Cassandra the Lucky Read online

  “Have you ever noticed how vague his prophecies are, though?” Cassandra asked as she dusted off the abacus they used to calculate change for paying customers. “Like, ‘You will marry a man with a nice laugh.’ Or, ‘There will be a face on the moon the night before you meet the girl you will wed.’ Sometimes they aren’t even fortunes but only descriptions, like, ‘You are kind to others.’ Or, ‘Others like you.’ So the person who gets a fortune is flattered, and they’re happy because they want to believe it’s true.”

  “What’s your point?” said Laodice.

  “My point?” echoed Cassandra. “Isn’t it obvious?”

  “No,” said Laodice.

  Her point was that her fortunes were better! And she wasn’t bragging. Not really. For example, she’d known the name of the author who would be at their grand opening—Homer. Her brother hadn’t. Of course, she hadn’t gotten the chance to tell anyone.

  Feeling unappreciated, Cassandra went to the underground ice-room to get more of the cookie dough she’d made last night. A few minutes later, just as she began rolling the dough out in the small kitchen behind the counter to make the first of many batches of fortune cookies they’d bake and sell in the coming hours, the bell on the store’s front door tinkled.

  In walked their first customer of the day. A handsome teenage godboy. Laodice smiled at him and went to see if he needed help.

  Cassandra made a fist and began pounding the cold cookie dough to soften it up. Whomp! She wished she could make her sister understand her frustrations. But although Laodice was only two years older than she was, she seemed to think of Cassandra as a little girl. A little girl without a care in the world and certainly no problems. Ha!

  She did have problems—plenty of them. And in her opinion they’d all been caused by three immortals from Mount Olympus Academy—Athena, Aphrodite, and Apollo!

  Whomp! As she pounded the dough, Cassandra thought about the trouble they’d made for her countrymen, meddling in their lives during the Trojan War. Not to mention all the trouble they’d caused her personally. But they probably thought nothing of it—if they ever even thought of her and Troy at all.

  Cassandra automatically grabbed a rolling pin, dusted it with flour, and began rolling out the dough into a big flat pancake. Her friend Andromache said that the goddessgirls and godboys at Mount Olympus Academy didn’t have any troubles. For them every day was nothing but fun, with parties and dancing and hardly any school-work.

  Andromache also said that the Three A’s (which was their secret code nickname for Athena, Aphrodite, and Apollo, since their names all started with the letter A) deserved a little payback for the trouble they’d caused Cassandra and other Trojans. She said that they deserved to have some troubles of their own!

  After Cassandra put the cookies into the oven, she patted her pocket, which was still full of the fortunes she’d written that morning. Andromache was right, she decided. And with the help of these prophecies, she was about to put her and Andromache’s payback plan into effect!

  2

  The  Payback  Plan

  Cassandra

  THE BAKERY KEPT CASSANDRA BUSY all morning. So busy that she began to fear she wouldn’t be able to sneak out to get her and Andromache’s payback plan under way before it was time for school. She briefly considered skipping her first class. But the IM school was only in session three afternoons a week. Skipping would land her in big trouble. Besides, they were reading a scrollbook called Dialogues by an awesome philosopher named Plato in literature class, and she didn’t want to miss the discussion.

  When several batches of cookies were ready for fortunes, she dutifully took them to her brother Helenus, who had come to sit in the little office behind the bakery kitchen to do his job.

  Meanwhile, one customer after another came and went from the store, drawn by the delicious smell of cookies and by curiosity about the fortunes they contained. Cassandra liked hearing the interesting news and gossip that shoppers from Earth, Mount Olympus, and other magical lands brought with them.

  While she baked, she was listening with half an ear to their prattle, when she suddenly overheard someone say Athena’s name. Her ears perked up. She looked over from her cookie trays to see that several boys about her age had come into the store. She knew them from school. Two of the boys were okay, but for some reason that Agamemnon was always teasing her.

  “I think Athena must be his mentor,” one of the boys with him was saying. “Odysseus is her Greek hero. So if he’s heading back to his home in Ithaca now that the Trojan War is finally over, she must be helping him, right?”

  Hmm, interesting, thought Cassandra. As she cleaned the prep table she’d been working on, she filed away that bit of information in a corner of her brain, thinking it might somehow help Andromache and her with their payback plan later on.

  Then she hurried out to the cookie counter, since Laodice was busy helping Cleo, the purple-haired, three-eyed makeup lady who owned Cleo’s Cosmetics in the IM. It sounded like Cleo was trying to find the perfect gift of cookies for Mr. Cyclops, a teacher at Mount Olympus Academy that she’d been dating.

  Reluctantly Cassandra greeted the boys. “Welcome to the Oracle-O Bakery. Are you looking for anything special?”

  “Uh-huh,” Agamemnon told her. “Got any cookies in the shape of a horse?” He smirked at his friends and leaned an elbow on the counter next to where he was standing, acting all cooler than cool.

