So it was: I learned I would be queen via a rumor. It occurred to me that the gossipwitches might have spoken the truth.
Had true love entered into the story, I would gladly have exchanged my mountain life for it. Or, had I ever dreamed of power, perhaps I could have overlooked the absence of love. I had lavish chambers in the palace, where my every wish was granted. King Atlas was handsome—distant but not unkind. But when he became king, he spoke to me less, and the possibility of ever loving him began to flicker like a mirage.
The wedding date was set. Atlas still had not proposed to me. I was confined to my chambers, a splendid prison whose iron bars were velvet-covered. Alone in my dressing room one dusk, I put on my wedding gown and the lustrous orichalcum crown I would wear when I was presented to the kingdom. Twin tears welled in my eyes.
“Tears suit you even less than a vulgar crown,” a voice said from behind me.
I turned to find a figure sitting in shadows. “I thought no one could enter.”
“You’ll grow accustomed to being wrong,” the shadowed figure said. “Do you love him?”
“Who are you?” I demanded. “Step into the light, where I can see you.”
The figure rose from the chair. Candlelight caressed his features. He looked familiar, as if he were a fragment of a dream.
“Do you love him?” he repeated.
It was as if someone had stolen the breath from my lungs. The stranger’s eyes entranced me. They were the color of the cove where I swam in the morning as a girl. I could not help wanting to dive in.
“Love?” I whispered.
“Yes. Love. That which makes a life worth living. That which arrives to carry us where we need to go.”
I shook my head, though I knew it was treason to the king, punishable by death. I began to regret everything. The boy before me smiled.
“Then there’s hope.”
Once I had crossed the blue boundary of his eyes, I never wanted to find my way back. But I soon realized I was trespassing in a dangerous realm.
“You are Prince Leander,” I whispered, placing his fine features.
He nodded stiffly. “Back from five years’ traveling in the name of the Crown—though my own brother would have had the kingdom think that I was lost at sea.” He smiled a smile I was sure I’d seen before. “Then you, Selene, had to go and discover me.”
“Welcome home.”
He stepped from the shadows, pulled me to him, and kissed me with matchless abandon. Until that moment, I had not known bliss. I would have stayed locked in his kiss forever, but a memory returned to me. I pulled away, remembering a piece of the gossipwitches’ timeworn chatter.
“I thought you loved—”
“I never loved until I found you.” He spoke sincerely from a soul I knew I could never doubt. From that moment into infinity, nothing would matter to us but each other.
Only one thing stood between us and a universe of love …
SWAK
Madame B, Gilda, and Brunhilda
19
STORM CLOUDS
On Friday morning, before the bell, Brooks was waiting at Eureka’s locker. “You weren’t at Latin Club.”
His hands were stuffed in his pockets and he looked like he’d been waiting there awhile. He was blocking the locker next to Eureka’s, which belonged to Sarah Picou, a girl so terribly shy she’d never tell Brooks to move even if it meant going to class without her books.
Rhoda had insisted it would rain, and though the drive to school had been clear and bright, Eureka had her heather-gray slicker on. She liked hiding under its hood. She’d hardly slept and didn’t want to be at school. She didn’t want to talk to anyone.
“Eureka”—Brooks watched her twirl the dial on her combination lock—“I was worried.”
“I’m fine,” she said. “And late.”
Brooks’s green sweater was too snug. He wore shiny new loafers. The hallway was choked with shouting kids, and the seed of a headache was splitting open and sprouting a razor-wire beanstalk in Eureka’s brain.
Five minutes separated them from the bell, and her English class was two flights up and at the other end of the building. She opened her locker and threw in some binders. Brooks hovered over her like a hall monitor from an eighties teen movie.
“Claire was sick last night,” she said, “and William threw up this morning. Rhoda was gone, so I had to …” She waved her hand, as if he should understand the scope of her responsibilities without being told.
The twins were not sick. Eureka was the one who’d had a cramp across her entire being, the kind she used to get before cross-country meets when she was a freshman. She couldn’t stop reliving the encounter with Ander and his truck, the four pedestrians from hell glowing in the darkness—and the mysterious green light Ander had turned on them like a weapon. She’d picked up her phone three times the night before to call Cat. She’d wanted to set the story free, to unburden herself.
But she couldn’t tell anyone. After she drove home, Eureka had spent ten minutes pulling sugarcane from Magda’s grille. Then she ran up to her room, shouting down to Rhoda that she was too swamped with homework to eat. “Swamped in the swamp” was a joke she had with Brooks, but nothing seemed funny anymore. She’d stared out the window, imagining every headlight was a pale psychopath searching for her.
When she heard Rhoda’s footsteps on the stairs, Eureka had grabbed her Earth Science book and opened it just in time before Rhoda carried in a plate of flank steak and mashed potatoes.
