Goddess Boot Camp (10 page)

Nicole jumps up and grabs a scrap of paper and a pencil with a skull-and-crossbones eraser at the end. Handing them to me, she says, “Write it out. Exactly as it is in the note.”

When I do, she claps her hands. “I know what that is!”

“You do?”

“Yes.” She smiles triumphantly. “It’s a call number. Like from the library.”

A call number? I shake my head.

“It’s a book!”

“Oh,” I say brilliantly. A book. How is some book supposed to explain something about my dad? It’s not like just anyone can publish stuff about the secret world of the gods. Mount Olympus totally has supernatural protections against that kind of thing. Why would this crazy note have a library call num—

“What are you waiting for?” Nicole demands, grabbing me by the wrist and pulling me to the door. “Let’s go to the library.”

I’ve never seen Nicole get so excited about anything—except that time she came up with the plan to help me capture and then break Griffin’s heart. That time didn’t turn out so well for me. She temporarily zapped away my ankle muscles so Griff would have to carry me home. That was before they made up, of course. And before he and I got together.

It was the thrill of strategy and espionage that excited her then. It’s a good bet that it’s the same thrill that has her hurrying me across the campus lawn. In under two minutes we’ve made it from her room to the library door.

I’d been to the library dozens of times during the school year. Researching a book-length term paper for Ms. T’s lit class. Using the computer lab to check out a supercool 3-D physics simulator program in Ms. Madrianos’ class. Looking up newspaper accounts of my dad’s death.

Still, as Nicole and I walk through the glass double doors, I can’t help staring in awe.

You know what most high-school libraries are like? Small, cramped, and with so few books that if every student checked one out at once, the shelves would be empty? Well the Academy library is
so
not like that.

First of all, it’s
huge
. When you walk in, you’re on the second story, on a balcony that overlooks the basement-level main floor. Circling the upper level is an alternating pattern of tables and chairs, individual study carrels, and comfy armchairs facing low coffee tables. Who wouldn’t want to study in here?

Second of all, it’s
beautiful
. There is light everywhere on the balcony and pouring into the open space below. Since it’s at the corner of the school, it has two full walls of windows that let in glorious sun all day. The shelves that line the balcony are the exact same color as the Academy exterior, so they blend right in with the walls. Everything is trimmed in gold—I have a feeling it’s
real
gold—and marble. All the fabrics are this gorgeous gold swirly-girly pattern. As far as lush interiors go, it could rival any of the great palaces of the world.

Third of all, it’s
full of books
. Oh, not so much that you feel crowded by them or anything, but if they had a card catalog—which they haven’t since computerizing everything in the nineties—it would be the size of an average high-school library. Almost all of the books are in the basement level, which spreads out under the entire school. Probably farther. This is totally the kind of place that would have secret chambers or hidden passages or something else right out of a Nancy Drew novel.

“Come on,” Nicole calls out as she heads for the sweeping staircase that leads to the lower level. “Let’s check the call number against the Map.”

Note clutched in my hand, I hurry after her. The Map is a huge-scale, Plexiglas floor plan of the library that details what’s on every shelf. Not to the book, of course—wouldn’t that be cool, though, if it was some ultrahip, interactive map where you could scan through every book on the shelf !—but by call number.

When we reach the map I unfold the note and read the call number out.

“X Sigma 597.11 FL76.” I’m sure that makes sense to
somebody
—librarians, probably—but to me it’s just a garble of numbers and letters.

The one bad thing about the Academy library is that nothing is in order. At least, not call-number order. Or any other order, as far as I can see. Tracing over the Map with our fingers, Nicole and I search every inch of it. I’m just about to give up, when she says, “Here it is.” Followed immediately by, “No, that’s not it.”

“What?” I move to her side of the Map and look at the spot she’s pinpointing with her finger.

“This doesn’t make any sense,” she says. “That set of shelves has all the X-whatevers
except
X Sigma. There’s no X Sigma anything anywhere.”

Leaning in for a closer view, I see she’s right. How weird is that? The label lists everything that starts with
X
plus a letter from the Latin alphabet.

I scan the Map again. There are
no
call numbers with Greek letters. But the second letter of the call number is definitely a ∑. A Sigma.

