by P. J. Night
Cora was staring into the fitting-room mirror of her favorite clothing store at the mall. Hailey, Amber, and Skye were standing behind her.
“You have got to get this dress,” Amber continued. She looked at the other two friends in the mirror. “You think so too, right?”
“Totally,” said Hailey.
“A hundred percent,” agreed Skye.
And as she studied her reflection, Cora decided her friends were right. This dress was perfect. It was very simple, with a square neckline and cap sleeves. It fit closely down to a flared skirt at the hip line and was made of matte satin in a shade somewhere between blue and lilac. Cora hadn’t planned to look at any dresses. What was the point? But when Amber had spotted this one on a sales rack and insisted that Cora had to try it on, she couldn’t resist. Besides, it was 20 percent off. . . .
“If I get this, though, it will mean I have to go to the dance,” she mused aloud. “Otherwise it will go to waste.”
“Of course you have to go!” said Hailey. “Did you really think we were going to let you off the hook?”
“And even if you don’t have someone . . . um . . . someone specific to go with,” added Skye, “in that dress you’re going to be dancing all night.”
Cora spun around and gave her reflection one more look. “Okay! I’ll do it!” she said. All of a sudden she felt happy and excited. Maybe she had more in common with her friends than she’d thought. Maybe she could learn to be as outgoing as they were.
For once, why not just relax and stop overthinking?
Which didn’t mean Cora wanted to stop thinking about everything. Earlier that week she and her friends had been assigned a school project. Now, as they sat in the mall’s food court eating ice cream as a reward for all their hard shopping, Cora made an announcement. “When we get to my house, we’re going to do an hour of work first before anything else.”
“But it’s Saturday,” Hailey protested. “And it’s a sleepover. What kind of hostess are you, making us do homework at a sleepover?”
Cora held firm. “It’ll only be for an hour. Then we can order a pizza and officially start the sleepover.”
“I hate mythology,” Amber grumbled. “Why can’t we just do a book report like regular people?”
At Cora’s school the eighth graders always had a segment on Greek mythology. This year Cora’s English teacher had let the kids in class pick their own groups and then told each group to choose one particular myth to study. At the end of the semester each group was going to do some kind of presentation on the myth they’d chosen. Naturally, Cora and her friends had wanted to work together, but they still hadn’t decided on their myth.
Cora had gotten a bunch of mythology books out of the library on Tuesday. They were stacked on the coffee table in her living room. When she and her friends got home from the mall, Cora led them into the living room and showed them the books.
“Let’s each pick one and see which myths we like.”
“Oh, that’s not too bad,” said a relieved Hailey. “I thought you were going to make us do flash cards or something.”
When the girls compared notes a few minutes later, they discovered that each of them wanted to work on a different myth.
“Persephone, definitely,” said Cora. “Hades kidnapped her and made her live in the underworld with him.”
Skye disagreed. “I like the one about Echo and Narcissus the best. We could have good echo sound effects. And we know lots of people who are as conceited as Narcissus.”
“What about Eos? She fell in love with this prince—a mortal—and asked the gods to give him eternal life,” asked Amber. “But she forgot to ask them to grant him eternal youth. So he lived and lived and got older and older and finally shriveled up into a grasshopper, and she had to keep him in a basket.”
“That’s probably the weirdest myth I’ve ever heard,” said Hailey. “And besides, you’re all wrong. We have to do King Midas. It’s the most famous Greek myth, I’d bet. And it would be fun to show Midas turning things into gold.”
“How could we show that?” Cora wondered.
“Oh, we could just use spray paint,” Hailey said casually.
Amber frowned. “The story of Midas makes no sense. If everything he touched turned into gold, why didn’t he turn into gold when he was, like, putting his shoes on? He would have had to touch his feet, right? Or did he wear sandals?”
“You can’t look at this kind of thing too closely,” said Cora. “Myths don’t have to work like real life. The point was how stupid his greed made him.”
“Who wants to do a myth that has a point?” said Skye crossly. “These aren’t fables. I don’t want to work on something educational.”
