The Weight of the World Read online

  Minnie glanced over at the house. She was sure she had never seen Zach's Dad at any of the school events, at least the ones she went to. The house they sat in front of was modest. It didn't look like someone who could afford to give classic cars as birthday presents lived here.

  “Are your parents divorced?” Minnie asked. Come to think of it, had Zach mentioned his Dad at all in these past weeks of spending time together?

  “Since I was a baby. Dad lives in Orlando. I see him once or twice a year.”

  “But that's so close.”

  Zach shrugged and looked down at his lap. “It was a nice car. It was my car.”

  “I'm sorry, Zach.”

  Zach nodded and unbuckled his seat belt. “Thanks for the ride.” He hesitated with his hand on the door handle.

  “Everything okay?” she asked. Zach had spent a lot of time with Minnie over the last few weeks. She had become his confidant. He felt closer to her than Lewis these days.

  Zach turned back and leaned across the center console. He closed his eyes as he pushed forward. His lips met Minnie's hand.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “I just thought...”

  “Zach,” she groaned. “Ew, no. I mean no offense, but no.”

  Zach sat up and furrowed his brow. When was the last time he'd been rejected? Never, perhaps. “I don't get it.”

  “You and I would be terrible together.”

  “What are you talking about? We get along great.”

  “Zach, you're all passion. I'm logic. You're Kirk and I'm Spock. Not to mention you're still in love with June.”

  Zach snorted, “Am not.”

  Minnie just stared at him. Zach looked down at his hands.

  “I'm not really in to dating, Zach. I have way more important things I want to spend my time on and-- no offense-- if I was going to be with someone, I would want an intellectual equal and I just haven't met one yet.”

  Zach didn't know what to say. He was humiliated.

  “We're going to pretend this never happened, okay?” Minnie said. She pointed to the passenger-side door. “So go inside. Have some dinner. Shout about what happened to your car. In the morning we'll pretend you didn't just try to pull a move on me.”

  Zach nodded, relieved that she had offered him an escape route. He stepped out of the car, into the pouring rain and ran into his house. His mother greeted him at the door with a hug and a reheated meal. Zach Jacobs had just survived his first ever romantic rejection.

  June Herald's phone chimed. She picked it up, finding a Twitter notification waiting for her. Her username was mentioned with a link to “new, hot gossip” by Discordia. June signed on to her laptop and clicked the link. A bright page with a golden apple at the top came up. It was the Discordia gossip blog.

  The top of the article featured a zoomed-in photo of Zach leaning over the center console of Minnie Rutherford's car. The photo was taken from the street view, looking over Minnie's shoulder as Zach leaned in to kiss her in front of his house. June's heart took off.

  New Romance for Jilted Quarterback

  Zach Jacobs, known to Olympia Heights football fans as “Lightning”, has finally moved on after ending his long romance with preppy redhead June Herald this February. The lucky lady is a dark horse in the race for Jacobs' heart. Miranda Rutherford, known as the girl who always has her hand up in class, is sporting a new look for her new boyfriend.

  This shot was taken outside of Jacobs' house earlier tonight. Jacobs has been spotted spending a lot of time visiting Minnie where she works at the small book store in the mall. The flirtation and romance have been going on, coworkers say, since the beginning of the summer.

  It looks like the storybook romance is officially over for June Herald, who broke it off with Jacobs because of his cheating heart. No word yet on whether or not Rutherford has figured out that she needs to put out to keep Jacobs' attention.

  June slammed her laptop. She should have known something was going on when Zach sat with Minnie at the Pantheon meeting Sunday afternoon. She let out a frustrated growl and grabbed a stuffed toy he had bought her for Valentine's Day two years ago. She could handle the whorey version of Zach. If Zach was seriously dating someone new now, after so many years of June trying to make it work between them, then maybe it wasn't a problem with Zach. What did Minnie have that June didn't?