Maybe the note was a typo.

“You will not find Chi Sigma on the Map.”

Nicole and I both spin around. I don’t know about Nicole, but my heart is racing. I feel like we got caught sneaking into school after dark, not searching for a library book.

Standing right behind us is the librarian, Mrs. Philipoulos. I adore her—she helped me find obscure Aristotle writings for my final in Mr. Dorcas’s philosophy class—but she scares me a little. She is no stereotypical librarian. She only comes up to my chin, making her maybe five foot. Maybe. My best guess at her age is seventy, but you wouldn’t know it from how she’s dressed. It’s not every day you see a five-foot, seventy-year-old librarian wearing black cargo pants and a black leather corset top. And certainly not one that looks
good
in that outfit.

“Mrs. Philipoulos,” Nicole gasps. “You scared the Hades out of us.”

“We librarians have to be stealthy.” She shrugs her tiny shoulders. “How else can we expect to spy on young lovers in the stacks?”

My cheeks flush with the memory of one night during finals week when Griffin and I slipped down the modern-dramatic-theory aisle for a make-out session, certain that no one in their right mind would come looking for one of those books. We quadruple-checked that no one was around. There was no way she could have—

“Mrs. Philipoulos!” I gasp.

The tiny librarian winks at me.

I give her a weak smile.

Remembering why we’re here—and desperate to deflect my embarrassment—I ask, “Why won’t we find Chi Sigma on the Map?”

Why didn’t we guess that the
X
was really a chi?

“Because,” she says, her ruby-glossed lips smiling mischievously, “that is one of the secret collections.”

“Secret collections?” I repeat. Why would someone send me a call number for a book in a secret collection?

“One of?” Nicole gasps. “You mean there’s more than one?”

“Of course, dear.” Mrs. Philipoulos turns sharply and walks to her desk.

“She’s a little scary,” I whisper.

Nicole whispers back, “She’s a descendant of Nemesis.”

Who is that? I shake my head.

“Goddess of retribution,” Nicole explains.

I’m impressed. “No wonder she looks like she can kick butt.”

“She also has excellent hearing,” Mrs. Philipoulos says as we reach her desk. Before we can react, she says, “What is the exact call number, dear?”

As I read it out she quickly keys in the letters and numbers.

“Interesting,” Mrs. Philipoulos says, squinting at the screen. Her short, spiky gray hair glows blue in the light from her flat-panel monitor.

“What?” Nicole and I both ask, hurrying around the desk to see.

Mrs. Philipoulos presses a red button on her keyboard and the screen goes blank just as we catch a glimpse.

“I’m sorry, girls,” she explains, “but that segment of the collection is off-limits to students.”

“What do you mean?” I ask. “Isn’t this a student library?”

“Of course.” She gives me a sad look. “But we are also the official archival library of Mount Olympus.”

“So?” Nicole asks, defiantly crossing her arms over her chest.

“So,” Mrs. Philipoulos replies, just as defiantly, “not every document the gods file is fit for student eyes.”

My shoulders slump. After all the racing my brain has done since I got that note, I half expected some kind of miracle in that call number. I’m not sure what kind of miracle, but I was sure there was some kind of mystery about my dad’s death that might explain why he’d died. Why he’d done it. Why he’d decided that his football career was the most important thing in his life. Some clue to how I might avoid the same fate.

Now I might never know.

“That’s all right, Mrs. Philipoulos,” I say, defeated. “Thanks for your help.”

Nicole gapes at me. “What?” she asks. “You’re giving up? When you’re this close”—she holds up her palms half an inch apart—“to finding the truth?”

“What truth?” I throw back. “My dad died. The gods smoted him because he abused his powers to succeed in football. Nothing can change that.”

“How can you be—”

Mrs. Philipoulos gasps, stopping Nicole midsentence. “You’re Nicky Castro’s daughter.”

“Did you know my dad?”

“No, not personally.” She gives me a sad, sympathetic smile. “But I knew of him.” After a thick beat, she adds, “Everyone did.”

My eyes water. There’s something in that beat, in that silence, that tells me the entire
hematheos
world knows Dad’s story. Like he’s a warning. Careful how you use your powers or this will happen to you.

