Chapter 23 The Goof on the Roof
MY STOMACH IS STILL AROUND my toes when Fifi and I walk out onto the rooftop five minutes later. Of course, she stops dead at our first glimpse of it, eyes wide as she spins around and around in an effort to take it all in.
“Isn’t it beautiful, Ellie?”
Normally open rooftops—especially ones this high up—aren’t really my thing. But she’s right. It is beautiful and also really, really cool. I can see why they told us at check-in that it’s everyone’s favorite place to hang out.
From the hundreds and hundreds of fairy lights crisscrossing the roof to the flower- and greenery-filled trellises that line the entire back side of the roof, everything about this place is a fairy tale.
Daybeds covered in brightly colored pillows linger beneath the trellises, while dozens of ornate table-and-chair sets are scattered in haphazard groupings around the entire area.
Giant tile pots filled with pomegranate trees draped in even more fairy lights dot the corners of the roof, and directly in the center is a huge dance floor made of the same abstract mosaics I saw in the hallway earlier.
The front side of the roof—which my practical little Athena heart is thrilled to see protects roof goers with lengths of decorative iron railing several feet high—is where the food and drink tables have been set up.
One table nearly buckles under the weight of the most beautiful Greek feast I’ve ever seen.
There are piles of souvlaki and grilled vegetables, baskets upon baskets of fresh-off-the-fire pitas, and pretty glass bowls filled with hummus, tabouli, and several other dips and salads.
The other table is very obviously the dessert table.
It’s loaded with gallons of ice cream in every flavor, kept cold by bowls of dry ice.
In the center of the table are two huge boards loaded with every candy topping imaginable, as well as bowls filled with hot fudge, caramel, whipped cream, and fresh cherries.
I’ve never seen anything like it. Athenas aren’t big on dessert except for really special occasions, and while I’ve never missed it, my mouth is watering right now as I imagine diving into a giant bowl of ice cream.
“Where do you want to start?” Fifi yells to be heard over the blaring dance music.
Part of me wants to say the dessert table, but Athena girls aren’t impractical. And dessert before dinner is the definition of impractical, at least in my house.
Since Levi is in the middle of handing out glow sticks and crowns, I nod toward his station. As far as I’m concerned, the sooner I get the answers I need, the sooner I can head back downstairs. No matter how cool this party is, I’ve got work to do.
But by the time we make it through the throngs of students, Levi is swamped. “We’ll get him later!” Fifi shouts as she grabs flower crowns for both of us.
“Oh!” I flinch a little when she tries to put one on me. “I don’t think I need that—”
“Of course you need it! Hard to be a queen without a crown.” She plops it on my head, then screams as a song she likes comes on. “Oh my gods! We have to dance to this.”
“I don’t really dance—” I start, but she’s already dragging me toward the dance floor.
And honestly, I’m tired of fighting forces beyond my control—which Fifi definitely is—so in the end, I just go along with her.
Maybe by the time we dance for a song or two, Levi will manage to get the glow-stick crowd under control.
Even though the party just started, the dance floor’s already packed, and somehow I find myself dancing with Fifi in the middle of a circle of upperclassers.
Part of me is totally traumatized—Athena girls do not make spectacles of themselves—but another part of me is kind of having fun, especially when several of the older girls join us in the circle.
Before I know it several songs have passed, and I’m drenched in sweat, not to mention dying of thirst.
I shout to Fifi that I’m going to take a break, then head for the nearest gap in people.
But I’ve barely made it a few steps before the ground beneath my feet starts to move.
It’s not like last time, when it literally shifted and shook.
No, this time it’s just the small tiles that make up the mosaic pattern of the floor.
They’re sliding and shifting against one another, rearranging themselves into…a picture?
I bend down to get a closer look, but it’s like the image is fuzzy, just a little bit out of focus. I think there’s a girl, maybe? And a bird? No, a snake. No, that’s not right either.
I’m still not close enough, so I crouch down to get an even better look.
But the tiles are still slipping and sliding like a bunch of mismatched puzzle pieces.
I reach a hand out to trace a few of them, but the moment my finger touches the floor, my head grows thick and dizzy.
My legs start to cramp, and I end up falling right on my butt on the edge of the dance floor.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa. You okay?” Suddenly Fifi’s sister, Charlie, is right there, scooping me up and wrapping an arm around my shoulder as she and another girl usher me to the nearest seat.
“I’m okay,” I tell her. “I just got dizzy for a minute.”
“Probably the heat,” the other girl says. “When’s the last time you had anything to eat or drink?”
“The donut hole and cider at the bridge, I guess,” I answer. “Oh, and a pineapple gummy bear.”
“Yeah, you definitely need something. Watch her,” she says to Fifi’s sister as she fades into the crowd.
