TWELVE

NOW

Lunch. Three and a half months left.

Jack didn’t come to Mrs. Stone’s room for an entire week. He didn’t try to speak to me during class. By lunchtime on the fourth day, I found myself going a little crazy. I knew it was better for him this way, but I longed to hear his gruff voice and see his brown eyes dart toward mine.

With my lunch sack in hand, I made my way to the school library. The windows on the north side overlooked the courtyard, where most of the students ate their lunches on sunny days.

If Jack was there, I would see him.

I found a seat near the windows and scanned the courtyard. The large table at one end, near the doors, still held all the big names in the school. The hierarchical seating chart, based on social standing, hadn’t changed. But Jack wasn’t with them. I kept looking, and finally found him sitting at a small table on the other end of the yard, across from a girl with long blond hair. She turned briefly and I could see her face, confirming what I already knew.

Jules.

Jack and Jules had been friends before I left, but it was mostly through me. I wondered if they ate together every day now. Nobody seemed to notice them.

They inclined their heads toward each other, both of them pushing the contents of their lunches around on their trays, but neither of them eating.

Jack’s lips were moving, and Jules mostly just nodded. At one point, she reached out and put her hand on Jack’s forearm. She was so tender with him. I realized my hand was covering my mouth as I watched them. I had no right to be jealous, but I found myself squeezing my apple. I stared hard at the stem, and twisted it off before I dared to look up again.

Jack smiled and leaned back in his chair. At this movement, Jules pushed his sandwich toward him. Jack rolled his eyes and picked up the sandwich, took a purposeful bite, then set it down.

They both laughed.

I left the library and almost sprinted back to my nook. Were they together now? They spent a lot of time with each other, but they’d done that before I left too.

I didn’t want to think it was possible, but then again, why shouldn’t they be happy?

I had to get my mind off Jack. It wasn’t doing anything to make my Return easier. In fact, it had distracted me from figuring out what Cole was hiding.

I needed to go back to the Shop-n-Go. Continue my search for clues that probably weren’t there. At least it would get me away from here and give me something else to think about.

Outside the Shop-n-Go.

I looked up and down the street to make sure no one saw me. In the daylight, the place looked so ordinary it was even harder to believe it had anything to do with the Everneath.

Through the window I could see the same bored guy— Ezra—at the counter. I felt in my pocket for change, so I could buy something and not look so crazy. He probably wouldn’t even remember me.

I pushed the door open, making the bell chime, and walked past him. This time I couldn’t smell any alcohol.

“Didn’t expect to see you here again, detective,” Ezra said loudly. I looked around. There weren’t any other customers— he had to be talking to me.

As if to prove it, he said, “Still looking for the man with the bottle?”

I walked toward the counter. “Nope. Just shopping.”

He gave me a skeptical look and went back to working on what looked like a crossword puzzle, as if he were too bored to argue.

I ignored him and wandered slowly down the aisle toward the back of the store to look at the tile again. My cheek had smacked against that floor the day the Everneath released me. Ezra was busy with his paper, and I made sure he wasn’t looking before I stomped a few times on the floor. As solid as ever.

I rubbed my forehead with the palm of my hand. What wasn’t I seeing? I turned away and kicked my shadow on the floor. How could something so ordinary hold the answers to anything at all, let alone anything that would help me? I crouched down and put my hand to the tile. Cold. I looked at my hand. The only thing it proved was that the floor needed a good cleaning. I was missing something. Or maybe I was trying to find clues where there were none to be found.

My investigation of the floor was so intense that I didn’t hear the store door open, and I didn’t notice that someone was standing behind me.

“What did you lose?” a familiar voice said.

I shot up so fast that I whacked the back of my head on Jack’s chin.

“Ow.” I rubbed my head as I turned around.

Jack had a hand up to his chin. I’d hit him just right. His lower lip was starting to bleed a little. “You’re telling me. Sorry, Becks. Didn’t mean to scare you.”

“It’s okay. Sorry about your…” I motioned to his face. A drop of blood trickled down his lip, and I reached into my bag and pulled out the closest thing I had to a tissue—a knit tea cozy I’d been working on.

“Here,” I said. I brought the tea cozy to his lip and put his hand there to hold it in place. He held it there for a second and then pulled it away to look at it. Without a teapot under it, the cozy looked a little misshapen.

“What is this?” he asked, his lip twitching.

“A tea cozy.”

“Of course.”

We stood there in an awkward silence for a moment. I wondered if he was still mad at me. I couldn’t tell from his expression, and I couldn’t discern the taste of the energy in the air. I only knew there was a lot of it. I didn’t know if I’d ever get better at it.

Jack gripped the tea cozy so tight, his knuckles turned white.

When I couldn’t take the silence anymore, I said, “What are you doing here?” It sounded like an accusation.

Jack raised an eyebrow and let up on his death grip of the tea cozy. “I heard this place has great tile.” He jerked his head toward the floor.

I gave a nervous laugh.

“Truth is, I saw your car out front,” he said. My heart did a little happy dance. Maybe he wasn’t so mad anymore. “So, what’s so special about the floor?”

“It’s not the floor. I was just … reaching for…” I crouched down again and grabbed the nearest thing off the bottom shelf. “These.”

He looked at the package in my hand and raised his eyebrows. “Chocolate-covered raisins?”

I nodded.

“You don’t like raisins.”

He remembered. “They’re, um, not so bad now.”

He gave a little nod and shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “I guess everything changes.”

