Something True (10 page)

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Darla

I walked past the football field after school that afternoon, my eyes on my beautiful boyfriend, who stood near the bleachers in his practice uniform, deep in conversation with his coach. It was a warm autumn day. The leaves were falling. I had worn sensible but stylish flats, so my feet weren’t killing me, and I’d just gotten back an A on my chem lab. Best of all? Like, ten different people had told me today they were going to vote for me for homecoming queen. Ten!

Everything was right in the world.

“Read over this list and tell me if it’s right.”

Wallace shoved his iPad in front of me just when I was about to wave to Orion. We were supposed to check in at Boosters and make sure everyone was ready for the pancake breakfast on Saturday, then head out and do the last-minute shopping for decorations.

“You’re the champion list maker of all time,” I told him, pushing the iPad away. “I’m sure it’s fine. And I called the florist. The centerpieces I ordered will be delivered in the morning, and she’s giving us a twenty percent discount since it’s for the team.”

“Sweet.” Wallace grinned. “I called ahead to the party place, and they’re going to have the balloons all bundled and ready.”

“Nice.” I paused as he clicked something off on the screen. “We make a good team after all.”

“We do, don’t we?” he replied, tilting his head. “Don’t look now, but your Romeo approacheth.”

Orion jogged over to us with this massive smile on, like he’d just won a Golden Globe or something. He leaned in to kiss me, so hard I had to bend back at the waist.

“Wow. What was that for?” I asked.

“Coach just told me we’re going to run the wildcat tomorrow night, and he wants me to QB it,” Orion said.

I literally had no idea what that meant.

“Wow, man. That’s awesome,” Wallace said, and sounded sincere.

“Yeah,” I agreed. “Totally awesome.”

He looked so happy. Like, purely happy. I tugged my phone out of the side pocket of my bag, and trained the lens on Orion.

“What’re you doing?” he asked.

“Taking your picture. You look so cute right now I can’t help it.”

Orion clucked his tongue but smiled. As I clicked the picture, True walked by with Claudia, wearing a pretty red dress that made her already long legs look way longer. Orion watched her go by. He even turned his head and sort of craned his neck so he could keep watching her go by. Wallace shot me a look. The humiliation hit me like a sledgehammer.

“Um, hello?” I snapped at Orion.

Orion’s face turned purple. Snagged.

“What the hell?” I demanded. “Why are you staring at her?”

“I’m not. I mean, I wasn’t,” he said.

“Oh, please. Wallace? Was he staring at True or not?” I demanded.

Wallace raised his hands and took a step back. “I’m neutral. I’m Switzerland.”

I groaned. “So . . . what? Do you like her? Are you, like, cheating on me or something?” I demanded, thinking back to that phone call he’d just had to sneak off to take yesterday. The fact that he’d gone out with True on Tuesday night without even telling me beforehand. Was I the biggest idiot on the planet? Veronica’s words echoed in my head—don’t be a doormat, keep him on a short leash. Apparently my leash wasn’t short enough.

“Answer me, Orion. Because I am
not
going to ride around in a convertible at the homecoming game with some jerk who thinks he can play around behind my back. It’s humiliating.”

Orion’s face went slack. “That’s all you care about, isn’t it? Homecoming.”

“What?” I asked, feeling like the wind had been knocked out of me. Wasn’t I supposed to be doing the accusing around here?

“I mean, do you care whether I’m cheating on you because it would mean there’s something wrong between us, or do you only care because it would look bad to the world? To Veronica?” he demanded.

My face stung. Because he was right. I did care what Veronica and the rest of the world thought. I just never realized how bad it sounded until he spat it out at me like that.

“Don’t—don’t try to change the subject,” I said.

Just then, Coach Morschauser blew his whistle long and loud. “Floros! Get your butt on the field!” he shouted.

“I gotta go,” Orion said flatly. Then, without another word, he pulled his helmet on over his head and jogged away.

I blinked back tears as a cool autumn breeze blew my hair over my eyes. From my phone, Orion’s handsome face smiled up at me. Two minutes ago everything was fine. Everything was perfect. And now I felt hollow, and confused. What the heck had just happened?

“He’s not cheating on you,” Wallace said in that matter-of-fact tone of his.

“How would you know?” I asked, flicking my fingers under my eyes.

“I could tell by how shocked he was when you said it,” Wallace told me. “Also, True would have said something to me.”

“Are you sure?” I asked, sniffling.

“Yeah. I’m sure,” Wallace said. “Sometimes guys check out other girls, even in front of their girlfriends. We can be hormonal that way. But they’re not hooking up.”

