossy black bookshelves, crammed with books in pink covers, flanked a fireplace. I hadn’t been to any bodega back-room offices before this, but did any of them have a rope swing hanging from one corner of the room, with three fuzzy pink beanbags underneath? I doubted it! Red roses sat in vases on small tables throughout the space, and the whole place smelled like . . .
Honey mustard?
I snapped my fingers. “Ambrosia! This place smells like ambrosia. That means you must be a—”
“Go on, guess which one,” Ari’s aunt said. She put her hands on her hips and raised her chin, batting her long lashes at me. She was wearing skinny jeans and a T-shirt with a picture of Venus Williams on it, mid-swing. “It’s a clue,” she added in that musical voice of hers, and pointed at her shirt.
“Venus Williams?” I’m sorry to say it took a minute for my brain to catch up to everything. Maybe I was just dazzled by the room, and by Ari’s aunt.
“She’s my namesake, of course,” Ari’s aunt said.
Finally, my thoughts fell into place. “Venus. The Roman name for the goddess—”
“Aphrodite!” she said, flinging her arms up in a “ta-da” gesture.
“You’re Ari’s aunt?”
Aphrodite walked over to one of the beanbags and plopped down on it, then she beckoned me to join her. “Not really. But I agreed to accompany her on her quest. Not help. Can’t do that. But every kid needs a parent of some kind, right? And a warm place to stay. Someone to give them their vitamins and read them bedtime stories. I like it,” she said, shrugging.
I hadn’t given it much thought. Ari’s real parents, the ones she’d had when she was twelve the first time, were long gone, weren’t they? I suddenly imagined how lonely Ari must feel. Sure, Aphrodite seemed sweet, but I bet Ari missed her family.
“I try at least,” Aphrodite added with a sad look. I was pretty sure she’d read my mind just then.
Clio usually complained that I didn’t know enough mythology, but I did know about Aphrodite. Mario and Fernando had to do a project on her once and they made a poster about some of the most famous myths about her. And the stories? They usually weren’t very complimentary. Usually, they were about how pretty Aphrodite was, and how some humans didn’t think she was pretty enough, which meant they’d get punished, often really brutally. Of all the gods, Aphrodite always came off as the . . . pettiest one.
Now she was looking at me, one eyebrow arched really high.
The mind-reading thing. Right.
“Sorry,” I said. “It’s just that the stories—”
Aphrodite laughed. “I know the stories. But consider me reformed. I’m a better Aphrodite than I was before,” she said, and twirled a lock of hair around her finger. “Right?”
I stood there, silent as a lawn ornament, terrified that at any moment she was going to turn me into one.
“Please do feel free to agree with me at this point, Callie,” Aphrodite said through a tight smile.
“Yes, yes,” I said quickly, my heart slamming in my chest. When I calmed down, I carefully added, “So you’re not angry with Ari? For challenging Athena? And for the stories she wove into her tapestry?”
Aphrodite waved her hand in the air. “That old feud? Ari wasn’t wrong, you know.” Aphrodite looked at her long nails, and it felt like she was avoiding my eyes. “We gods of Olympus were . . . careless about the people we were meant to love. It’s why they stopped worshiping us in the end. We weren’t always helpful.” She brightened up. “But you muses. Oh my, you are incredibly helpful. You’re model goddesses! And I’m glad you’re helping Ari. I hope she beats Athena this time.”
“You do?”
Aphrodite had a glimmer in her eye. “Most certainly. Athena is always going on about how smart she is, how wise she is, and
she teases me for being girly, and in love with love. She thinks I’m dumb, but you don’t get to run the most profitable bodega in the tri-state area being stupid!”
“Congratulations.”
“Thank you.”
We were both quiet for a second. There was a silver clock on Aphrodite’s desk, and I stole a glance at it. Three o’clock. The day was slipping away, and this time, I had to be home before dark.
“So you can’t help Ari with the quest?” I asked, and Aphrodite shook her head very solemnly.
“I’m sorry that I can’t. But you must. You absolutely must. You and the other muses.”
“Why? How did we get caught up in this anyway?”
Aphrodite hummed to herself a moment as she thought. “Fate? Duty. Ari needs you.”
“She doesn’t want us to use magic on her. She says she hates it,” I argued.
“Of course she hates it. Olympian magic turned her into a spider, after all. But I didn’t mean you should use magic on Ari. She’s inspired enough. Talented enough. She needs friends, is all. She needs people who can help her see the paths before her clearly in order to pick the right ones. Helping Ari is the key to everything,” Aphrodite said, laying a cool hand on my cheek. I felt warm all over.
“That’s what Tia Annie said. Something like that, anyway,” I whispered.
“Ah, Annie Martinez. My favorite muse of all. Don’t tell the others, but I also like you very much.”
My stomach did a flip. I could see why grown-ups went all loopy around Aphrodite. It wasn’t her beauty, not really. It was more about the look in her eyes. It felt like she cared about me. And I guess that’s what love is, in the end. Caring about someone and having them care back.
But I wasn’t a grown-up and I wasn’t loopy for Aphrodite.
“Can I tell you something?” I asked her.
Aphrodite took my hands and, okay, maybe I did swoon a bit then. “Ask me anything,” she said. Then she grinned, adding, “I’m so good at this mom thing, aren’t I? I should absolutely ground you or make you chicken soup or something.”
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