“I’m too hungry to think anymore,” said Amber. She clapped her book shut. “Let’s order that pizza now. With no mushrooms.”
“I like mushrooms,” Hailey objected. “Let’s get half mushroom.”
“No way! I’ll be able to tell,” said Amber. “The flavor will migrate across.”
After a marathon debate about extra cheese, onions, sausage versus bacon, and sausage versus no meat at all, the girls decided on two medium pizzas—one for the meat eaters and one with all veggies (but no mushrooms). Cora phoned in the order. All four girls were starving, and the half hour they had to wait seemed endless. When the doorbell rang, they raced for the front door. Cora got there first and yanked the door open.
“Cora?” said the boy who was standing on the front steps.
Cora blinked, all pangs of hunger instantly forgotten. “Evan?”
Because that’s who was at the door—holding two pizza boxes and looking even cuter than she’d remembered.
“What—what are you doing here?” Cora stammered.
Evan seemed surprised by the question. “I have your pizzas. I work at the pizza place around the corner.” He held out the two boxes. Wordlessly Cora took them. As the silence stretched on, Hailey gave Cora a hard elbow to the ribs.
“Thanks,” she finally managed to say. “Um, see you around, I guess.”
“Cora, you have to pay him!” Hailey blurted out.
“Oh, that’s right! Of course. Sorry. Um, come in for a second,” she told Evan. “I—I have the money right here. Wait, it’s in my pocket.” Half-dazed, she looked around for a place to set down the pizzas until Amber firmly took them away from her.
“I’ll put them in the kitchen,” Amber said.
“The kitchen. Right. Okay.” Cora was still too rattled to think straight. “Oh! Your money!” She fished the bills out of her pocket and handed them over. “And, um, the tip—”
“No tip.” Evan’s voice was firm. “No tipping among friends. These are your friends, right?”
Cora introduced him to the three other girls. She couldn’t help noticing that they all looked as starstruck as she felt herself. Hailey recovered the fastest. “I’ve already met you, Evan,” she said. “That is, I saw you the other day. You know, when you threw those postcards all over Cora’s feet?”
“You don’t need to remind me,” said Evan, smiling at Cora. “It was a . . . memorable occasion.”
Cora was starting to feel more like herself again. “It sure was. What were those—?” Then she realized that Evan was still standing. “Want to sit down?” she added hastily.
“I wish I could, but I shouldn’t. The pizza place will need me. I do all the orders that can be delivered on foot around here.”
“So the postcards are for a different job?” asked Cora.
“That’s a volunteer job,” Evan told her. “I work at the sculpture garden on Wednesdays and sometimes Saturdays. They’re going to have an unveiling ceremony for a new statue that’s coming in a few weeks. The postcards were advertising all the details. When I saw you, I had just dropped off a couple of cards at the middle school office. I was on my way to the post office and then back to the garden when I ran into you. Literally ran into you, I mean.” He smiled awkwardly.
“We actually p
assed by the sculpture garden on the way home,” said Cora. “I didn’t see you there.” Dumb! she thought instantly. It’s going to sound like I’m stalking him.
But Evan didn’t seem to mind. “I wish I’d been outside so I could’ve seen you,” he said. “But I was in the office sticking address labels onto more postcards. That’s the kind of glamorous work I do there. Why don’t you come to the garden this Wednesday?” he went on.
For a second Cora thought Evan was talking to all four of them. She felt shivery when she realized that he was looking straight at her. “I can show you around,” he said. “It’s kind of an interesting place—hey, you’re reading Greek myths!” he added suddenly. He had just noticed the library books the girls had stacked on the coffee table. Now he crossed the room to look at them more closely.
“We’re supposed to pick a myth to do a project on,” explained Cora. “The trouble is, we can’t agree on just one.”
“They’re all pretty great. Which ones are you thinking about?”
“Persephone, Eos and the grasshopper man, Echo and Narcissus—”
“And the obvious choice—Midas,” interrupted Hailey. “I’m right. Right?”
Evan shrugged. “Midas was okay, I guess. But have you thought about Perseus and Andromeda?”