I wanted to yell out, Nothing changes! I still hate raisins! But then I heard a loud motorcycle pull into the parking lot. I glanced out the window.

It was Gavin, the Dead Elvises’ drummer.

What if he saw me here? I had to assume if Maxwell knew about me, then Gavin would too, and I didn’t want him to report back to Cole that I was snooping around. And I doubly didn’t want to involve Jack.

“I have to go,” I said. I had to get out of there before Gavin came in.

“Wait, Becks,” Jack said. He tried to grab my hand, but I yanked it away and pulled my hoodie over my head, all Unabomber, and started toward the door. Jack stood there watching me with a confused look on his face. “Don’t leave.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, backing toward the door. “I am.”

“What about your raisins?” Jack said.

I could see Gavin flip the bike’s kickstand with his foot. “I don’t want them anymore,” I said. “You’re right. They’re gross.”

I was almost to the door now.

“Don’t you want this?” Jack held up the tea cozy. It was as if he were trying to make my escape even more difficult. Gavin was crossing the parking lot.

“No. Keep it.”

Right as I shoved the door open, I heard Jack mumble, “I guess nothing says ‘I’m sorry’ like a tea cozy.” Frustrated, he kicked the counter that held the rotating hot dog machine.

Then I made it out, and the door slammed shut behind me.

I ducked my head and passed Gavin just as he reached the door. He didn’t seem to notice me, and I was pretty sure he hadn’t heard Jack.

I avoided my car and walked up the street a little ways, sat down on the curb, and let out a breath of relief.

I hadn’t learned anything new, except that another one of the Dead Elvises had an affinity for the Shop-n-Go. And Jack officially thought I’d lost my last marble.

I put my head in my hands. After several long minutes, I felt someone sit down next to me. I half expected it to be Jack, but when I looked up, I saw Mary. I’d never seen her outside the soup kitchen before.

“Mary,” I said. “Hi.”

Mary was looking straight ahead. She scratched her arm a few times, as if something there were bothering her. “I come here a lot too.”

I grimaced. “Where? The Shop-n-Go?”

“Yes. I come here for supplies. The cashier doesn’t notice things.”

Great. She just admitted she’s a shoplifter.

She patted my knee. “Okay. I have to go. I’m late.”

“For what?” I asked.

Her face went blank, as if my question made no sense, and she scratched her arm again. “I hope you find it.”

“Find what?”

“What you were looking for.” She looked at me like I was the one suffering from dementia. She stood up and wandered down the street, pausing only to ask a couple of tourists for some spare change. I hoped they gave her plenty.

THIRTEEN

NOW

School. Less than three months left.

Mrs. Stone read through a rough draft of my paper, and one day after school she sat in the desk in front of me. “Nikki, you seem to have a chip on your shoulder when it comes to ancient myths.”

“What do you mean?”

She smiled. “You place an inordinate amount of blame on some of the central figures of Greek mythology.”

I was quiet for a moment, unsure of how to answer.

“Don’t get me wrong. I love how you’ve seamlessly planted characters such as Persephone in a modern high-school setting. Superb.” She placed the stack of papers on my desk. “But you, as the author, are letting your disdain show through.”

“How?” I asked.

She gave me a wry smile. “Like when your modern Demeter, and basically everyone else who’s even nice to your Persephone, gets killed or maimed by random acts of violence.”

Oh yeah. I nodded.

“Now, if you intended to offer a scathing indictment of heroes, well, you’re succeeding.”

“I just think they were foolish,” I said. “Made irrational decisions in hopeless quests.”

“Maybe. But don’t forget that what we can glean from these stories is not the string of decisions that got them into harrowing situations but what sacrifices did they make? Did Demeter give up when Persephone was kidnapped? Did she ever lose hope that she would get her daughter back?”

“That’s just it, Mrs. Stone. She shouldn’t have let herself hope, because she didn’t really get her back. Persephone ended up ruling the Underworld anyway. I don’t know why she wasted her time.”

Mrs. Stone paused. “Now you’re asking the right question. Why do we hope when all hope is lost? What if Orpheus had given up hope?”

“Who?”

“Orpheus. We’ll talk about him later in the unit, but in a nutshell: The love of Orpheus’s life, Eurydice, was taken to the Underworld. He was desperate to get her back, but no one ever comes back from the Underworld, right? Orpheus didn’t give up, though. He followed her and pleaded with Hades to let her go. He played music for Hades and touched his heart, so much that Hades released Eurydice on one condition— that Orpheus never look back as they left.”

Goose bumps appeared on my arms. I wasn’t familiar with the story, but Cole said most myths were rooted in some truth. Could it be that a mortal girl who was bound to the Everneath escaped? I stayed quiet, anxious for Mrs. Stone to go on.

“I’d like you to ask yourself, Who loses hope first? And who never gives up? Because it’s not the supernatural abilities that set mythical characters apart.” She leaned forward. “It’s the decisions the human characters make, in impossible situations, that have us still talking about them centuries later. Heroes are made by the paths they choose, not the powers they are graced with.”

I didn’t tell her my opinion about the existence of heroes. I wanted her to talk about Eurydice again. “So this Eurydice escaped the Underworld?”

“Yes.” Mrs. Stone paused. “For a moment.”

“What happened?”

“Orpheus couldn’t help looking back to make sure she was behind him. She was sucked back down.” She smiled and patted the papers in front of me, as if she hadn’t just obliterated my little ray of hope. “What you’ve done here is fine work. Good structure. Solid voice. But I think you can dig a little deeper.”

I nodded, no longer paying close attention. No one could escape.