Chapter 38 That Ponytail Has Sailed
TURN IT OFF!” PT YELPS, jumping backward.
“I can’t!” I yell back, holding the lighter up so he can see my fingers are nowhere near the buttons. “I’m not pressing anything!”
The more I move it, the bigger the flame gets, until it looks like I’m holding a full-blown torch instead of a lighter. At first, the fire just shoots outward and upward, but then it starts creeping down the base of the lighter toward my hand.
I try to hold on as long as I can—the last thing I want to do is set the entire amphitheater on fire if we can’t get it to turn off—but as the flame licks against my fingers, I freak out and drop the lighter on the ground next to the cauldron.
PT and I both jump back, expecting the worst. But the second the lighter hits the ground, the flame goes out. Just disappears like it never was. Even the smoke vanishes.
For several long seconds, we both just stand there, flabbergasted. Until PT slowly, carefully bends down and picks up the malfunctioning lighter. In some weird twist of I don’t know what, it stays dormant in his hand. Not even a stray spark comes out.
“Well, that’s not something you see every day,” he finally says.
“You know what? I’m okay with never seeing that again,” I shoot back, making sure to keep my distance from whatever is going on with that thing. “I’m beginning to think you and Anaximander’s are going to have to give up on getting that cauldron working again. It doesn’t appear to want to be lit.”
“I’m not so sure about that.” PT glances from the lighter to the cauldron before leveling a totally inscrutable look my way. “You’re going to have to stop blaming me for the bridge.”
It’s the last thing I expect him to say considering what just happened. “One little lighter accident and you think we’re even?”
“One little lighter accident and I’m suddenly seeing a pattern,” he answers as he starts gathering up his tools and dropping them in his toolbox.
“I’m beginning to think there’s a reason things happen to you that don’t happen to anyone else.
Things that have nothing to do with me or that one misshapen donut hole and everything to do with you. ”
He closes his toolbox with a snap that has my heart jumping in my chest. Then again, that could be from my close brush with disaster of the oh-so-flammable kind.
Or, a tiny voice inside me whispers, it could be because of his words.
Words that are ringing true, even though I really, really don’t want them to.
“It’s probably just a coincidence,” I tell PT, not sure who I’m trying to convince—him or me.
He studies me again, the bun on the top of his head quivering in the wind, just like it did that morning at his farm stand. “I hope it is,” he finally says. “For all our sakes.”
“What does that mean?” I ask.
But he’s already walking away, whistling that popular song about playing with fire as he goes.
Which is a little bit strange considering what just happened, but who am I to judge?
Especially if he’s right and I’ve somehow been the cause of all the bad things that have been happening to me since I got here.
The thought makes me sad, but I don’t have time to stand around worrying and wallowing. Not when I have to talk all of Aphrodite Hall into helping me win the Pandora’s box contest.
But telling myself that doesn’t keep me from worrying about it as I make my way around the corner past the science building, which is next to the library today.
Every time I see Paris, it feels like he’s looking at me like there’s something really different—or wrong—about me.
He hasn’t said anything, but I can see it in eyes.
At first I thought it was just about me being stuck in Aphrodite instead of Athena. But now I’m not so sure.
My stomach clenches sickly as I make another left. As I do, I walk past a bunch of willow trees before getting to a building I’ve never seen before. It’s so tall and imposing and in your face that even in the middle of this new freak-out I’m having, I have to stop and stare.
It’s tall—taller than any building on campus except for Zeus Hall—and it’s narrow, kind of like a skyscraper. Except it’s only about twenty stories high and not a hundred like so many of the big city buildings.
It’s also made of pure white marble with gold veins running through it. In fact, the entire building is gold and white—including the huge, imposing gold double doors right in the front. Even the high fence around it looks to be made of gold.
I’ve never seen a more beautiful or intimidating building in my life. Which makes me wonder what it’s for—and why it has yet to appear on any map on my bedroom ceiling. Someplace like this has to be important, doesn’t it?
Except, as I take several steps closer, I realize that it isn’t important at all—at least not anymore. In fact, it doesn’t look like anyone has set foot in this place for a long, long time.
What looks like it was once a perfectly manicured garden between the fence and the building is now completely overrun with weeds and plants gone wild.
The gorgeous white-and-gold marble is actually gray from lack of care, and even the gold doors are coated with what looks like several seasons of dust and grime.
It doesn’t make sense. Why spend all the time and money building something like this only to let it all go to waste? Why not use it for something amazing?
Turn it into a library filled with hard-to-find texts.
Make it a dorm for parents to stay in when they come for parents’ weekends.
Or maybe just make it a work project and have students through the years use their gifts to help restore it to its former glory. Anything would be better than just leaving it here to fall apart.
As I get right up to the fence, a gust of wind rolls through and blows the elaborately swirled gate open just a crack.
Act of nature or not, if Fifi was here I know she’d consider it an invitation.
But I’m a little more cautious. No matter how much I want to look inside, the last thing I can afford right now is to get into trouble for trespassing somewhere I don’t belong.
Especially when my mother is already so unhappy with me.
But even knowing I don’t belong here—even knowing I might get in trouble—I’m still tempted to walk through the gate. There’s just something about this place that calls to me in a way I’ve never felt before.
I just wish I knew what it was.
I take a couple more steps forward, trying to get a better view through the open gate. But before I can see anything other than tangles of weeds and wild lilies, my phone buzzes with a message.
Fifi: Where are you? Class ended forever ago and the meeting starts in fifteen minutes!
Fifi: Get here so we can pick out our snacks or I’m going to the candy room without you
Me: OMW
Me: What candy room?
Fifi: OMGs!!!! You don’t know about the candy room?
