chapter 30
“There’s a certain someone,” Ambrosia says. “A meddling type. She and I go way, way back. Sometimes she calls herself Athena, sometimes Minerva, sometimes she fancies herself up as Pallas Athena.”
I start to say I knew it, but Ambrosia tells us to listen. “She demands complete obedience, but I’m having none of that. She’s jealous of you three—your youth, your power, your unwillingness to compromise. She thinks that minor goddesses should kowtow to someone of her elevated stature.”
“Who’s she calling minor?” Alix readies her fists for a fight.
Stephanie’s jaw tenses. “No authority tells me what to do or not to do anymore.”
Ambrosia makes a tent with her hands, taps the fingers. “She’s stopped me before with her meddling. And now she’s brought in a compatriot and together they plan to dilute your power. This compatriot pretends to be your friend. He offers comfort and understanding, the family you never had. That’s how he sucks you in.”
I fold my arms over my chest and press my belly against the ocean railing. I’m barefoot and the cliff is cold against my feet. Out in the water, a pod of dolphins breaks the surface. Waves pound the rocks. Overhead, thick fog blocks out any hope of a sunny day.
“Your true enemy is doubt,” Ambrosia goes on. “They try to instill it in you. The slightest hint of doubt holds you back, keeps you from fulfilling your natural potential as jury and judge. You know why they do it? You know what they want?”
“To strip us of power,” Alix says, flexing her biceps.
“To tame us.” Stephanie runs her tongue over her fangs.
“Exactly! Athena wants to take the glorious, relentless Furies and dress you in nice, comfy aprons of bland femininity. She’s done it before. She’s trying again.”
Ambrosia opens her copy of Aeschylus, and in a sappy, mimicking voice she reads a section near the end of the play. “We sing of the gifts we will give: No storm-winds will strike at your trees, no searing heat will ever burn scorching the earth, blistering your buds.”
With the book raised overhead, she shouts, “Not this time, Pallas!” and hurls it into the ocean. “Do you know what the original Furies got in return for giving up their rage?”
I do know. I finished reading the play. The Furies are appeased and settle for minor-goddess status. They get a nice altar in a nice city. Some citizens honor them by giving them a new name: the Kindly Ones.
“Kindly!” Ambrosia points her sharp fingernail at the book floating in the ocean, and it springs back into her hand just so she can have the pleasure of heaving it back into the water again. “The original Furies—the OFs—had it all! Weak, pathetic humanity trembled in fear before them and begged them for their justice and protection. But they traded it all for…”
Her mouth bunches like she bit into something sour, bitter, and hot. She spits out the words in disgust. “For popularity.”
A wave picks up the collected works of Aeschylus and pounds it against the rocks. The current sucks it back out a little, but then it washes in again for another pounding. And another. And another. The pages are saturated and the plays sink.
Ambrosia’s face is so close to mine that it blocks out everything but her. “So what’s it going to be, Megaera? Your justice for the entire human realm? Or a nice friend to eat lunch with?”
“The OFs took a rotten deal,” I say. “I don’t want to be minor anything ever again.”
With her fingernail she draws an invisible star on my forehead. “Give yourself an A-plus for that answer. But it means certain things must be taken care of.”
* * *
I forgot to mention the football team.
Despite the fact that half the cars in the school parking lot have a waxed surfboard buckled onto the roof, Hunter High is not a beach-town freak in the world of high school sports. The glass display case at the front entrance has football trophies right next to the surfing ones, dozens of bronze-colored, muscle-popping masculine figures clutching footballs and frozen in mid-run. Like everywhere else, autumn means football, and we are smack in the middle of the traditional season. If this were any other year, there would be scrimmages and pep rallies, everything leading up to the all-important homecoming game.
Oh well. Traditions are made to be broken. People need to get used to that. This year just about the whole team is out with the mysterious wasting disease, and the rest of the student body is bummed about it. The cheerleaders, poor things, are shadows of their former bouncy selves. They’re all on some combination of Prozac, Ritalin, and antibiotics in hopes that a miracle of modern medicine will revive their perkiness. Plus, none of the coaches, players, parents, or band members from the other schools will set foot on the Hunter High campus. It’s too scary.
That’s why I’m flabbergasted when, during Western Civ, the ding, dong, ding of the classroom speaker comes on and, instead of Mr. and Mrs. H, Raymond’s voice blasts out a cheery:
“Don’t be square. Be there! Today’s big homecoming event!”
There’s a surprised, happy buzz among the few students still left in class. How irritating! I exchange grumpy looks with Alix and Stephanie. When did Raymond become pumped up on school spirit? All this cheeriness gives me a pounding headache. I lay my head on the desk, cupped in the circle of my crisscrossed arms. I get a concentrated sniff of something not good. What’s that funky smell? There’s something familiar about it. Oh yeah, the stink of the plant at Ambrosia’s house—and yeah, I guess it’s coming from me now, my rank breath coupled with my eau de armpits.
Raymond’s voice goes on with its optimistic chirp: “Who needs big bruisers in shoulder pads slamming each other to smithereens? Homecoming is about the music and the marching. The band and color guard—what’s left of it!—are all rehearsed and ready to wow you with their precision stepping and flag-twirling.”
Somebody in the room actually applauds, and I have to look up to believe it. It’s one of the band geeks whom we let slide—so far. How disrespectful. And then the Danish foreign exchange student shakes his fist in the air in triumph, and a girl known for her buckteeth makes a choking sound that turns out to be tears of joy. Joy!