  Ha. Ha. Ha, thought Cassandra. Like she hadn’t heard that one before? She knew why he was teasing her like this. It was because she’d once predicted that an enormous wooden horse full of Greek soldiers, including Odysseus, would enter Troy and destroy it. No one had believed her about that Trojan horse. Not even after her prophecy had come true. Because after a little time had passed, her prophecy had gotten twisted around in everyone’s minds. They thought she’d predicted just the opposite of what had actually happened!

  “No, but I could make one shaped like a horse’s behind, if you’ll just let me draw your face as a cookie pattern,” she replied. She smiled so brightly at Agamemnon that it took him a minute to realize she’d insulted him.

  Straightening, he scowled. “Hey! What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Sorry, no horses,” said Laodice lightly, coming over now that Cleo had gone. She flashed a frown at Cassandra and shook her head, warning her to behave. Customers wouldn’t come to the shop if word got around that the staff was mean!

  “Yeah, sorry. My sister’s right,” Cassandra added, speaking to Agamemnon in the same supersweet voice she’d used before. “So maybe you and your friends should just gallop on out of here before I bring you bad luck. Because, though I don’t mean to, I do it sometimes.”

  When she saw good fortune in someone’s future, it was her pleasure to tell them. But when she saw bad fortune, she felt obligated to warn them too. Either way, people might halfway believe her fortunes in the beginning, but as time passed, they changed their minds and decided she’d gotten things wrong! Not only that, but they often decided she was kind of to blame if anything bad happened, so she’d gotten a reputation for being bad luck. She just couldn’t win!

  At her words, the boys’ expressions had turned uncomfortable and a little scared. Mumbling something about needing to go buy a new shield at Mighty Fighty—an IM store that sold battle and athletic stuff—Agamemnon’s two friends shuffled out the door and hurried off. Unfortunately, Agamemnon stuck around.

  As Cassandra got back to work, she felt him glancing over at her now and then as he wandered around the store, checking out the different kinds of cookies for sale. She couldn’t understand why he was still there. Didn’t he believe she was bad luck? His friends obviously did. She’d known that and had played on their fears to make them leave.

  Some people went out of their way to avoid her, as if she were a black cat. Or a ladder they needed to walk around. Though she used their nervousness to her advantage sometimes, it also kind of hurt her feelin
gs.

  Cassandra’s own luck hadn’t been the best lately, but she believed you could make your own luck. And that’s what she was about to do, just as soon as she could take action. As in, get out of here to run a very important errand. A payback one!

  “All done,” Helenus announced. He’d just come in from the back office and set a box of spoken-fortune cookies on the counter next to a box with his written fortunes.

  Noticing Agamemnon, his face brightened. “Hey, what’s up?” he asked. “Want to go to Mighty Fighty? I heard they got in some new swords.”

  Grrr. Her brother didn’t seem to care that Agamemnon had been on their enemies’ side during the Trojan War.

  “Sure,” said Agamemnon, shrugging agreeably.

  Laodice started trying to cheer her up the minute Helenus and Agamemnon left the store. “Don’t let those boys get to you. You know why Agamemnon teases you, right?”

  “Because he’s a dork?” Cassandra guessed.

  Ding! At the sound of the timer bell, she zipped over to the oven and pulled out the current batch of freshly baked cookies. She set them on the cooling rack.

  “No. Because he likes you,” said Laodice.

  Huh? Then he was wasting his time hanging around. No way she would ever like that boy back, Cassandra thought, totally underwhelmed by this information. Agamemnon was a bully.

  “So he’s mean to me because he likes me?” asked Cassandra. “That’s ridiculous. No, wait, it’s worse than that. It’s ridonkulous.”

  Laodice smiled at her in a superior sort of way. “That’s how some boys are. Show-offs at times. Anyway, I think he’s kind of cute. Thirteen’s too young for me, of course.”

  Cassandra rolled her eyes. Laodice’s mind was always on boys these days. Right now she was mostly crushing on an older teenage boy who worked in Mr. Dolos’s Be A Hero store. It sold all kinds of products like drinking mugs and posters with autographed pictures of mortal heroes on them. Last week she’d been crushing on Cleo’s son, and the week before that it had been someone else.

  Well, that was fine for her, but Cassandra had had enough trouble from boys in her life so far! Especially from one particular immortal—that Apollo, who was the godboy of prophecy, among other things. When they’d both been little kids—her in kindergarten and him in first grade—they’d happened to meet in a temple. And Apollo had put a curse on her! He’d proclaimed that her prophecies would forever after be thought true at first and then quickly be judged to be false. No one had believed any of her predictions ever since.

  It was sooo not fair! she thought. But Andromache claimed that all immortals were stuck-up and didn’t care about mortals like them.

  Like Apollo, Aphrodite sure didn’t seem to care. She was the one who had made Cassandra’s other brother, Paris, fall in love with a Greek queen named Helen. It was their romance that had started the Trojan War in the first place.

  But maybe what Athena had done was worst of all. She’d sent the Trojan horse. When it had entered the gates of Troy, the Greek heroes inside it had leaped out and attacked the city. Led by Athena’s special hero, Odysseus himself!