The girls looked at one another. “We don’t quite . . . know who they are,” Cora said. “We only just started looking through our books.”
“This book’s pretty good,” Evan said, pointing to the one Cora had used. “This one is too. But this”—he picked up the girls’ mythology textbook from the bottom of the pile—“is worthless. The author got everything wrong.”
“Wait—what?” said Amber. “What kinds of things did she get wrong?”
“Even the most basic stuff! Dumb little details like saying Actaeon was changed into an elk instead of a stag . . .” Evan’s voice trailed off when he realized that all four girls were staring at him. “I just—uh—like Greek myths,” he added sheepishly.
“We can tell,” said Cora. “So who was Perseus and . . . what was the other one’s name?”
Evan brightened. “Andromeda. She was the girl Perseus rescued.” He gently took a book off the top of the pile and opened it to the myth. “See,” he began, pointing to an illustration. “Perseus was the son of Zeus and a mortal mother, Danaë. He lived on a little island ruled by this kind-of-insane king. When the king announced that he was going to get married, all the guys on the island were supposed to bring him gifts. But Perseus was too poor to come up with a present, so he offered to complete a task instead.
“The king was all over that,” Evan continued. “He told Perseus to kill Medusa and bring back her head.”
“Medusa was the one with snakes for hair, right?” asked Cora.
“Exactly! She was so horrible-looking that anyone who saw her turned to stone. So Perseus flew to the Gorgons’ cave—”
Skye interrupted. “What do you mean, flew? Did he have wings?”
“No, just winged shoes. Plus, Athena gave him a shield that was as bright as a mirror. Hermes gave him—”
“Why was the shield so bright?” broke in Skye for the second time.
“You’ll see! So anyway, Hermes gave Perseus this supersharp sword. It could cut through even the hardest metal.”
“I don’t see why the gods had to make it so easy for Perseus,” said Hailey sourly.
Evan shrugged. “The gods play favorites. So anyway, Perseus flew to the Gorgons’ cave. When he got there, the Gorgons were all sleeping. Perseus looked into the shield instead of looking at them—that’s how he kept from turning into stone. He swooped down and lopped off Medusa’s head. And that’s the story of how Perseus killed Medusa,” he finished. “Of course it’s more interesting when you read the real myth. I’m leaving out a lot.”
“Um, Evan? What about Andromeda?” asked Cora.
Evan smiled. He flipped the page again, but this time it showed a beautiful woman chained to a rock in the sea. “Sorry—didn’t mean to leave her out! . . . Okay. So on his way home with Medusa’s head, Perseus flew over the coast of Ethiopia. He looked down and saw this girl chained to a boulder right at the sea’s edge. That was Andromeda. I’m not going to get into how she got there—you’ll have to read about it. But the main thing is, this huge sea monster was about to kill her. Perseus killed the monster with his sword, and when Perseus took Andromeda home, he saw her old boyfriend, who hadn’t tried to save her, and he used Medusa’s head to turn the boyfriend into stone. Then he and Andromeda got married,” he finished.
“Wow. I have to admit, there’s a lot of good stuff in that myth,” said Hailey. “It would be cool to make Medusa’s head, for instance.”
But Evan wasn’t paying attention to Hailey. He had turned back to Cora. “Even if you don’t use that myth, you really should come to the sculpture garden with me,” he told her. “It has a ton of statues from Greek myths. I bet it would help with your project!”
“Probably not,” Cora replied regretfully. “How could statues—” She broke off as Hailey punched her in the back.
“I’m sure it would help,” Hailey said firmly. “And while you’re showing Cora around, you can tell her more about the story of Perseus.”
This time Evan did listen to Hailey. “She’s right,” he told Cora. “You owe it to this project to meet me on Wednesday. Also, you owe it to yourself. Because I think it would be fun.” He flashed his most enchanting smile.
“It would be,” Cora agreed. “I—I would love to come, actually.” Then she wanted to kick herself. Why had she said “actually” in that dumb way? She hurried on. “Should I meet you there?”