I start to answer with an “obviously not,” but in the last week I’ve come to learn that won’t help me get an answer. Fifi is both an exuberant and totally inefficient texter, and the only way to actually get information out of her is to cut through all her effervescence in person.
I use my phone to snap a couple of quick pics before giving the building one last curious look.
As I walk away, I promise myself that I’m going to try to find it again—and next time I’ll even bring Fifi and Arjun along when I come.
But for now, I have a meeting to attend and, apparently, a candy room to ransack.
Determined not to be late, I make the rest of the trek back to Aphrodite Hall in record time.
And though I’d hoped to go to my room to change and maybe even braid my hair before the meeting—my mother reminded me when we FaceTimed this morning that Athena girls always look neat and presentable—Fifi meets me at the front door, her big brown eyes gleaming with excitement.
“She’s here!” she shouts over her shoulder as she grabs my hand and starts tugging me down a long, winding hallway while Arjun follows along behind us. “Finally!”
“I’ve still got eight minutes before the meeting,” I tell her as she pulls me through the lobby to the elevator. But instead of pushing the button for our floor, she hits the LL button so we go down. “Wait a minute, where are we going? I want to redo my hair—”
“Your hair looks great,” she answers. “Doesn’t it, Arjun?”
My eyes meet Arjun’s sympathetic ones as he comes up behind me. “I think it looks great messy,” he tells me.
“Messy!” My hand goes to what was once upon a time—i.e., this morning—a very neat, slicked-back ponytail. And I realize that ship has definitely sailed. Somehow during the course of the day, my (very) unruly hair has managed to bust out of its restraints and is now half up and half down.
No wonder PT kept looking at me so strangely.
“I can’t go to the meeting like this!” I try to dig in my heels, but we’re walking on tile, so that doesn’t work. Also, Fifi keeps dragging me along like she doesn’t even notice my resistance.
To be fair, maybe she doesn’t. In the week I’ve known her, I’ve learned that Fifi is a force of nature. A benevolent one that gives instead of destroys, but still a force that will disrupt your plans and your life whenever she whirls by.
Because that’s also the best part of her, I give up on trying to stay my own course and just follow along. I do tug my wrist free from her grasp, though, and try my best to smooth my hair into another, better ponytail as we wind our way down two more halls.
But when we make our way down a fourth hallway—this place really can be confusing if you aren’t paying attention—I notice something move out of the corner of my eye. I turn toward it just in time to see a bunch of the tiles slide around on the wall.
“Did you see that?” I ask, stopping dead in the middle of the hallway.
“See what?” Arjun asks, looking baffled as he tries to figure out what I’m staring at.
“The tiles—” I start, but break off because they aren’t moving at all now. They’re just staying where they belong, making up another abstract mosaic—this one filled with lots of reds and oranges and yellows.
“I don’t know. I thought I saw…” I trail off, not sure what to say.
“You’re probably hallucinating from low blood sugar,” Fifi tells me as we start walking again. “And I know exactly what will fix that. The can—”
“There!” I stop in my tracks because several tiles just shifted again. “Tell me you saw that!”
But Arjun and Fifi both look baffled. “What are we supposed to be looking at?” my roommate asks.
Arjun steps closer to the wall. “What do you see, Ellie?”
“You really don’t see it?” I move closer too, so I can trace my fingers over a couple of the small, colored tiles. “The mosaic keeps moving.”
“Moving how?” Arjun asks, stepping closer as well. He sounds more curious than doubtful, which I appreciate, considering how strange I must sound.
“I don’t know. I usually catch it out of the corner of my eye, and then when I turn to look, everything just looks normal.”
“That’s so cool!” Fifi says as she narrows her eyes at the abstract mosaic we’re all standing in front of. “Do they spell out words or make a pattern?”
“I can’t tell because it happens so fast. And right now they just look normal, but…” I shrug. “It’s happened a few times now, so I can’t believe I’m imagining it.”
“Of course you’re not imagining it!” Fifi slings a supportive arm around my shoulders. “Maybe Aphrodite is trying to tell you something. Wouldn’t that be cool?”
“Beyond cool,” Arjun agrees as he, too, studies the mosaic, waiting for something to move.
Surprise, surprise, nothing does. Maybe I’m imagining things after all.
“We should get going,” I finally say. “We’re just wasting time.”
Arjun and Fifi exchange a look I don’t even try to decipher as we start walking again. “What?” I ask.
Fifi sighs. “You know, Ellie, just because something doesn’t work out the way you think it should doesn’t mean it’s a waste of time.”
“I know that—”
“Do you?” Arjun asks softly. “Because sometimes the gods work in weird ways. And sometimes it’s the journey they’re using to teach you something—not the destination. But you’re always so focused on getting where you want to be that sometimes you…” He trails off awkwardly.
“Forget to stop and look at the tiles?” I fill in for him with a laugh.
“Exactly!” Fifi says, bumping her shoulder against mine in a friendly way. “Think of how many cool things you miss if you never stop to look.”
I don’t know what to say to that. I mean, who besides Aphrodites has time to just stand around looking at stuff all day? You have to have a destination in mind or nothing ever gets accomplished. I mean, sure, it’s fun to hang out. But fun only gets you so far.
I don’t say that, though. Partly because I don’t want to hurt their feelings and partly because I know they won’t agree. So I just nod as I start walking again.
They fall into step beside me, but they don’t say anything else either. None of us do.
But as we turn one more corner, I catch another glimpse of something out of the corner of my eye. And this time when I turn to look at it, I see more than just a couple of moving tiles. I see the reds and oranges and yellows combine into a tiny little fire right in the center of the wall.