Only Everything (19 page)

A body. The limp, lifeless body of a man. Careening toward Earth.

I jumped up, but there was nothing I could do. Within seconds he had collided with the ground at my feet, yet aside from the fact that his eyes were closed, his figure limp, he looked none the worse for the fall. He was wearing the exact same clothing he’d worn the day he died those thousands of years ago. Silver breastplate, red cape, leather leggings, leather sandals. The only change was the small white scar where the gaping wound in his head had been.

“Orion,” I whispered.

I dropped to my knees. This wasn’t possible. I was a lower goddess. I was not supposed to have the power to do such things. I reached my hand out to touch his lifeless shoulder. The skin was warm. My eyes turned to the sky, and there were the stars of the Orion constellation, still bright in the winter sky. Still winking at me like they knew something I didn’t.

Suddenly the world awoke. The wind whipped my face. The traffic whizzed by. Somewhere, a screen door slammed. And I was kneeling in a parking lot next to a corpse.

I glanced desperately around. As a lower goddess, I had no means of returning to Mount Olympus on my own. My mother would summon me at midnight and I would appear in her chambers to give my report on my day. For now, I was not a goddess. I was a human being in a very real world with very real consequences for murder.

I had to hide the body. At least until Aphrodite summoned me.

I shoved my hands under his arm. His head lolled forward, and he groaned.

“Orion?”

I dropped his weight in surprise, and his skull bounced against the hard ground.

“Ow.” He winced and reached his arm back to touch his head.

“You’re alive?” I asked, sitting down next to him, so stunned I forgot how cold the blacktop would be.

“Of course I’m alive, you idiot,” he replied. “You made it so.”

“You saw me?” I asked.

Orion sat up. He rolled his head around on his neck and blinked a few times.

“I see everything,” he said. “For two thousand, nine hundred sixty-four years, I’ve seen everything.”

“Wow,” I said. “That’s a lot to process.”

He looked at me then, and our eyes met for the first time. I was astonished by the shade of blue. They were the exact color of the Aegean Sea at dusk.

“Hi,” he said with a small smile.

“Hello,” I replied, breathless.

A car engine revved. Headlights flashed. Brakes squealed. My hands flew up to cover my face as a car stopped mere feet away.

“What the hell are you kids doing sitting in the middle of a parking lot?” the driver shouted out the window.

I yanked Orion to his feet and we stumbled out of the way, under the boughs of an old elm tree.

“That was close,” I said under my breath.

“What do we do now?” Orion asked.

I looked down. His hand was clasped around mine. Suddenly I wondered who else was watching us. Aphrodite? Zeus? Artemis?

Dear gods, let her and her awful brother not be watching. They had tried countless times over the last two thousand years to do what I’d done with one quick meeting of my wrists. To say they would be enraged was an understatement. To wonder whether they’d exact revenge, an act of folly. The moment those two discovered that Orion was alive and well, they would come for him, and they’d slaughter anyone who stood in their way. Namely, me.

Suddenly I felt Artemis’s fingers digging into my neck, felt the life draining out of me. It had been the most terrifying moment of my existence. I couldn’t give her the motive to finally finish the job.

“We’ll find you someplace to stay. Someplace no one will find you,” I told Orion. “At least not until I figure out what the hell is going on.”

•  •  •

“Hey! Watch it!”

A couple of skateboarders parted around me on the sidewalk,
and I realized I’d been walking blindly for the past five minutes as I daydreamed. Luckily, I’d walked myself right to my destination, Goddess Cupcakes, where the windows gleamed, the tables were jammed with customers, and the bell at the door trilled merrily whenever someone entered or exited.

I took a step toward the door, and a handsome, bulky, raven-haired boy in jeans and a flannel shirt held it open for me on his way in.

“After you,” he said with a smile.

I grinned. The day was looking up.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

True

“Any questions?”

I smiled at Dominic Cerlone, the manager and head baker at Goddess Cupcakes, and the first human I had recognized in Lake Carmody. I had matched him with his current wife back when they were in high school in Brooklyn, New York, and they had been together ever since. There was nothing better to bolster my mood than to see my successful work in progress, and to know that high school sweethearts could still make it, especially considering where I was concentrating my efforts these days.