“Why don’t we go together?” said Evan easily. “The high school lets out half an hour before the middle school. Want to meet at the car-pool place again? I promise I won’t dump postcards on you this time.”
“I’ll be there,” Cora promised. “And thanks.”
“Thank you for inviting me in,” Evan said gallantly. “But right now I’d better say good-bye. They’re going to be wondering what’s happened to me.”
He turned around when he got to the front door. “See you Wednesday, Cora. And nice to meet the rest of you.”
As soon as the door had closed behind him, Cora’s friends burst into screaming laughter.
“Shhhhhhhhh!” Cora hissed at them. “He’ll hear you!”
But they couldn’t stop.
“No, thanks, Prince Charming,” Skye said mockingly. “I don’t want to go on a date with you because it won’t help with our project.”
“It’s not a date! He’s just showing me where he works, is all.”
“Okay, fine,” said Skye. “But what were you thinking?”
“I know, I know. My brain wasn’t working,” Cora confessed.
“It sure wasn’t,” Skye told her emphatically. “You’re lucky Hailey saved you. Evan seems really nice. Plus he’s better-looking than Adonis!”
“Wait.” Amber sounded puzzled. “Who’s Adonis?”
“Adonis was this amazingly handsome Greek guy,” Hailey told her. “You’d know about him if you’d been paying attention in class yesterday. But you’re right, Skye. He’s really. Really. Really. Cute.”
“Who—Adonis?” said Amber.
“No, Evan!” said the other three girls in unison.
“Cute and an older man,” Skye put in slyly. “This is going to be the talk of the school next week.”
“Stop! He’s just a year older than we are,” said Cora. “Don’t make such a big thing out of it.”
“Cora. Look me in the eye,” ordered Hailey. “A super-good-looking high school guy just asked you out on a date, pretty much. How about just being happy?”
But Cora was already happy. Very, very happy.
All through dinner, and the movie they’d ordered on demand, and the late-night talking (until Cora’s mom told them to be quiet), and then the whispering until one by one the girls dropped off to sleep—through all of t
hat, Cora kept wanting to pinch herself to make sure this was really happening. Happening to her, the girl who twenty-four hours before had been feeling so sorry for herself about being left out.
She didn’t want to fall asleep, because then she’d stop thinking about Evan. On the other hand, the sooner she did fall asleep, the sooner the next morning would come when she could think about him again.
And Cora was pretty sure she would dream about him. . . .
No matter how late she fell asleep, Cora was usually the first person awake at a sleepover. Of course, that had something to do with sleeping on the floor instead of in a nice comfortable bed, but she was also a morning person. Often she’d read in her sleeping bag for what felt like hours before her friends slowly came back to consciousness. But not at this sleepover. Cora had been so churned up by seeing Evan again that she didn’t fall asleep properly until about five a.m. It wasn’t until Hailey whomped her with a pillow to the head the next morning that she finally opened her eyes a crack.
“Why are you hitting me?” Cora croaked. “Leave me alone.”
“No! Get up, get up, get up! We’ve been awake for three hours!” said Hailey. “We want some breakfast before our parents come to get us.”
“You don’t need me for that,” Cora said, shutting her eyes again. “You know where everything in my kitchen is. Go get your own breakfasts.”
“I already had some cereal,” said Amber. “I’m hungry again.”
“And Skye and I haven’t had a bite,” said Hailey. “C’mon, Cora. Get up! You’re going to need lots of energy.”
“Why?” grumbled Cora.
“So you’ll survive until Wednesday when you see Evan. Why else?”
Evan! At the sound of his name Cora bolted upright and scrambled out of her sleeping bag. How could she have forgotten him for a single second, even while she’d been sleeping?
“Well, that worked,” Skye observed. “Sorry if we took you away from dreaming about Evan.”
Now Cora saw that her friends were not only wide awake but dressed, with their sleeping bags rolled up. She couldn’t believe she’d slept through it all. “I don’t remember dreaming about anything,” she said as she quickly got dressed. “Maybe my brain was too worn out from thinking about Evan while I was still awake. That all really did happen, right? I mean, he brought our pizza and asked me to go to the sculpture garden and—”