  June hurled the toy into her wall with a shout of fury and then kicked the side of her queen-sized bed. “That traitor!” she hissed. Here she had thought Minnie was her friend. This new information colored every memory June had of Minnie. The first time they had really spoken, Minnie had tried to convince June to break up with Zach. Now she knew why.

  June took a deep breath and started to walk about her room. She threw her closet open and began to meticulously organize every article hanging up by color and cut. Dressy tops went at one end, printed t-shirts at the other. “I'll kill her,” she muttered. She began to form a plan as she worked.

  “The greatest griefs are those we cause ourselves.”

  -Sophocles

  x.

  The beautiful god sought passage to Naxos,

  so he hired a party of well-paid pirates.

  When they had Dionysus on board the ship,

  they veered towards Asia.

  When the god discovered their plan to sell him,

  he transformed the mast and oars to sea serpents.

  The deck was flooded with ivy, their ears with

  the sounds of shrill flutes.

  Their minds were overwhelmed with the blasting notes

  and the terror of their oars turned against them.

  In madness, the sailors dove into the sea

  and changed to dolphins.

  “I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who conquers his enemies; for the hardest victory is over self.”

  -Aristotle

  X.

  Teddy Wexler pulled up outside the Livingstone house at 8:32 P.M. He was feeling pretty excited about this date. Penny was babysitting Dr. Livingstone's kids. Teddy had a red Netflix envelope in his hand as he knocked quietly on the front door.

  Penny came to the door carrying a rag doll. An assortment of Duplo blocks lay scattered on the floor behind her. “Hey,” she said with a bright smile. Between their drive-in date and now, they had been out three other times. Their last date, a few days before, had been a day trip to the beach. They had played in the surf during the morning and spent the hottest hours of the afternoon in the arcade across the street. Despite all of the sun and sand, Penny looked as pale as ever.

  “You look nice,” he said, choosing to ignore the ketchup on her tank top. Undoubtedly one of the twins had spilled it on her.

  “Come in,” she said. “I'm just picking up. Haley finally went to sleep.”

  Teddy followed Penny into the house. He looked around the living room, curious to see how Doc Livingstone lived. His house was decorated in cool, desaturated colors and had a lot of packed bookshelves, containing everything from Grey's Anatomy to The Wolves in the Walls. Teddy sat down on the sofa while Penny cleaned up. He checked out the framed photos on the end table. Teddy picked up a photograph of a blonde woman with large blue eyes. “Was this his wife?” Teddy asked.

  Penny nodded. She came to sit down with him. “Yeah, she passed away right after the twins were born.”

  That was a downer. Teddy set the photo down. “Well, she was beautiful.”

  “Did you bring a movie?” Penny asked.

  Teddy handed her the envelope. “Yeah. Wanna pop it in?”

  Penny took the movie and loaded it into the DVD player. “We'll have to keep it down so they don't wake up.”

  Teddy smirked. He was hoping to have a lot of alone time with Penny tonight.

  Jason pushed his cart around the store, browsing the back wall of the movie section. He was dressed down in paint-stained jeans and a fitted grey t-shirt. It was a lazy evening out, tak
ing some time to unwind. He froze when he saw a familiar face across the electronics department. Candice Matthews. “Crap,” he muttered. Her frizzy red hair and gawdy makeup were unmistakable. The moment he had arrived at Olympia Heights Senior High, broken and recently widowed, she had been on the prowl. He had been dodging her attempts to catch him for years.

  Jason ducked down, drawing confused looks from a woman down the end of the aisle. Jason pushed his cart quickly out of the department and straight across to sporting goods. He looked back over his shoulder as he fled, checking to make sure that Candice hadn't spotted him.

  “Jason?” a voice asked. Jason leapt, terrified that she had somehow cut him off. He looked ahead and saw Celene Davis standing just ahead of him, holding a Water Bobble. “Everything alright?”

  He sighed in relief but responded quietly. “Oh, thank God, it's you. I was just... dodging someone.”

  Celene raised an eyebrow.

