I killed my friend.
“You’re going to have to do summer school as it is,” her dad said, and poured her more soda. “For a few weeks at least. You can’t disappear without consequences.” But what those consequences were, he didn’t say. Neither did her mother. They tiptoed around it and talked themselves out of it with every slice of pizza. It could wait until tomorrow, they thought. She’d had a hard year, but at least she was safe, they thought.
They were poor punishers due to lack of practice. Seventeen years without enforcing anything more than two days’ grounding would do that to a parent. The closest they came to scolding that night was telling Andie she couldn’t stay over.
“We kept your room closed off,” her mom said gently. “But I went in to straighten up. Sometimes. Of course now you can do it yourself.”
Cassandra touched her doorknob and made a silent wish that she’d open it and fall through into a void. Out of existence, just like that, with no memory of her left behind for her family to mourn over.
“Do you want me to make pancakes in the morning, Mom?” she heard herself ask.
“That would be nice. Cassandra?”
“Yes?”
“I know it was hard. I won’t pretend to know what you felt. But I know what I felt when you were gone, and if it’s anything like that, I—” Her mother paused and looked at her, hard. “It’s not okay to make us feel like that. It’s not okay to do that to us on purpose.”
“I know. I should’ve come home.”
“You should never have left.”
“I know. That’s what I meant.”
Her mother hugged her tight, and Cassandra could feel her heart beating fast, as though just saying those words had scared her to death.
“I love you, Cassandra. You’re a good girl.”
No, I’m not. Not anymore. Now I’m a monster.
19
DEATH AND THE DYING
I’m afraid to open the damn door.
Athena stood outside Odysseus’ room. She’d waited as long as she could, given him as much space as she knew how, only to stand motionless with her hand on the knob. Screw that. She swung the door open and stepped inside.
“So, when do you want to kill Alecto?” she asked.
Odysseus looked up at her.
“What?”
“When do you want to kill Alecto? We can go as early as tomorrow. I might be dying, but I can still tear the wings off a couple of overgrown harpies. She’s dead. Say the word.”
He didn’t say anything. He sat on his bed with his elbows on his knees. If he’d wept, she couldn’t tell. If he’d thrown anything, she couldn’t tell, either, as his room was generally messy.
“You can say something. Anything you want to. I know you loved her.”
He ran his hand roughly across his face.
“I didn’t love her,” he said. “That’s the bitch of it. But she always loved me, and I sure did like her a lot, and that seems like the shittiest thing in the world.”
He toyed with something between his fingers: a dried white flower. A gift from Calypso? Or something he’d kept, that she’d worn in her hair?
Athena swallowed, disliking the way the sight of the flower made her feel.
He has every right to mourn. Every right to feel whatever he feels. But then, I suppose, so do I.
“I never loved her,” he said. “And I never cut her loose. She knew it, but she would’ve been happy with me anyway, even knowing that I loved you more.” He looked at Athena, but she turned away for fear of resentment. “You said let’s go kill Alecto. But what if I said let’s go find Calypso? What if I didn’t believe she was dead?”
“Then we’d go. We’d find her.” It felt stupid in retrospect, coming in and declaring war on the Fury. All bluster and balls and no heart.
“Because it doesn’t feel like she can be gone,” Odysseus said. “She’s always been here.”