I followed him over to one of the benches near the end of the field. After fishing in his bag for a second, he came out with a package of tissues and handed me one.

“Allergy boy lives,” I joked, giving my nose a quick blow.

He smiled. “Never leave home without them.”

Out on the field, the guys lined up, and I saw Orion take the ball and slam into a couple of other guys. He was laid out on the ground for a second before someone helped him up.

“I feel like such an idiot,” I said. “Did you hear him? He thinks the only thing I care about is homecoming.”

I fiddled with the crumpled tissue between my palms. “What’m I going to do? If he breaks up with me, I’ll die. I can’t go to homecoming alone.”

Wallace blew out a sigh. His feet bounced back and forth beneath the bench. “So . . . show him you care about more than homecoming.”

I sniffled and touched the tissue to the tip of my nose. “How?”

“Well . . . for starters, do you even know what the wildcat is?”

An awful, prickly feeling tightened my throat as Coach Morschauser blew his whistle. “Like you do.”

“Actually, I do.” Wallace wore a familiar smug expression—the same one he used to wear on the rare occasions he beat me at MarioKart back in the day. “It’s when a running back lines up in the quarterback position to take the snap. Then he either hands the ball off to another back, takes the ball downfield himself, or throws the ball to a receiver.”

I blinked. Half the words he’d just used were gibberish to me. I tucked my hair behind my ear as a breeze scattered some fallen leaves across our feet. “Oookay. So?”

Wallace rolled his eyes. “So the fact that Coach Morschauser is trusting Orion to run it is a huge deal.”

“Oh.”

“Darla, do you know anything about football?” Wallace asked.

I slumped, the worn tissue an ugly ball in my palm. “Not really.”

“So maybe you should learn. Maybe that’d be a good way to show him that homecoming isn’t the only thing you care about. Show him you care about the stuff he likes. About, you know, him.”

Right. Like I was going to take relationship advice from Wallace Bracken. He hadn’t had a girlfriend since the fifth grade, when Christina Newan had gone on three group dates with him to the mall. I’d been there for every one of them, and they’d never even kissed.

Over on the field, they ran the same play again, and this time Orion busted through and raced to the end zone—at least I knew what an end zone was—thrusting his arms in the air.

“If you want, I’ll teach you,” Wallace offered, following my gaze. “It’s not that complicated once you get the basics down.”

“Why?” I asked. “Why would you do that for me?”

He grinned. “You know how I like a challenge.”

The breeze blew his bangs back from his face and he shrugged, like all of this was so obvious. Suddenly I laughed. I couldn’t help it. This whole situation made no sense. Wallace should have hated my guts, but he kept right on being nice to me.

“You really think you can teach me?” I asked.

“Did I not teach you algebra in fifth grade?” he replied.

“You did. Which I’m still grateful for, PS. AP calc is my favorite class.”

“I know. I can tell. You get this look on your face when you’re working a problem, like you’re in a happy zone,” he said. “It’s pretty cool.”

I blushed, but I wasn’t sure why. Was he really watching me during calc class?

“So. Football tutoring?” he asked.

“Okay, fine,” I said finally, wondering if I was completely out of my mind. “Just don’t tell anyone.”

He smiled. “Your secret’s safe with me.”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

True

“I’m telling you, it’s a lost cause,” Wallace said, talking to me through the speakers on my phone while I examined my look in front of my full-length mirror on Friday evening. I was wearing a blue, white, and silver football jersey over jeans. It had Orion’s #22 stitched onto the front and his last name,
FLOROS
, across the shoulders. It was a new look for me—school-spirit chic—and I must say I was totally rocking it. “Darla’s in love with Orion. She almost blew a gasket when she caught him checking you out yesterday.”

I froze. “He did what?”

“He checked you out. Right in front of her.”

I grinned at my reflection. Best. News. Ever.

“So what did you do?” I asked, reminding myself to focus. This was about Darla and Wallace, not me and Orion. But I still couldn’t stop smiling.

“Oh, just offered to help her get back in with him by teaching her the intricacies of football. We’re meeting up in five minutes so she can cram before the game.” Wallace groaned. “What is wrong with me?”

“You volunteered to help her because you care about her,” I told him, reaching for a shimmery lip gloss and swiping it across my lips.

“Correct me if I’m wrong, but helping the girl I like win back the guy she likes doesn’t really advance my goals in any way,” Wallace said.

I laughed. “It
seems
that way, but this is actually good. The more time you spend with her, the better. She’ll get to see how selfless you can be and be reminded of how smart and funny you are. It’s actually perfect.”

“If you say so.” Wallace did not sound convinced.