It was Thursday afternoon, my fourth day on Earth, and the day of my first shift as an employee of Goddess Cupcakes, where I had been hired after yesterday’s brief interview. Dominic had just given me the general tour of the shop, including its impressive kitchen, from which emanated the sweet scent of baking cupcakes, the large stockroom, the small bathroom and break room for employees, and the garbage Dumpster out back. He’d run through the twenty-two cupcake flavors the eatery currently offered, as well as the five specials of the day, and laid out his theories on coffee.

“We don’t do fancy,” he’d told me. “You want nonfat, half-caf, extra foam with room? Go to Starbucks.”

I did remember liking him back in the day.

Behind the counter, the register dinged and the till slid open with a bang. The pretty, bespectacled girl working there, Tasha, handed change to a large woman toting a bag full of cupcake boxes.

“Yes. When do I get paid?” I asked.

Dominic laughed heartily. “Every Friday,” he said. “Except you won’t get paid this Friday because you’ve only got one shift this week, so it’ll be rolled into next week’s pay. Okay?”

My heart sank. Darnell had been a tad irritated this morning when I’d told him I couldn’t pay him back yet, and I knew a week’s delay wasn’t going to please him. But what was I going to do? I couldn’t ignore him or I’d risk expulsion from the school, and if that happened, I’d never complete my mission. I had to earn money, and I was grateful to Dominic for giving me a chance, with no work experience whatsoever (other than the countless years of sparking love between unsuspecting humans, including himself). I knew better than to complain.

“That’s fine,” I told him, smoothing the front of my white apron. On it was printed the establishment’s logo—a pink-iced cupcake wearing a white toga-style dress instead of a cupcake wrapper, silver stars dotting the icing, and a gold halo hovering over its pink peak. It was more of an angel than a goddess, but I understood the appeal. “What should I do now?”

“You’re on bussing for the rest of the day.” He stepped behind the counter and came out with a pink rectangular bin. “Go around and remove empty plates and cups, clean up used napkins and whatnot. If someone still has food on their plate, make sure you ask if they’re done. Okay?”

“Okay. I’m on it,” I told him as he headed back to the kitchen. “Thank you!”

With a sigh, I turned toward the jam-packed dining area. In less than a week I’d gone from lounging on a cloud with Harmonia and our friends to cleaning up garbage. I would have to learn to keep my temper in check from now on, but even then, frustration burbled up inside me. I was stuck here for four hours. That was four hours away from my mission. Four more hours of sands slipping through the hourglass. Four hours closer to Orion’s doom.

Trying not to dwell on the many reasons to race from the building, I walked to the nearest table. Two girls in private school uniforms chatted over coffee and empty cupcake plates.

“So he totally broke up with her,” one girl said to the other, checking her cell phone for texts as I removed her dish. “I swear you two are getting back together.”

“You think?” the other girl asked hopefully. “Should I call him?”

“No. Absolutely not. Let him call you. You must play this cool.”

I dropped their plates into the bin and turned to the next table. A guy in a Lake Carmody High School jacket leaned back on two spindly legs of his chair, sipping soda through a straw casually, while the girl sitting across from him sniffled.

“But we’re still going to homecoming, right?” she asked tearfully.

He lifted one shoulder. “I dunno. Maybe. I gotta leave my options open.”

I scowled and grabbed his plate, which still had half a cupcake on it, dumping it upside down into the bin. Ass.

In the corner, a pack of girls chatted over coffee.

“You should ask him out!”

“No way! I couldn’t.”

“I swear. He’s too shy.”

“She’s right, Becks. He’ll never do it himself.”

I paused behind their table, a light, airy feeling filling my chest. Slowly I smiled. When I had walked into Goddess Cupcakes yesterday, practically begging for a job, I hadn’t realized what I was lucking into, but now I took a moment to really survey the place. Packs of kids from half a dozen different schools were crowded around every table. The private school girls in their maroon-and-gray uniforms. A handful of LCHS guys sporting their royal-blue-and-white jackets. In the corner, a pair of boys in green-and-yellow sweatshirts chatted up girls wearing red-and-black cheerleading uniforms. And there were dozens more with no discernable loyalties who could have been from anywhere.

