“You have to chew bacon, Lennie,” her dad said sarcastically. “It doesn’t just dissolve in your mouth.”
“Is that how it works?” Realizing she had been sitting there stock-still, she forced herself to act normal and crack a joke. “Now he tells me.”
While her dad chuckled, she wrenched her thoughts away from Lucas and considered all the homework she hadn’t done. She hadn’t even finished reading the Odyssey yet, not because she didn’t want to read it, but because she hadn’t had time.
It seemed like everything on Helen’s to-do list needed to be done yesterday. On top of that, her favorite teacher, Hergie, kept trying to pressure her into joining the AP classes. Like she needed to expand her reading list.
Claire cruised up the driveway in the new hybrid car her parents had bought her and yelled, “Honk-honk!” out the window rather than actually honking the horn. As Jerry tried, and failed, not to hover, Helen stuffed the remaining pancake down her throat, nearly choked, and ran out the door with her shoelaces still untied.
She hurried down the steps, taking a glance back at the widow’s walk on her roof, but she knew it would be empty.
Lucas had made it painfully clear to Helen that he would not sit on her widow’s walk again. She didn’t know why she bothered to look up there, except that she couldn’t seem to stop herself.
“Button your coat, it’s cold out,” Claire admonished as soon as Helen got in the car. “Lennie? You’re a frigging mess,” she continued as she put the car in gear.
“Ah . . . good morning?” Helen said with wide eyes. Claire had been Helen’s best friend since birth, and was therefore entitled to yell at Helen whenever she felt like it. But did she have to start so early? Helen opened her mouth to explain, but Claire would not be deterred.
“Your clothes are falling off your body, your nails are bitten down to nothing, and your lips are chapped,” Claire ranted, plowing right through Helen’s weak protests as she tore out of the driveway. “And the bags under your eyes are so god-awful it looks like someone punched you in the face! Are you even attempting to take care of yourself?”
“Yes, I’m trying,” Helen sputtered, still trying to button up the front of her coat, which had suddenly become harder to figure out than Chinese algebra. She gave up on the buttons and faced Claire, throwing up her hands in frustration. “I’m eating up here, but there’s no food in the Underworld and I can’t seem to stuff enough down when I’m in the real world to compensate. Trust me, I’m trying. My dad just fed me enough breakfast to choke a linebacker.”
“Well, you could at least put on some blush or something. You’re white as a sheet.”
“I know I look awful. But I’ve got other things on my mind. This whole descending thing isn’t exactly easy, you know.”
“Then don’t descend every night!” Claire exclaimed like it was obvious. “Take a break when you need it! Obviously, you’re not going to solve this in a few weeks!”
“You think I should treat the Furies like a part-time job?” Helen yelled back, finally finding her voice.
“Yes!” Claire shouted back, and since she was naturally better at shouting than just about anybody, Helen shrank back into her seat, cowed by her itty-bitty friend. “Three weeks I’ve put up with this and I’ve had enough! You’re never going to find the Furies if you’re so tired you can’t even see your own big, stupid feet!”
After a slight pause, Helen burst out laughing. Claire tried to keep a straight face, but eventually she gave up and laughed her amazing laugh as they pulled into the parking lot at school.
“No one would think any less of you if you decided to limit your trips down there to once or twice a week, you know,” Claire said gently as they got out of the car and started toward the front door of the school. “I can’t believe you can force yourself to go down there at all. I don’t think I could do it.” Claire shuddered, remembering her own recent brush with death when Matt hit Lucas with his car. Claire had almost died in the accident, and her soul had traveled down to the dry lands—the outskirts of the Underworld. The memories of that place still frightened her, weeks later.
“You would if you had to, Gig. But it doesn’t work like that, anyway. It’s not something I decide to do.” Helen threw an arm over Claire’s shoulders to pull her out of her disturbing recollections of the thirst and loneliness of the dry lands. “I just go to sleep and end up there. I don’t know how to control it yet.”
“Why doesn’t Cassandra know? She’s so smart and she’s been doing a lot of research,” Claire said archly. Helen shook her head, wondering if she really wanted to get in the middle of the feud between Claire and Cassandra.
“Don’t blame Cassandra,” she said carefully. “There isn’t exactly a manual for descending. At least Cassandra and I haven’t found one in that pile of ancient Greek and Latin the Delos family calls archives. She’s doing her best.”
“Then that settles it,” Claire said, crossing her arms and narrowing her eyes with conviction.
“Settles what?” Helen asked in a worried tone as she turned the dial on her locker.
“You and Cassandra can’t do this alone. You need help. Whether Cassandra wants me to or not, I’m helping.” Claire shrugged as if the matter was settled, which it most certainly was not.
Cassandra insisted the archives were for Oracles and the priestesses and priests of Apollo only, despite the fact that there hadn’t been any real priests or priestesses of Apollo in about three and a half thousand years. Matt, Claire, Jason, and Ariadne had offered to help Cassandra a bunch of times, but she wouldn’t accept because that would go against tradition, and for a Scion, going against tradition was nothing to sneeze at.
The Fates had a thing against Scions in general, but Scions who broke tradition usually found themselves on the Fates' extra-special hate list. Plus, most of those archives were hexed against the uninitiated. The only reason Cassandra let Helen in the library at all was because no one could think of a hex that could harm her. Helen was protected by the cestus. In the real world she was impervious to practically everything. But Claire most certainly was not.
Helen followed her stubborn friend down the hallway, feeling her shoulders slump more with every step. She hated the thought of going against Cassandra, but when Claire set her mind to something there was no point in arguing with her. Helen just hoped that whatever Claire was planning didn’t get her permanently cursed with boils or lice or something equally horrid. Claire could get seriously hurt.
The bell rang just as Helen and Claire scooted into homeroom. Mr. Hergesheimer, or “Hergie” as he was called behind his back, gave them one of his most disapproving glares. It was almost like he could smell the trouble brewing inside Claire’s head. Hergie assigned both of them two words of the day for the next morning as preemptive punishment for whatever it was they were so obviously up to. From that moment on, Helen’s day got progressively worse.
Helen had never been the most attentive student, and now that she was spending her nights slogging through the Underworld, she had even less interest in school. She was scolded in every class, but at least one of her peers was doing even worse than she was.