“You’d better not be messing around in here,” Rhoda said. “You’re still on thin ice after that Dr. Landry stunt.”
Eureka flashed her textbook. “It’s called homework. They say it’s highly addictive, but I think I can handle it if I only try it at parties.”
She hadn’t been able to eat. At midnight she’d surprised Squat with the kind of meal a dog on death row might request. At two, she heard Dad come home. She got as far as her door before she stopped herself from rushing into his arms. There was nothing he could do about her troubles, and he didn’t need another weight to drag him down. That was when she checked her email and found the second translation from Madame Blavatsky.
This time, when Eureka read from The Book of Love, she forgot to wonder how its story might apply to Diana. She found too much strange symmetry between Selene’s predicament and her own. She knew what it was like to have a boy burst into your life out of nowhere, leaving you haunted and wanting more. The two boys even had similar names. But unlike the boy in the story, the boy on Eureka’s mind didn’t sweep her off her feet and kiss her. He slammed into her car, followed her around, and said she was in danger.
As sun rays tentatively fingered her window that morning, Eureka had realized that the only person she could turn to about all of her questions was Ander. And it wasn’t up to her when she saw him.
Brooks leaned casually into Eureka’s locker. “Did it freak you out?”
“What?”
“The twins’ being sick.”
Eureka stared at him. His eyes wouldn’t hold hers for more than a moment. They’d made up—but had they really? It was like they’d slipped into an eternal war, one you could retreat from but never actually end, a war where you did your best not to see the whites of your opponent’s eyes. It was like they’d become strangers.
Eureka ducked behind her locker door, separating herself from Brooks. Why were lockers always gray? Wasn’t school already enough like a prison without the trimmings?
Brooks pushed the locker door flush against Sarah Picou’s locker. There was no barrier between them. “I know you saw Ander.”
“And now you’re mad that I possess eyesight?”
“This isn’t funny.”
Eureka was amazed he hadn’t chuckled. They couldn’t even joke now?
“You know, if you miss two more Latin Club meetings,” Brooks said, “they won’t put your name in the yearbook on the club page, and then you won’t be able to put it on your college applications.”
Eureka shook her head as if she’d misheard him. “Uhhh … what?”
“Sorry.” He sighed, and his face relaxed, and for a moment nothing was weird. “Who cares about Latin Club, right?” Then a glimmer came into his eye, a smugness that was new. He unzipped his backpack and pulled out a Ziploc bag of cookies. “My mom is on a mad baking spree recently. Want one?” He opened the bag and held it out to her. The smell of oatmeal and butter made her stomach turn. She wondered what had kept Aileen up baking the night before.
“I’m not hungry.” Eureka glanced at her watch. Four minutes until the bell. When she reached into her locker for her English book, an orange flyer fluttered to the ground. Someone must have slipped it through the slats.
SHOW YOUR FACE.
TREJEAN’S FIFTH ANNUAL MAZE DAZE.
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 11, AT 7 P.M.
DRESS TO SCARE THE CROWS.
Brad Trejean had been the most popular senior at Evangeline the year before. He was loud and wild, redheaded, flirtatious. Most girls, including Eureka, had crushed on him at some point. It was like a job they worked in shifts, though Eureka had quit the first time Brad, who knew about LSU football and nothing else, actually spoke to her.
Every October, Brad’s parents went to California and he threw the best party of the year. His friends constructed a maze out of haystacks and spray-painted poster board and set it up in the Trejeans’ sprawling backyard on the bayou. People swam and, as the party went on, skinny-dipped. Brad mixed his signature drink, the Trejean Colada, which was horrible and strong enough to guarantee an epic party. Late in the night, there was always a seniors-only game of Never-Ever, exaggerated details of which were slowly leaked to the rest of the school.
Eureka realized Brad’s younger sister Laura was carrying on the tradition. She was a sophomore, less notorious than Brad. But she was nice and not a label-whore, unlike most of the other sophomores. She started on the volleyball team, so she and Eureka used to see each other in the locker room after school.
For the past three years, Eureka had heard about this party on Facebook a month in advance. She and Cat would go shopping for their outfits the weekend before. She hadn’t logged in to Facebook in forever, and now that she thought about it, she remembered a text from Cat that proposed shopping last Sunday after church. Eureka had been too preoccupied with her fight with Brooks to consider fashion.
She held up the flyer and tried a smile. Last year she and Brooks had had one of their most fun nights at that party. He’d brought black sheets from home, and they’d turned invisible to haunt what was known as the Maze. They’d terrified some seniors in some compromising positions.
“I’m the ghost of your father’s eyesight,” Brooks had warbled heavily to a girl in a half-unbuttoned blouse. “Tomorrow you’re off to the convent.”
“Not cool!” her companion had shouted, but he’d sounded scared. It was a miracle no one ever figured out who was behind the Maze haunting.