Chapter 25 Dis-Go with It
AM I SUPPOSED TO KNOW what’s going on?” I ask as we walk away. “Because I don’t.”
“You will,” Fifi tells me, sliding one of the bracelets off her wrist and handing it to me.
As she does, I realize she only has a couple left of the twenty or so she put on before leaving our room.
She sees me looking at her bare arms and grins. “I’ve been handing them out all evening.”
“Okay.” I’m not sure what that has to do with anything—until I start to slide it on my wrist and see the letter beads facing the inside of the bracelet. They spell out APPLE 10.
“What does apple 10 mean?” I ask, even as I wonder if it’s some strange Aphrodite code I know nothing about.
“It means meet me at the apple at ten o’clock.” She glances at her phone. “And it’s nine fifty now, so we need to move.”
“What apple?” I ask, completely confused.
She shoots me a look that says she can’t believe I have to ask. “The apple. You know, the one in front of Aphrodite Hall?”
“The tie-dyed one?” I vaguely remember seeing it when we first got here, but so much has happened today that it barely registered.
To be honest, it’s still barely registering.
“Is there another one?” Fifi punches the button to the elevator and the doors open right away. “That’s a good sign.”
“What’s a good sign?” I ask as we step inside.
I feel like a parrot at this point, and not a very clued-in one at that.
Then again, Fifi could stand to be a little less mysterious.
I’m her roommate, not an extension of her brain.
Not to mention, before a few hours ago, I’d never spent more than a second or two thinking about Aphrodite Hall.
I know nothing about it except the most basic stuff.
“The elevator being on the roof,” she replies. I expect her to punch the button for our floor, but instead, she punches it for the bottom floor. “That means everyone’s still up here.”
“And that’s good? I thought you wanted people to meet us at the apple.”
“Not people. A select group of first years. Everyone else can stay upstairs—the last thing we need is a bunch of upperclassers snooping around, trying to ruin this.”
My stomach turns uneasily. I have no idea what Fifi is up to, but if she needs darkness and privacy to do it, it’s probably not great. “I don’t think this is a good idea.”
“You don’t even know what the idea is.” She rolls her eyes. “But trust me, it’s epic.”
I really don’t like the sound of that. Everything I’ve learned about Fifi so far today has taught me that her idea of epic and mine are super different.
“But before we do anything,” she continues, completely oblivious to the fact that I’m one bad suggestion away from running back to our room and diving under the covers, “we need to find the package piazza.”
“What exactly is that?”
“It’s the mail room, silly, with a pizzazzy name. It’s more fun to get cool packages from the package piazza than from a boring old mail room.”
“Do Aphrodites get that many cool packages?”
“Of course they do!” This time she’s the one who looks confused. “Parents love to send care packages.”
There’s a strange sort of logic to her answer, so I decide to go with it. Even though it seems hard to believe that so many care packages come through that they need an entire room to handle them—not to mention someone to work in that room.
Instead of heading toward the front door—and the apple—when we exit the elevator, she turns left into a long, winding hallway.
The walls are made up of the same tile mosaics that make up so many of the walls and floors in Aphrodite Hall, and I do my best not to look at them.
Even though I know what happened on the dance floor was a onetime thing brought on by a weird combination of heat and hunger, there’s a tiny part of me that can’t help wondering if it was something more.
A tiny part of me that’s terrified to do anything that might make it happen again.
The hallway ends as it runs into another hallway, and Fifi turns right without hesitation.
“Do you know where you’re going?”
“I know where Levi told me to go when I asked this morning,” she answers. “I guess we’ll find out whether or not he gave me the right directions.”
We make another quick right and end up in what I think is some kind of gaming lounge, judging by the number of TVs and gaming consoles throughout the room.
“Does this mean he didn’t give you the right directions?” I venture as we back out of the room.
“Actually, I think that one was my fault. It should have been a left.”
We retrace our steps at a jog, going left instead of right, and end up in what I’m guessing is the package piazza, judging by the hundreds of multicolored little cubbies stacked up in rows in the center of the room.
Of course, all the cubbies are empty because it’s the first day of school, but that doesn’t seem to bother Fifi, who heads straight for a stack of four boxes in the back of the room.
“Your parents sent you four care packages for the first day?” I ask. How is that possible considering the sheer number of things she brought in her suitcases? I know Aphrodites are all about beauty, but how much does one person need?
“Actually, I sent them to myself. It was Leah’s idea.” She picks up two of the boxes, then nods for me to do the same.
I brace myself, expecting them to be as heavy as her suitcases. Instead, they’re superlight—which is weird enough. Add in the fact that when I shake them, nothing rattles at all, and I’m intrigued despite myself.
“What are we—”
“Three minutes,” she says as we head out of the room and back down the hallway. “And I promise I’ll tell you everything.”
Three minutes later, we’re outside the gate, standing at the base of the apple with at least fifteen other first years—including Arjun and Omari.
They all seem really chill—and really nice.
A part of me is a little surprised that so many people came just because Fifi told them to.
