Chapter 9
I wassix when Calliope was born, so I’ve seen her upset about a lot of different things.
I’ve never seen her upset like this.
She lets Daisy and I into her bedroom with tears running down her cheeks, then closes and locks the door behind us as if anyone in this house would barge in on her and demand answers.
“It’s this,” she says, her voice shaking, and thrusts her phone into my hand. “Look what they said.”
It’s some second-rate gossip website with comment threads and minimal photos—basically a water cooler for assholes. I scroll through the thread. Daisy leans over my shoulder to see.
I glance up at Calliope to show her that I’m taking this seriously, but…
“It says your family is rich.” I say this as generously and carefully as I can, because I don’t want to dismiss Calliope’s feelings. Rich is not the word these people have used to describe us, but that’s what they mean, at the end of the day. “And they’re being very rude, but…it’s true, isn’t it.”
“That’s not what they said.” Calliope snatches the phone out of my hand, scrolls angrily, and hands it back. “Look.”
These comments are about her. They’ve made up an unkind nickname for my baby sister—my blood boils at the sight of it—but these aren’t threats. They aren’t even specific.
“Calliope, I don’t—we can tell Dad, if you want, and he’ll?—”
“No! I’m not going to tell him anything! Swear you won’t tell him!”
“Okay, okay!” I hold both hands up. “I won’t tell him. But if you’re this upset, then maybe we should?—”
“They said I act like Marie Antoinette!” she practically wails. If my parents were inside the house, they’d be up the stairs in two seconds.
“You’re not Marie Antoinette,” Daisy answers soothingly. “And these people are horrible, worthless jerks, but this is not a French Revolution scenario.”
“I know it’s not the French Revolution!” Calliope whips a throw blanket off her bed and wipes her face with furious despair. “It’s not—I’m not upset because of, like, the guillotine implications. I’m upset because of the—the—Versailles implications! We don’t live at Versailles! These are just houses!”
I remain silent, because the reality of our lives is that our dad and his brothers live in a row of three luxurious mansions that have all been designed to protect Daisy and our Uncle Hades from harmful light exposure as much as humanly possible. None of this is cheap. To a lot of people, we do live at Versailles.
“It’s not—” Calliope continues, struggling to catch her breath. “I know we’re not royalty. We don’t live in palaces. But they’re saying—they’re saying I order people around.”
She looks at Daisy and me, her eyes wide, waiting for us to join in her fury.
“What the fuck,” Daisy says, a beat too late.
Calliope drops her head back in frustration, then picks it up again. “They say I order people around because I know they can’t refuse me.”
“Calliope…” I put her phone down on the nearest available surface and pull my sister into my arms. “These people don’t know you. They just want to say mean shit because it makes them feel better. We all know it isn’t true.”
She wraps her arms around my waist, trembling. “It just seemed…very specific.”
“Specificity is what drives ad revenue,” Daisy says in a comforting tone.
I give her a what the hell? look over my shoulder. She shrugs, mouths I was a dangerous witch, remember?, then draws a finger across her own throat to emphasize the point. Which is simultaneously cute and funny and sad, because Daisy is not about blood and death and assorted carnage no matter what some of her paintings might suggest. She is about old sitcoms and new period films and destinations that have cool places to visit at night. She’s about vacations on our family’s island and staying up late talking and, most of all, she’s about Hercules.
People think Daisy is into blood and death and carnage because she looks like her dad. On Daisy, a lot of Uncle Hades’s mannerisms—most of which grew out of the terrible childhood he and my dad and their siblings had, and most of which were, I have to think, originally attempts to protect himself—take on a subtler, more elegant form, and ironically strangers read them as more unpredictably threatening. The world is constantly doing a patriarchy on her, so of course rumors about her being a murderous witch would drive ad revenue.
Time to refocus with a deep breath. Calliope is a ball of tension in my arms, her chest still hitching with tears. I don’t like the assholes on social media, either. I think one of the screwed-up things about present-day society is that it frequently puts people in a position where the quickest way to financial security—usually temporary or illusory, nothing you can build a life on—is
“It hurts,” I tell Calliope. “It always does, even when they’re completely in the wrong. So we can be angry about it together, if you want, but we should also do something we want to do. To make ourselves feel better. Because those assholes can’t stop us.”
“Fuck the assholes!” Daisy shouts.
Calliope laughs against my chest. “Daisy! My parents could hear you.”
Daisy cups her hands around her mouth. “I have it on good authority,” she shouts. “That your parents have heard the word fuck before.”
Calliope lets out a strangled, laughing shriek.
“Do you want to talk about wedding plans?” Daisy asks. Calliope relaxes. “Should we order food and talk about the menu?”