For the first time since the Fall of Brendon, I feel a serious lack of anxiety among my fellow students. I actually sense the room growing lighter. All because of a public performance by the mercilessly mocked color guard? What’s this about?
Raymond again: “Today! Right after school in the football stadium. Music! Marching! Instant satisfaction guaranteed!”
I don’t like it.
Neither does Ambrosia. She stands, and the way her hands knot at her sides I think she’s going to take a flying leap at the loudspeaker, superhero-style, and destroy it with one perfectly placed blow of her fist. But she stays earthbound and stomps one of her designer pumps. She finally manages to mutter, “Not this time!” before storming out of the room.
Ms. Pallas looks pleased. Very pleased. To the already-closed door: “Permission to leave granted, Ambrosia.”
From the loudspeaker comes a triumphant blast of recorded Hunter High band music. At first I think it’s what Raymond refers to as a John Phillip Snooza tune. It sets my teeth on edge, makes me grind them with each flare of the trumpet. But something about its awfulness sounds familiar. I know this tune. I hum a few notes ahead and wait for the music to catch up. What is it? Where have I heard it before?
My mind adds the sound of a violin, and I recognize the source. It’s the song Raymond was writing—part pop, part show tune—the one that he said came out of nowhere and got stuck in his head. I guess he finished composing it. I cover my ears with my palms, and notice that Alix and Stephanie have done the same. It’s excruciating. But strangely, nobody else seems to mind. The jarring trumpet and the snappy beat of the snare drums are actually perking up everyone’s mood. Disgusting. Ms. Pallas is snapping her fingers and doing some kind of folk dance. Goddesses her age should never shimmy their shoulders like that in public. A few kids are chair-dancing, bump-bumping their bottoms and hand-jiving, like the music is filling them with inspiration. I can’t stand it. All this positive energy is intruding on my negative brain.
I zero in on the worst culprit. The super-blond Danish kid is wiggling his fingers and vibrating his lips, the whole sickening air-saxophone routine. He thinks he’s on fire with the music. I’m the one on fire. Death is too good for air musicians. I invite the other Furies to join me in a special impromptu session. I tune up my internal pitch pipe and we hum with perfect rhythm and harmony.
We swarm. We enter. But something’s wrong, terribly wrong. We manage to dip only one tiny toe into that boy’s mind before the door is slammed in our faces. We try again, but it’s a no-go. We’re met with static and electronic jamming signals, then driven away by the saxophone part of Raymond’s corny song blasted back at us.
Panic on Alix’s face, uncertainty on Stephanie’s. Both those reactions take turns in me. My forehead creases, my bottom teeth make a hard pull on my upper lip.
That’s when I see a flicker of approval on the corners of Ms. Pallas’s mouth. She snaps her fingers faster and happier. Her smile is as bright as her voice: “Our own battle of the bands.”
I now understand what’s at stake, why Ambrosia flew out of the room in anger. This is a full frontal assault on us. This is not any piece of music. It came from someplace deep and true inside of Raymond, and it reflects everything that he is, everything that he believes and values. It was composed from his trusting nature, a musical by-product of his loving mom and his damn happy home. The homecoming performance is a planned strike, them against us, a terrorist attack to drown out the righteous fury of our sacred music.
They mean business. They’ve been practicing. But so have we.
On our side, we have human nature with its inexhaustible taste for rage, hatred, and revenge.
Their big gun? My gawky, good-natured former best friend parading around in a lame-o high school band uniform.
* * *
We cut our next class and don’t bother getting excuse notes. Who would dare try to give us detention? We meet in the parking lot and sit on the hood of Alix’s Volvo.
“I know we need to take action. It’s just that I…” I feel my mouth twisting, fumbling for words. “I want to at least consider another way.”
Stephanie rests her big head of hair on my shoulder. She smells about the same as I do. “I hear ya. It’s one of those dear old friend things. That makes it hard. Wanna talk about it?”
“We could … we should have … if he would…”
Alix peers at me over her sunglasses, blows off all my objections with an irritated “Coulda, shoulda, woulda.”
Stephanie gives me a funny little smile. “It’s your doubt speaking, Meg. That’s what they want. Ambrosia warned us about doubt, remember?”
Alix jumps off the hood, brushes her palms against her pant legs. Dust explodes from them. “Steph, don’t coddle her with that touchy-feely stuff! She’s a big girl. She knows what she signed up for.” To me: “Grow up!”
“I’m just saying—”
“You have a better idea? You don’t have a better idea.”
They’re right, of course. This is not something that I want to do, but there’s only one choice and it’s as clear as the big black crow that’s hopping across the parking lot and gobbling up every stale, moldy, rotten thing it can find. Stephanie is already warming up her voice. She’s committed to improving the harmony part of our song, making us sound a little like one of those girl groups from the 1960s. Diana Ross and the Supremely Powerful. I hug my knees against my chest. “I’m in.”
Alix hits me with a high five.
“We’re going to go easy, right? Nothing permanent. He’s not like the others. We only need a diversion. The plan is to shut down the rally. That’s all.”
“No major badass stuff,” Alix confirms.
The three of us are in agreement.
First we’re going to eat an entire box of powdered doughnuts for energy.
Then we’re going to kidnap Raymond.