  “I kind of have an admirer,” he admitted, blushing a little. Celene had never seen him blush before.

  “Candice?” she ventured to guess. Jason nodded. Celene hid her laughter poorly. “Sorry,” she said. “It's not that funny, but... well... it's a little funny.”

  “Thanks a lot.”

  “Oh, come on. It's got to at least be flattering.”

  “It was flattering until it became painful. She acts like she's fourteen.”

  She sighed. “I'm sorry. I'll try to be more supportive. Are you here for something specific?”

  Jason shrugged. “Just unwinding. I was going to get some new music or a movie, but I got spooked and took off.” He looked down in her cart. Aside from the food in her cart and the filtered water bottle in her hand, she had a pair of athletic shoe inserts and a few sports bras. “Looking to start some physical activity?”

  “I've started running again. Something I haven't done in years. I'm starting to realize how out of shape I am.”

  “You're not out of shape,” he said.

  Celene began to push the cart towards the check-lanes. “You flatter me.”

  Jason and Celene walked to the registers.

  “So was your trip a total bust?” she asked. His cart had a bottle of shampoo and a pack of chocolate chip cookies.

  Jason laughed, “It looks like it.”

  Jason rang up his purchases first and waited with Celene while she scanned her full cart. “I'm glad you're getting out of the house,” she said. “Me-time is extra vital when you're a single parent. It's the oxygen mask principle. You have to take care of yourself so that you're at your best as a parent.”

  “I saw a movie earlier tonight,” he said. “But sitting alone in the theater just made me feel like a loser. I think next time I have Penny babysit I'll just take a book to a cafe. It's cheaper, too.”

  “Depends on which cafe.”

  Jason grabbed her bags while Celene took her receipt from the cashier. She turned to take the bags from him, but he stepped back. “I'm trying to be a gentleman here,” he said with a smile.

  “Fair enough.”

  Jason followed Celene to her car. When they were away from the crowds, Pantheon business came to the surface. “Did you hear what happened to Zach's car last night?” Jason asked.

  “Zach's car?”

  “He called me when he got home, having a meltdown about it. You know, we both have classic cars, so I guess he knew I'd feel his pain. Someone smashed it up. It's probably totaled.”

  Celene shook her head and clicked her tongue, wondering who would do that to an antique car.

  “Thing is,” Jason lowered his voice. “He says when he found it, there was a giant ladle-- a big dipper-- on top. When he brought a security guard, the ladle was gone. Minnie advised him against sharing that bit with the police.”

  Celene stopped. “A giant ladle?”

  “Yeah. The car was crushed like it had fallen out of the sky.”

  “Do you think there's another Titan?”

  “The thought has crossed my mind.”

  “Then we need to be more careful,” she said. She adjusted her glasses on the bridge of her nose. “We have new abilities popping up. The last thing we need is to call attention to ourselves if a Titan might be hunting us again.”

  “It's silly to think the pyro brothers would be the only ones.”

  Celene walked to her car and popped the hatchback. She moved a stack of books out of the way so that Jason could set her bags down.

  “Woah, there's a whole library back here,” he said.

  “I take books out of my purse when I finish reading them. If I'm not at home at the time, they end up in my car. They were collecting in my back seat, and I had Penny throw them back here when I had to drive her and Teddy to the beach.

  “So she's dating Teddy?” Jason decided to keep quiet about his thoughts on that one. Celene nodded silently. He could tell it made her nervous, too. The boy was the god of drunken debauchery. He wasn't a mother's dream. “That's a good book,” he said, instead, gesturing to a copy of Anansi Boys in the back of her car.

  Celene picked up a couple of the books. “I finished that one during finals. This is a great one, too.” She showed him a copy of C.S. Lewis' Till We Have Faces.

  “Lewis? Narnia Lewis?”

  “The same. This is a retelling of Cupid and Psyche. It's not a children's book.”

  “Sounds good.”

  “Do you want to borrow it?”