“Shoes first,” Calliope says.
“Shoes first!” Daisy cries, and goes to retrieve her phone so she can order food. I offer moral support during the food-ordering process. Then Daisy and I sit on either side of Calliope, Daisy holding out her phone and scrolling through wedding-related photos.
“I like this one,” Daisy says through a mouthful of sushi, forty-five minutes later. “But you have the power to decide for yourself.”
“I’m going to be in the wedding, though.”
“And? I’m not a bridezilla. You look how you want to look. Fuck the assholes.”
Calliope laughs. “You’re saying you’re the asshole.”
I’m too full of sushi, so I climb up off the bed, stretch, and pace around Calliope’s room.
“I am kind of an asshole sometimes,” Daisy says. “I get it from my dad.”
“Your dad is a total sweetheart,” I interrupt, to be funny. Hades is a sweetheart of an uncle and a brother and a dad. Just not always how people expect.
“Of course he is.” Daisy laughs.
I end my pacing near Calliope’s window, which looks over the backyard. My dad is with Uncle Poseidon. At one time, I think they were throwing knives into a target, but now it looks like they’re either arguing about or reminiscing about the gala on the aircraft carrier. Hercules watches them like a referee, balancing an empty bowl in his hand.
Uncle Hades is lying on a blanket in the grass, one arm over his eyes and his other arm resting on Conor’s back. Aunt Persephone sits between Hades and the edge of the blanket. A small garden has sprung up in the grass. She keeps her hand on Hades’s knee and spirals her index finger over the ground like she’s stirring something invisible.
Another flower shoots up out of the earth and blooms into vivid purple.
It’s weird.
Not the growing of the flowers. That’s Aunt Persephone’s thing. And it’s not unheard of for Uncle Hades to spend time outside. It’s just that he isn’t the type to sunbathe. He’s not sunbathing, anyway. He’s fully clothed, and despite the fact that he’s supine on a blanket, he doesn’t seem to be relaxed.
“What’s going on with your dad, Daze?”
Daisy doesn’t look up from the tray of sushi balanced on Calliope’s bed. She’s holding her phone remarkably still so Calliope can keep looking at the photos. “What do you mean?”
“He’s been outside for a long time. And he doesn’t look happy about it.”
“Oh.” Daisy chooses a piece of sushi. “It’s the solar storm. You know.” She waves the sushi in a circle. “The magnetic storms. Caused by the solar flares.”
“People,” I announce in a sage tone, “cannot feel solar activity and magnetic storms. I’ve read that in several articles.”
Daisy scoff-laughs. “My dad would beg to differ. Also, he would be right. We’re very sensitive to solar activity.”
“The sun is always doing a sun, isn’t it? What a bastard.”
Calliope giggles.
“It’s doing a very special sun,” Daisy tells her, completely serious. “I’m sure you’ve seen the news coverage. We may be able to witness the brilliant colors of the Aurora Borealis at certain surprise times over the next week if we drive to someplace very dark. And if we’re very lucky.”
“But…” Calliope’s expression sobers. “I feel bad. If it’s giving you and your dad a headache.”
“It’s not giving me a headache. It’s more of a nag.” Daisy purses her lips. “It’s worse for my dad. He described it as tension like a motherfucker, if I recall correctly.”
“Oh, no!” Calliope says. “And I’ve been up here complaining about?—”
“Shh. He would be so sad if he thought he’d disrupted our bonding session.”
“But—”
“So sad!” Daisy repeats. “My mom has it handled.”
“Is she…” Down in the yard, my dad, Poseidon, and Hercules stroll over to the blanket. Poseidon sits near Hades’s feet. My dad hovers, looking over them. Hercules ambles, tossing his bowl up in the air and catching it. Toss. Catch. Toss. Catch. “Growing him a sympathy bouquet?”
“She’s repurposing his energy,” says Daisy.
“How?” Calliope asks.
“Magic,” Daisy answers, completely deadpan.
“It’s a mystery,” I say, when I’m done laughing. “Someone should look into the two of them.”
I mean it as a lighthearted joke, but midway through, I realize I mean it. And I realize how much of a joke it is, because nobody is going to research Uncle Hades and Aunt Persephone. They wouldn’t agree to be an experiment. I wouldn’t agree to be an experiment.
Unless, in being an experiment, I could figure out what’s going on with Apollo. The solution can’t be anything like Uncle Hades and Aunt Persephone, though. They’re in love and married, not desperately pining for each other and pretending to be engaged.
I say that only as an example. I am not desperately pining for Apollo. And he kissed me in full view of other people earlier and said we’re engaged like he meant it.