“I really am all right—”
“Don’t worry about it,” Charlie tells me, dropping into the chair across from me. “It’s wild in there. I guarantee you won’t be the last one tonight to get a little dizzy.”
“I just…” I trail off because I have no idea how to explain to this stranger that I just saw something impossible. Maybe the other girl’s right. I really do need some water.
“Your crown’s crooked.” She reaches over to straighten it. “Wait, you’re Ellie, right? Fifi’s roommate?”
“Penelope.”
“Oh.” She frowns. “I must have heard her wrong. Sorry.”
“You didn’t. Fifi’s decided Ellie is my new name, whether I agree or not.”
Charlie bursts out laughing. “Yeah, that sounds like the little tyrant. When she was a baby she couldn’t say my full name so she started calling me Charlie. Twelve years later, it’s the only thing anybody calls me.”
“What’s your real name?” I ask. “I can call you by it if you want?”
“Nah, don’t worry about it.” She stretches her legs out in front of her, drapes an arm over the back of her chair. “I’m used to Charlie now.”
I nod, because I’ve known the powerhouse that is Fifi for only a few hours and I’m half ready to give up on the name I’ve had my whole life. I can’t imagine what it’s like for one of her siblings.
Although Charlie’s about as different from Fifi as she can get. Oh, they look alike—same glowing brown eyes, same rich brown skin, same slightly crooked nose and long, elegant build. But that’s pretty much where the similarities end.
Unlike Fifi, Charlie wears her hair in short, tight blond curls.
Also unlike Fifi, who is all dressed up, Charlie is currently wearing loose olive-green cargo pants and a cropped black tank top.
She’s also got a ring through the side of her right nostril, a bar through her left eyebrow, and more ear piercings than I can count.
It’s not a look I would go for—my mother might have an actual stroke if I come home with a facial piercing—but it looks good on her. A little intimidating, definitely, but also really cool.
Her friend gets back before I can think of anything else to say, and she hands me a water bottle before dropping a giant plate of food on the table in front of me.
“There’s no way I can eat all that!” I tell her as I eye the mountains of grilled vegetables and pita bread.
“You don’t have to,” she answers, pulling three forks out of her pocket and handing one to each of us. “Turns out I’m starving too.”
I don’t normally share plates with strangers or, well, anybody. But it seems rude to do anything but dig in when she and Charlie have gone out of their way to be nice to Fifi’s pathetic little roommate.
I mean, really, what was I thinking? Just dropping down on the dance floor like that because I thought the floor moved? I’m lucky Charlie found me and not a bunch of kids who would have had a blast making fun of me.
Still, it seemed so real, which makes no sense.
I’m not saying a moving floor is impossible, not when the entire school spins around whenever it wants to.
But I am saying that no one else saw it.
So what’s got the better odds—that I was overheated and hallucinating or that the mosaic tiles actually moved?
I definitely know which one of those I’d be willing to bet on, and it isn’t the second one.
“Eat,” Charlie tells me, “before Leah here changes her mind and keeps it all for herself.”
She hands me a pita stuffed to the brim with chicken and vegetables and the most delicious-looking sauce I’ve ever seen.
So I do as she instructed, and the second I take the first bite, I realize they’re right. I am famished. Then again, I did spend most of the day hiking from one place to another. No wonder I’m hungry.
Two sandwiches later and I’m finally feeling normal again. No more dizziness and no more moving tiles. I glance at the dance floor just to be sure—and to prove to myself that there’s nothing weird going on with it. Sure enough, this time the tiles stay exactly where they belong.
Charlie and Leah are bantering back and forth about absolutely nothing as far as I can tell. But I don’t want to interrupt, so I wait for them both to take a bite of their own food before I say, “Thanks for helping me. It was really nice of you.”
Leah shoots me a weird look, her turquoise eyes glinting with the reflection of the fairy lights all around us. “You’re an Aphrodite now, Ellie. Taking care of each other is what we do.”
I don’t know what to say to that, not when I’ve spent nearly every minute since becoming an Aphrodite trying to get out of being one. So I just nod and take a long sip of my water to avoid having to say anything.
We pass the next couple of minutes in silence, with Charlie and Leah watching everyone on the dance floor and me trying to find Levi. But sometime in the last fifteen minutes, the line for flower crowns has disappeared, and he’s nowhere to be seen.
Terrific. That’s what I get for relaxing and just having fun for a few minutes—I totally miss the opportunity I’ve been waiting for since I got on this roof. That’s why Athena girls are always supposed to be vigilant.
When you’re not, opportunities get missed, mistakes get made, and you end up sitting in the middle of a dance floor seeing things that never happened.
Just the thought has me stumbling to my feet. “I’ve got to go,” I tell them, shouting to be heard over the music.
But before I can do more than take a couple steps back from the table, Levi—hands full of unlit sparklers—flings himself into the seat I just vacated and says, “Hide me!”