“How did you get this call number?” she asks. “It’s not student-accessible in ECHO.”

I shrug as I blink away the moisture. “Someone left that note at my door.”

“I always say there are exceptions to every rule, honey.” She types another quick sequence, turns the monitor to face me, and says, “You have every right to see this.”

Nicole hurries around to look over my shoulder as I quickly scan the entry on the screen.

Collection: Mt. Olympus Archives

Title: Council Court Minutes

Topic: Proceedings of the Trial of Nicholas Andrew Castro

Copies: 1

Call Number: X
∑
597.11 FL76

Location: B2-S18D

My heart thuds into my throat.

The record of my dad’s trial? I didn’t even know there had
been
a trial. I thought the gods just decided among themselves to punish him. If there was a trial, maybe there was testimony or interviews or some kind of documentation to prove that Dad hadn’t just sacrificed everything for a sport.

“Follow me, girls,” Mrs. Philipoulos says, grabbing a set of keys from her desk drawer.

“I can’t believe it,” I say to Nicole as we follow Mrs. Philipoulos through the doorway that leads to the stacks. “The record of my dad’s trial. I didn’t know they kept that sort of record.”

I’d heard about the “secret” collection—everyone has. But I had no idea what they held.

“Neither did I.” Nicole’s voice sounds strange.

When I look, she’s staring straight ahead, her eyes completely blank. Without question I know what she’s thinking about: the trial where her and Griffin’s parents got banished. The trial over something she and Griffin did, and for which their parents were punished. Though she and Griff are finally friends again after years of hating each other over it, I know it still kills them inside. I can see it sometimes when Griffin runs. His bright blue eyes get a faraway look and I know he’s thinking about his parents. My heart breaks every time.

As we reach the end of one row of stacks, Mrs. Philipoulos stops in front of a janitor’s closet and whips around to face us.

“What I am going to show you,” she says, sounding very ominous, “you are not to breathe a word about to another living soul.” She starts to turn around and then spins back. “Or a dead one.”

Nicole and I exchange raised eyebrows.

Mrs. Philipoulos unlocks the janitor’s closet and walks inside. When we don’t follow, she leans her head back out and says, “What are you waiting for?” She waves us inside. “This way.”

Nicole raises her finger to her temple and makes the universal sign for nutso. But really, what have we got to lose?

I shrug and take a step into the closet. As soon as we’re both inside, Mrs. Philipoulos pulls the door shut. While we’re surrounded by darkness I hear a bit of a shuffle. Something falls over, crashing to the floor.

“Drat!” Mrs. Philipoulos snaps. “Who put that mop there? Ah, here we go.”

I hear a soft click. All at once the tiny closet is bathed in soft light. And it starts to move. Down.

“Whoa,” Nicole gasps. “There’s a
sub
-sublevel?”

Mrs. Philipoulos winks at her.

Seconds later, the closet stops moving and Mrs. Philipoulos reaches for the handle. “Remember, girls,” she says, turning the handle. “You were never here.”

“Oh. My.
Gods
.”

I can’t believe what I’m seeing. It’s a whole other level that spreads out beneath the school. With just as many rows and rows of bookshelves as the floor above. And every last shelf is full.

“Are these
all
records from Mount Olympus?” Nicole asks, gaping just as seriously as I am.

“Of course not,” Mrs. Philipoulos says, as if
that’s
the most ridiculous thing that’s been said all day. “Most of these are from the Library of Alexandria.”

“The Library of Alexandria?” I ask. “Didn’t that burn down?”

Mrs. Philipoulos scoffs. “Damn fool Hypatia. Athena tried to convince her to install a sprinkler system. But
no-o-o,
no one was going to tell the librarinatrix how to run
her
library.” As she starts stomping down one aisle, she adds, “Athena saved the collection before it turned to ash, but she couldn’t exactly advertise the fact, could she? So, we keep it protected here.”

As we hurry past shelf after shelf of ancient books and scrolls and papers, bound in various earthy shades of leather and smelling like dirt and mold and century upon century of history, I try to catch a few titles.
The Complete Plays of Sophocles
.
Plato’s Early Writings
.
Chronicle of the Trojan War
. Wow.