“True?” Hephaestus shouted up the stairs. “What’re you doing up there? Plucking every last hair out of your body? Let’s go!”

I rolled my eyes. “Wallace, I’ve gotta go. But I’ll see you at the game.”

“See ya.”

Wallace clicked off. I gave my hair one last fluff, then turned and tromped down the stairs. Hephaestus smirked when he saw what I was wearing.

“Isn’t that a tad desperate?” he asked.

“What? I’m his booster,” I said, lifting my palms. “Now come on. I don’t want to be late for the game. I need him to see me, front and center, cheering him on.”

“You’re the one who took an hour to line your eyes,” Hephaestus replied under his breath. He tugged at the collar of the brand-new bright-blue LCHS sweatshirt I’d made him wear. “How’re things coming with Wallace and Darla?”

“Fine. Great, even,” I said as I reached for the door. “In fact, the two of them are getting together right now.”

“It’s impressive, I gotta say,” Hephaestus told me. “How you just happened to find a match for the girl who’s currently dating the guy you want.”

“Isn’t it, though?” I turned away from his knowing smirk. “Still nothing from Harmonia?”

“No. I’m starting to get concerned,” he said, shoving his wheels hard to get over the doorstop. “Maybe we should try contacting her the way you did the first time. Or call on your father to see what’s what.”

Something moved in the corner of my eye, and I turned just in time to see Artemis step out of the shadows near the edge of the porch. Her straight white teeth were bared, her curls tumbling over the shoulders of a black leather jacket.

“Must be a cold day in the underworld if you’re willing to go to Ares for help, Hephaestus,” she said with a sneer.

I gripped the handle on Hephaestus’s chair as Apollo moved in from the other side. His eyes were rimmed in red, his pale skin gone sallow over sunken cheeks. There was a feral look about him, as if he’d just crawled out of the desert after a week of tortured wandering.

“So. You’ve found us,” I said, my confident voice betraying none of my terror.

Artemis’s eyes narrowed like a cat’s. “Deal with him,” she said to her brother.

Apollo whipped a black hood out of his pocket and brought it down over Hephaestus’s head so fast neither of us could stop it, yanking a cord to tighten it around his neck. Hephaestus reached back blindly, but Apollo shoved his chair off the one step to the path, and it tipped sideways, falling over with a clatter and throwing my friend on his side. Apollo jumped down next to him and kicked the chair away, leaving Hephaestus blind and struggling.

“True?” he called out.

“Hephaestus!” I took a step, but Artemis was on me. She gripped my hair and held a blade against my throat. I felt a prick of pain just as the door opened behind us. Artemis whipped around, still clinging to me.

“Let her go,” my mother spat through her teeth.

“Take one step closer and I will end her,” Artemis said.

“I wouldn’t do that,” I said, barely able to speak, the blade was pressed so firmly against my windpipe.

“Oh really? Why not?” Artemis asked.

“Because if you kill me, you’ll never see Orion again,” I replied. “Not the Orion you loved.”

“She speaks the truth, Artemis,” my mother said, her slender fingers gripping the doorjamb on either side. She was clinging to her self-control by a slim thread. “Let her go and listen to her.”

Apollo strolled back up onto the porch. I saw the look he gave Artemis. He didn’t believe us and was silently telling her as much. But then, suddenly, the blade was released. Artemis shoved me toward my mother, who stopped me from hitting my knees. She cupped my face with her hands and I stared into her steady eyes for a moment, gleaning their strength before turning to face my enemies. Out on the sidewalk, a couple slowed, noticing Hephaestus, who was now sitting with his face covered, groping blindly for his chair.

“Talk,” Artemis said, still holding the knife perilously close to my face.

“Help Hephaestus first,” I said to Apollo.

He laughed.

“This is a busy street,” I told him, nodding toward the small klatch of worried onlookers that was now gathering. “And you’ll find that humans don’t take kindly to people who abuse the physically challenged. You wouldn’t want anyone calling the police.”

Apollo glanced at the crowd. I could tell he didn’t want to let me win or let the threat of human intervention cow him, but he wasn’t stupid. He hopped down and untied the hood, yanking it off. Hephaestus sucked in a loud breath.

“Just a prank,” he shouted gamely to our spectators, lifting a hand. “Nothing to see here.”

Apollo righted Hephaestus’s chair and returned to his sister’s side, leaving Hephaestus to climb back in on his own. Hephaestus had a cut on his forehead, and when he touched his hand to it, his fingertips came back smeared with blood. I gritted my teeth.

“Now. Talk,” Artemis said. “What do you mean, he’s not the Orion I know?”