Goddess Cupcakes was a matchmaker’s dream.

The bells above the door tinkled, and Darla traipsed inside with two of her friends trailing behind her—no sign of the awful Veronica. She was laughing until she saw me, and then her face fell.

“Oh,” she said, her purse dangling above her elbow. “Hi.”

“Hello.”

I watched her closely as she found an empty table near the window with her friends and they settled in, perusing the menu board behind the counter. A tiny inkling of a thought took root in the back of my mind, then slowly grew into a sapling. Yesterday at lunch, Darla had flirted with Charlie. And he hadn’t shied away from it. She wasn’t the nicest person I’d ever met, but she was by no means the worst, and she was better than vile Veronica. Besides, Charlie had said it himself—he wanted to fit in at this school. What better way to fit in than to have a girlfriend in the so-called popular crowd that he clearly wanted to be a part of?

I walked over to Darla’s table. “Hey,” I said. “Can I talk to you?”

She glanced at her friends, both of whom appeared shocked and appalled by my presence.

“About what?” Darla asked, picking at the front of her cashmere sweater.

“It’s about Charlie.”

Her eyes widened ever so slightly. She was intrigued. “I’ll be right back,” she told her friends.

I led her into the nearest corner. “Do you like him?”

She pursed her lips. “Why would you say that?”

“You were flirting with him yesterday at lunch,” I replied. “So do you like him, or were you just bored? Because I know him pretty well, if you want some pointers.”

Darla looked at me like I was crazy. “Why would you help me? We’re not friends.”

“I have my reasons,” I replied, thinking of the hourglass, of the look on Orion’s face as I’d been ripped away from him.

Darla’s knees bounced beneath her as she considered. “Okay, fine,” she said finally. “What do I need to know?”

I smiled. Bull’s-eye. If I played this right, Charlie and Darla would be a couple before the end of the week, and Charlie would never know I had anything to do with it.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Charlie

“Our first big project of the year is going to teach you how to be adults,” Mr. Chin explained, pacing the front of my econ classroom on Friday afternoon. “At least, that’s its goal.”

Outside the windows, rain poured down in buckets. Cross-country practice was definitely going to be canceled, but I was sure the football game would be played tonight, rain or shine. Was Darla still going to show up in this weather? And more important, did she really want me to sit with her, or was she taking pity on the new kid?

I held my pen at its center and waggled it, tapping each end against the desk rapidly. Behind me to my left, Katrina sat at her desk, writing in a black notebook like her life depended on it. She hadn’t so much as looked at me today, but I couldn’t stop staring at her. At least True hadn’t come at me with some new and wild hookup scenario. Maybe she’d given up on me. After the way I’d treated her the other day, I wouldn’t have blamed her.

“Today you will be filling out this questionnaire to help me decide on your mock careers,” Mr. Chin continued, walking along the aisles and handing each of us a set of stapled papers. “On Monday I will
let you know what your jobs and salaries will be. Then, on Tuesday, you’ll be taking a compatibility test, and on Wednesday, you will be matched up with partners so you can embark on an entire semester of wedded bliss.”

My heart skipped a few beats, while everyone around me groaned. We were going to be pretend-married to someone? I glanced over my shoulder at Katrina. She was still writing.

“Together with your partner you will scour Craigslist for apartments, you will make a list of monthly expenses and a budget, you will keep a working checkbook and, in October, each of you will proudly welcome a bouncing baby doll into the world.”

Mr. Chin lifted a well-worn, life-size newborn doll out of a box and held it up. More groans.

I suddenly couldn’t stop smiling. Wedded bliss. Apartments, budgets, checkbooks, babies. Whoever I was hooked up with, I’d be spending crazy amounts of time with that person for the entire semester. I stared down at the career questionnaire, my heart pounding, and started to fill it out. What if Katrina and I got matched up together? Then she’d
have
to look at me.