But another part of me thinks it’s totally expected.
Haven’t I gone along with everything Fifi’s wanted from the minute she pulled me into the stands next to her in the amphitheater?
The girl’s got some kind of star power.
“First of all,” Fifi begins in a loud whisper. “Ellie and I want to thank you for coming to participate in what is a time-honored tradition for brand-new Aphrodites.”
“Hi, Ellie!” Arjun says as Fifi climbs up on the bench next to the apple.
“Penelope,” I remind him, because if we’re going to be friends, I feel like he should call me by my real name. I’ve figured out that Fifi’s going to do what Fifi wants to do, but I might still have a chance with him. “My name is Penelope.”
“Oh, right.” He looks startled, like he actually forgot that fact. Apparently, that’s what Fifi does. She turns things into what she wants them to be.
Must. Be. Nice.
“What’s the tradition?” someone calls from the other side of our small gathering.
“I was getting to that,” said Fifi. “Some of you already know this, but for those of you who don’t, it’s expected that sometime in the first week of school, the first years decorate the apple.”
“Decorate or vandalize?” I ask, as that icky feeling starts churning in my stomach again.
“Good question, Ellie! Vandalism destroys things. Decorating makes them better, and we are absolutely going to make this apple better. Ellie, give me one of those boxes you’re carrying, will you, please?”
“We’re not going to get in trouble for this, are we?” I ask before I hand over the box.
“I already told you, it’s expected. You don’t actually think this apple came tie-dyed, do you? Last year’s class sprayed it with hundreds of paintballs and then swirled the colors all together.”
A few of the girls near the base of the apple ooh and aah.
But Fifi calls them out on it. “Don’t be impressed by that, not when we’re going to do something so much cooler.”
She gives me an expectant look as she holds her hands out for the box. And though I’m still leery of this plan—I’m not sure I want to know what Fifi considers epic—I can’t help being caught up in the excitement at least a little bit.
At this point I’m pretty sure Fifi could sell water to a drowning person. After all, she’s managed to sell vandalism—excuse me, decorating—to me and fifteen other people all hoping to make a good impression on their first day.
“Get ready,” she whisper-shouts as she rips the top of the box open. “Who needs disco balls when you can have a giant disco apple?”
She turns the box over and hundreds upon hundreds of puffy, mirrored stickers pour out like confetti all over Arjun, Omari, and me.
As the stickers settle, she says, “Go ahead, Ellie. You get to go first! Grab a sticker and slap it on.”
“Um…” I want to say no. It’s one thing to carry a box for Fifi. It’s another to actually do something to the apple.
But Fifi’s grin is huge, and it’s obvious she’s having an amazing time. I don’t want to mess this up for her, especially not after everything she’s done for me.
So even though every rule-following, Athena inch of me tells me to run in the other direction, I do as she asks and pick up a sticker.
Around me the other students start to chant my name. “Ellie, Ellie, Ellie,” led by Arjun and Omari.
In my whole life, no one’s ever chanted my name before.
At school events, my parents always focused on Paris and what he did.
And while I had friends in my old school, they were even more studious and practical than I am.
Never in a million years would Pashma or Flavia stand around an apple—or anything else—calling my name.
I didn’t miss it—you can’t miss what you’ve never had—but standing here, now, it feels pretty good. Actually, it feels really good. So I do the only thing that will keep this going. I peel the back off the sticker and slap it dead center in the middle of the apple.
Quiet cheers erupt as people mill around excitedly. Some pat me on the back while others press closer to the apple, like they are just waiting for their turns.
Fifi jumps off the bench and joins me in ripping the tape off the other three boxes. And then everyone is joining in the fun, putting sticker after sticker on the apple until every single inch of it is covered.
Only when the last sticker has been applied do we step back to admire our handiwork. And I may be a little bit biased, but I think it looks amazing. Judging from the expressions on everyone else’s faces, they do too.
But Fifi wouldn’t be Fifi if she didn’t have one more trick up her sleeve. She reaches into the box and pulls out a small, rectangular object. Then she climbs onto the bench and stretches, trying to reach the stem of the apple.
But she’s not quite tall enough, even on her tippy-toes. “Come on, Ellie. Give me a boost.”
We’ve come a long way in the last half hour—or maybe I have—because, for once, I don’t even question her. Instead, I scramble onto the bench, then squat down and lace my fingers together.
She puts her sneakered foot between my palms and asks, “Okay?”
“I’ve got you,” I tell her, because I do. And right now, at least, it feels like she and all these other Aphrodites have got me.
“I know.” She grins down at me right before she pushes up and attaches the rectangular thing to the back of the stem.
“What is that thing?” one of the other first years calls.
“A motion-sensing speaker,” Fifi laughs as she flips the switch on it. And then she jumps down, waving her arms back and forth.
“We Are Family,” one of the most famous disco songs of all time—and a personal favorite of my grandmother’s, which is how I know it—comes pouring out of the speaker.
And, secret mission or not, our small crowd of Aphrodites goes wild.