Chapter 39 In It for the Long Hall
I STOP WALKING AS SOON as I see it, and so do my friends.
“What?” Arjun asks. “Did you find something?”
But I’m too busy thinking about what PT told me right before I crossed the bridge to respond.
The answer is fire.
At the time, I was so busy worrying about being late that I didn’t pay much attention to it.
And I haven’t exactly had the time to think about it since.
But after what happened in the amphitheater a little while ago and now this, I can’t help but wonder not only what it means, but how important it is to what’s going on in my life here.
Maybe it’s nothing; maybe PT is hung up on fire because it’s his job to get the cauldron lit again.
Or maybe it’s more than that. Maybe, if I can find the answer, it will help me finally figure out why I wasn’t chosen for Athena Hall—and how I can fix that.
“Ellie?” Fifi asks, looking concerned. “Are you all right?”
“I don’t know. I thought I saw a fire in the tiles.”
“A fire?” Fifi’s eyes go wide. “Do you think it’s a clue to the scavenger hunt? Prometheus gave us fire, and that’s why he was punished with Pandora. Maybe the fire marks where we can find one of the scavenger hunt items.”
It’s a good idea, one that comes at the perfect time. What better way to hype up a room full of Aphrodites than to prove to them the items are easy to find?
I move back around the corner to the mosaic, but that tiny little flame is long gone. That doesn’t mean anything, though. Maybe it’s behind the tiles where the flame was?
I step closer to the mural, run my fingers over the cool tiles, but there’s nothing there—no crack in the grout or tiles, nothing loose or broken. Just the same tile mosaic everyone else can see.
Still, I’m not quite ready to give up. The mural is huge, and I’ve only checked one small part of it.
It only takes a few seconds before Arjun and Fifi figure out what I’m doing and join in. And then all three of us are pressed up against the mural—Fifi duck-walking across the bottom while Arjun gives me a boost so I can check the top of the wall.
But there’s still nothing.
In fact, I’m just about to call it quits when I hear something.
It’s not noisy—or even loud enough to be recognizable—but it’s definitely there. In fact, now that I’ve noticed it, I can’t unhear it. And I certainly can’t ignore it.
“Hey, can you let me down?” I ask Arjun, who immediately complies.
“What’s wrong?” he asks, eyes narrowed as he studies the mosaic like he’s trying to figure out what has caught my attention.
“You don’t hear that?”
Fifi pops up, eyes wide. “Don’t hear what?”
“I don’t know. There’s a noise.” I press my ear to the wall, hoping to figure out what it is. But all that does is muffle the sound, so I pull back.
“Is it something electronic?” Fifi suggests, looking between me and the mural. “Maybe the air conditioning is behind there or something.”
“I don’t think AC works that way. Besides, this sounds more like…” I pause for a second, trying to figure out how to describe it. “Music,” I finally decide. “It sounds like some kind of chant, but without words.”
“I wonder if it’s some kind of Aphrodite thing,” Arjun says as we start walking again. “Maybe the mosaics always make that noise, but we don’t hear it because we’re just walking by.”
“Maybe,” I agree, because it’s true that I’ve never been that close to the tiled walls before.
Except my first night here when I was crouching down on the dance floor.
But music was playing then—loud music—and there’s no way I could have heard anything.
“That doesn’t explain why I was the only one who could hear it now, though. ”
“Yeah, there’s that,” he sighs.
“Maybe you should just start listening whenever you pass one, Ellie,” Fifi suggests. “See if this is a onetime thing or if it happens all the time.”
“And if it happens all the time?” I ask, just the thought making my chest ache and my stomach churn. “What does that mean? And why can’t you guys hear it too?”
“I don’t know. Maybe it’s part of your gift—”
“Seeing tiles move?” I ask skeptically. “Hearing noises that aren’t there?”
“First of all, no one is saying the noises aren’t there. Just because we can’t hear them doesn’t mean something isn’t going on,” she tells me firmly. “I didn’t say it was your whole gift. Remember, we get our gift in small increments every year—maybe this is the beginning of yours.”
“Yeah, but aren’t we supposed to get them at the end of the year?” Arjun asks skeptically. “We’re only a week in.”
Fifi lifts a brow. “Are you going to tell Aphrodite when it’s okay to give a gift and when it isn’t?”
“No, of course not,” he sputters.
“Well, then, I say we don’t freak out about this until we have to. Let’s just see what happens for a while, and if it doesn’t go away, we can ask Levi what he thinks.”
As we make one more turn into a hallway lined with gummy-bear wallpaper instead of tile mosaics, the sound finally goes away. Which is something I’m thankful for—the last thing I want is to have that noise in my head twenty-four seven.
But at the same time, it’s still really strange. I mean, if Fifi is right, what kind of gift has me hearing things like that? And what am I supposed to do with it?
It seems like ever since I got to Anaximander’s, all I have is questions without answers, and I’m sick of it. I know our curriculum is designed like that—to make us figure things out for ourselves. And I’m fine with it in class.
But I’m really sick of it in the rest of my life.
It would be nice—really nice—if, just once, things could happen the way I expect them to. The way I plan for them to.
I start to say as much to Fifi and Arjun, but before I can, we finally come to a pair of hot-pink double doors at the very end of the hallway.
“I think this is it!” Fifi exclaims as she throws the door open. “Welcome to the candy room!”