“When Zeus banished me here, it was with a specific goal and reward,” I told her. “If I formed true love between three couples without my powers, I could have Orion back.”

Her face colored at this. “He was never yours to begin with,” she spat. “The moment you brought him down from the heavens you should have returned him to me.”

As if he was a borrowed library book. As if his feelings meant nothing. I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from snapping her head off.

“Be that as it may, once you infiltrated the castle, Zeus had to send Orion here to protect our bargain, but he had to find a way to continue to keep us apart, even though we were so close together,” I said.

Artemis and Apollo were blank-faced. Confused.

“The king erased his memory,” Aphrodite supplied impatiently. “He doesn’t remember who he is, let alone whom he has loved.”

“If you kill me, Zeus has no reason to return Orion’s memory to him,” I said, eyeing Artemis’s very impressive blade. “He won’t know who you are. He won’t know you were once his love. As far as he’s concerned, he’s a human guy with parents, a sister, and a varsity jacket. Not to mention a steady girlfriend,” I added acerbically.

With a hefty groan of exertion, Hephaestus managed to climb back into his chair. He turned and popped the front of his wheels onto the shallow step, then shoved himself up to be nearer to us. The look he gave Apollo was a promise that he would one day return the favor. Apollo, wisely, looked away.

“So, what do you propose?” Artemis asked. “I simply let you get away with this betrayal? I just let you live after the pain and humiliation you’ve caused me?”

“No. I propose a bargain,” I replied, holding her gaze. “You stop stalking me and let me form true love between one more couple. Once I do, Orion will awake from his stupor, and we’ll ask him which one of us he truly loves.”

“And when he chooses me? Then I get to kill you?” Artemis demanded, an amused smile on her lips.

“No. If he chooses you, I will wish you all the joy in the universe and get back to my job,” I said as confidently as possible. “Because unlike Hera, you and I both know that if I am dead, then true love suffers. And if true love suffers, so will the women of this world. You do still care about your charges, don’t you, Goddess Protector of Women?”

Artemis lowered her knife and took a step back. “You knew the queen gave me her blessing to kill you?”

Now it was my turn to smirk. “I do still have my friends on Mount Olympus.”

“We believe that the queen wouldn’t mind seeing either of you dead,” Aphrodite told her.

“You’re wrong,” Artemis said. “The queen is on my side.”

“Think about it, Artemis. She knows of your growing powers,” Hephaestus said. “Of Eros’s abilities. The two of you are a threat to her throne. But she knows she can’t smite you herself without inciting Zeus’s wrath, so she sent you here to deal with Eros, hoping one or the both of you would die and take care of the problem for her.”

Artemis took this in. I could see her mind working, not wanting to believe the truth. Finally she looked to her brother. His thin-lipped expression said it all. He didn’t want to trust us, but he knew the queen well.

“Forget about the queen and her plans.” I closed the space between myself and Artemis, no longer feeling threatened. “Search your heart, Artemis. What is it that really matters to you? If it’s winning Orion back, this is the only way. If it’s exacting revenge on me, don’t you think that you running off with the man I love will be horrible enough for me to witness? Isn’t that the best revenge you could imagine?”

My throat constricted. Because there was the possibility, the tiniest possibility, that Orion would choose Artemis. And the worst of it was that his choosing her would be my fault. It was I who had matched them in the first place. I had manufactured their love with my arrows on a lark. That was what would hurt more than anything. If only I had known then that I would one day love him myself.

But I couldn’t think about that now. Artemis had to be convinced.

“I don’t like it,” Apollo said through his teeth.

“Of course you don’t. It means you get no blood spatter out of it,” Hephaestus shot back.

“I don’t like it because what if he doesn’t pick you, sister?” Apollo said.

Artemis’s jaw dropped indignantly, and I almost laughed until Aphrodite’s steadying hands came down on my shoulders.

“How dare you?” Artemis blurted. “Of course he’ll choose me. We were lovers for years. He’s known Eros for mere months.” She sheathed her knife in a hip holster and gazed coolly at me. “Our love was true. It was pure. I’m certain he’ll pick me.”

“Let us shake on it, then.” I thrust my hand at her. Her grip was as strong as ever.

“We have a deal.”

I was just letting out a sigh of relief when she withdrew her fingers and glanced at the silver watch clamped to her wrist. “It’s half past seven now. I’ll give you eight days. That’s about as long as I can last on this rock. After eight days, the deal is off.”

“You can’t be serious, sister,” Apollo countered. “Please tell me you’re not relegating me to this hell for that long.”

Artemis ignored him, her dark eyes glowering at me.

“Next Saturday, Eros. If you can’t manage your job by then, your blood is mine.”