  “Sure,” Jason figured, if nothing else, it gave him a chance to read something not written for his daughter-- though to be perfectly honest, he rather enjoyed The Wolves in the Walls.

  “Thanks for carrying my bags,” she said. “Apparently chivalry isn't dead.”

  “Thanks for keeping me away from Candice Matthews,” Jason replied. He closed the hatch and tucked the borrowed book under his arm. Celene went around to the driver's side door. “Be careful, Celene,” Jason added. “You know, in case another old friend is looking for you.”

  She took a deep breath. “The same goes for you,” she said. “If someone knows who we are, they'll know you're part of this, too.”

  “I'll remember that.” Jason pulled his keys out of his pocket. He waved as Celene got in her car and walked across the lot to his old Buick.

  The movie had finished ten minutes ago. It hadn't been very long. Now the DVD menu played on loop. Teddy and Penny were too busy to stop it. They had started off sitting next to each other, but now Teddy was on top of Penny with his hands in her hair. Her arms were threaded up under his, with her hands gripping his shoulders as they kissed.

  Penny was fifteen; she dreamed of getting to live those cliches. A romantic evening with her boyfriend while babysitting was just another one of those things she had read in books. She wasn't as lost in the moment as she would have hoped, though. She was nervous and tense and her mind was working too fast, worrying that the kids would wake up and wondering how far she should let Teddy go.

  Teddy's hands slid through her hair. His fingertips slid across her neck. Something like a static shock sparked at her hairline and then spread. The sensation was a mixture of an adrenaline rush and a hot chill. She shuddered as it coursed through her body, making her feel hot and restless. The worry went away for a moment. Teddy's touch had ignited an unnatural, feral desire in her.

  Her grip on his back grew tighter and their kiss became almost frantic. Teddy took a hand out of her hair and slipped it up under her tank top. Penny grabbed his wrist and stopped him. She broke the kiss, trying to steady her breathing and clear the fog from her thoughts.

  “Come on,” he groaned.

  That complaint shook her out of her stupor. “I don't want to do that,” she said quietly.

  “Why not?”

  Penny didn't feel like she needed to explain that. She pushed him off and sat up. “Because it makes me uncomfortable, okay?”

  “This is like, our fifth date.”

  “I didn't know I had
a deadline,” she snapped.

  “Penny,” he sighed and rubbed his forehead. “It's no big deal.”

  “Well it's a big deal for me, okay?” Penny got off the couch. She grabbed the remote and ejected the DVD. The loop of menu music, which had faded to the background, stopped abruptly and punctuated the conversation.

  Headlights lit up the mudroom as Dr. Livingstone returned home. Penny was relieved. The conversation was really over, now. Penny and Teddy sat in silence for a minute before Jason unlocked the front door and came inside. He looked between the two teenagers, noticing flushed faces and tousled hair. He shot Teddy a look that he hoped warned, “Not in my house.”

  “They went to bed at eight,” Penny said, trying to pretend that it was a normal babysitting gig and that nothing unusual had happened. “Scott knocked his plate on my lap, but once I fixed him another, he and James both ate well.”

  “That's good to hear. No other problems?”

  She shook her head. “We watched Veggie Tales and by the time it was over they were ready to sleep. No fights.”

  “Good.” Jason pulled out his wallet. “Is Teddy giving you a ride home?”

  “Yes, sir,” Teddy said.

  Jason handed Penny a handful of cash and then turned his eyes on Teddy. He placed a hand on Teddy's shoulder, gripping it tightly. “Drive careful,” he said in a tense tone.

  “I will.”

  Penny and Teddy headed out into the dark. Penny slid into the passenger seat of Teddy's purple Jaguar. He climbed in and hesitated before starting the car without a word. They drove back to Penny's house. She started to get out of the car when Teddy finally spoke up.

  “Are we okay?” he asked.

  Penny shrugged.

  “I'm sorry,” he pleaded. “You just... well... it felt like you wanted more.”