So it’s not all pretend.
The afternoon settlesinto a familiar pattern. Castor and Pollux emerge from Poseidon’s house and become nuisances in the backyard. Poseidon chases both of them around until they’re all in serious danger of jumping into the pool. My dad laughs at the side. Uncle Hades rolls over onto his stomach and drops his face into his arms. Aunt Persephone strokes his hair, her face caught between empathy and a smile. Uncle Hades is clearly complaining in a way that’s meant to make Aunt Persephone laugh, but she still feels for him, because all his complaints have a kernel of truth.
“Time for us to intervene,” I tell Daisy and Calliope. We go downstairs and instigate a discussion about what we should have for dinner. Cook must sense that there’s a conversation happening about food, because he emerges from the tidy guest house across the yard and comes scowling into the family room.
“Have I been fired? Is that it?” he grumbles. “Forgotten? Left to rot?”
“No!” Aunt Ashley rushes over to him and puts her arm through his. “We would never leave you to rot, Cookie.”
“If we left you to rot, we would leave you to rot at sea,” Poseidon calls.
“I quit,” Cook says.
“I formally re-hire you,” Ashley says. “I’m really hungry, so—” Her voice trails off as she walks him into the kitchen. Hercules kisses Daisy on the cheek, then goes after Ashley and Cook.
Castor and Pollux get sent out with huge trays of pigs in a blanket and veggies and dip and cheese and crackers less than fifteen minutes later.
Pollux whisks one in front of his dad and pulls it away at the last second. “Cook says you can’t have any,” he says with a fake sympathetic frown. “Because you were an?—”
Ashley sticks her head out of the dining room. “Pollux, don’t you dare call your father an asshole.”
Poseidon laughs out loud.
“Impertinent bastard,” Pollux finishes, his eyes wide. “I didn’t say that! He said that!”
“You’re fired,” Poseidon shouts in the direction of the kitchen.
Cook’s reply sounds something like an affectionate fuck off.
Apollo’s the last one to come inside, and every single person in the family room watches him cross the room and take a seat next to me on the sofa.
At first, I think he’s going to pretend he hasn’t noticed, but then he takes my hand in his and slowly, conspicuously, threads our fingers together and settles our joined hands on his thigh.
“Staring is rude,” he stage-whispers.
Daisy widens her eyes. Castor stares harder.
“Sorry,” Poseidon says, obviously not sorry at all.
Hercules comes out of the dining room with a carrot stick in his hand. He bites through it with a crisp chomp.
“What are we looking at?” He follows everyone’s gaze to me and Apollo, then narrows his eyes. “What did you guys do now? Get married?”
“Not yet,” Apollo answers, and that sets off another round of laughter.
The sunset isan orange-pink blur when I go in search of Apollo. He didn’t say much at dinner. He stepped out of the family room a few minutes ago. Today’s test run of being apart went well. I didn’t have any fevers, and he didn’t text me about any, so I’m assuming we made it through the day without any mystery episodes.
I should be comforted by that, but it feels like a purposeful lull. The calm before the storm. I don’t trust the quiet.
It’s a fairly short search. The kitchen window reveals Apollo outside by the pool, looking down into the water with his hands in his pockets and the sleeves of his shirt rolled up to his elbows.
He seems deep in thought.
He seems, actually, like a still place in the middle of a whirl of motion. A pillar, or a statue. A monument that’s so well-built that it still seems new, even after centuries. New, but with a world-weary perspective. Most times, the way he describes his childhood to a new acquaintance is like a fairy tale. There were the Dark Times, which he glosses over in favor of the more exciting escape and the new life on the other side of the garden wall. But that’s the trick of fairy tales, isn’t it? They make grand gestures at the forest and the flowers and the well and keep your head turned away from the shadows you aren’t supposed to see.
Apollo looks like he’s seen too many shadows.
Watching him like this brings on a sensation that’s both familiar and strange. It’s like…feeling the world turning under my feet. Or suddenly becoming aware of the rush of blood in my veins. There’s a pull, and it’s not the same as the pull I feel to Apollo.
He lifts his head and meets my eyes. Apollo must’ve felt me watching.
It’s like he can see inside my head, too, because he lifts an imaginary bow in his hands, draws back the imaginary string, and fires an imaginary arrow at me.
I pretend to follow its trajectory down below the window, following it with my head as it imaginarily bounces off the wall and clatters to the pool deck.
Then I raise my own imaginary bow and fire an imaginary arrow back at him.
His hand shoots up. Apollo catches the imaginary arrow out of the air before it can touch him. His eyes stay on mine the whole time.