  Cassandra had tried to warn everyone what would happen if the Trojan horse were allowed into the city. But because of the curse Apollo had brought down on her head in that temple seven years before, no one had been willing to believe her.

  This was the horse prophecy Agamemnon had been talking about. The one everyone remembered. Cassandra’s biggest, most embarrassing flop! Her face heated just thinking about it.

  Hearing another ding, she pulled a new batch of cookies from the oven. She peeked over her shoulder as she worked. Laodice was busy with a new customer. Her mom was over in the scrollbook store talking to the construction guys. Helenus was gone. The coast was clear.

  Still, she hesitated to put the payback plan into motion. It really wasn’t her nature to be mean to anyone, but she was just so frustrated about everything! And Andromache agreed that the Three A’s were to blame for her seven years of bad luck. She couldn’t back out on the payback plan now, right? She couldn’t let Andromache down.

  Quickly Cassandra pulled the papyrus fortunes she’d written that morning from her pocket and set them on the counter. After folding one fortune in half, she set it atop a warm, round cookie. Then she set a second cookie on top and gently pressed, sealing the two cookies together around the edges with the prophecy inside. It was like a cookie sandwich with a papyrus fortune filling.

  She did the same with the others, until each of her fortunes was hidden inside a cookie. She wished she could’ve spoken her fortunes as Helenus had done, but then Laodice or her mom would’ve heard her do it and known she was up to something. So the papyrus fortunes would have to do. After wrapping each finished cookie, she set them on top of Helenus’s spoken-fortune cookies in the basket bound for MOA.

  She wasn’t worried about the students there getting the right fortunes. Her fortunes were stronger than those of her brother, no matter what everyone else thought. If anyone at MOA took a cookie, they would get the right fortune. And if she hadn’t written a fortune for someone and Helenus had, they’d get his fortune.

  “Cassandra?” called her mom.

  Cassandra’s head jerked up, her eyes wide. Had she been caught in the act? “Yeah, Mom?”

  Phew! Turned out that her mom only had an errand for her to run. “Take a dozen cookies down to Ms. Demeter’s store in trade for some flour, will you?” she told Cassandra. Demeter was Persephone’s mom and owned an IM store that sold all kinds of plants as well as basic cooking ingredients made from plants—like wheat flour! “And while you’re at it, drop off that MOA cookie delivery to Hermes’ Delivery Service on your way,” Hecuba added.

  “Okay!” Cassandra called back. Yay! Perfect timing!

  She snatched up the basket of fortune cookies and a smaller box of cookies to trade with Ms. Demeter. Then she zipped out the front door of the store and into the Immortal Marketplace.

  Not only was the IM enormous, but it was amazingly beautiful, with a sparkling high-ceilinged crystal roof. Rows and rows of columns separated the various shops selling everything from the newest Greek fashions to tridents and thunderbolts.

  She dashed through the atrium, past a merrily splashing fountain encircled with blooming rhododendron bushes. She waved to Cleo through the front window of Cleo’s Cosmetics but didn’t stop to admire the new outfits in the window of the Green Scene, a store where all the clothes for sale were green. And she didn’t linger to gaze at the magical gifts in the window of Gods’ Gift like she usually did, or to look at the merchandise displayed in any of the other stores along the Marketplace. Because today she was on a mission!

  She glimpsed a sundial through one of the side glass door exits. It was three minutes till noon as she flew right past Demeter’s Daisies, Daffodils, and Floral Delights, where she was supposed to barter fresh cookies for flour to make even more cookies. Her family traded with other shopkeepers in the Marketplace for things they needed. But she’d have to take care of that errand later. First she had to catch Hermes before noon when he left with his daily deliveries to Mount Olympus Academy and other destinations.

  She put on a burst of speed, passing Hera’s Happy Endings, a wedding store. Inside, Cassandra could see the beautiful and statuesque goddess Hera giving advice to a lady trying on white veils. She must be planning a wedding.

  Hera, of course, was married to Zeus—the principal of MOA, King of the Gods and Ruler of the Heavens. Thinking about Zeus reminded Cassandra of Athena, Zeus’s daughter. The person who’d made her a laughingstock. She hurried on, determined to outpace her unhappy thoughts.

  Everyone else in Cassandra’s family seemed to have gotten past the events of the Trojan War and the part the immortals had played in them, but she simply couldn’t let those things go. She missed her home in Troy so much. There she’d been a princess living in a palace, instead of in a few crowded rooms above a store. Plus, she’d had some friends, even if th
ey had mostly been chosen by her parents.

  As Cassandra passed Magical Wagical, Andromache ducked her head out of the store to give her a thumbs-up. “You go, girl!” she called encouragingly.

  “Thanks!” said Cassandra, her spirits improving. Although Andromache didn’t think Cassandra’s fortunes were accurate, she did believe they could stir up trouble. And that girl really had it in for the immortals. Way more than Cassandra did. She was behind their payback plan all the way.

  Of course, their plan wasn’t meant to hurt anyone or make big  trouble. They just wanted to cause a little dismay among MOA students, especially the Three A’s. Neither she nor Andromache were sure what would happen as a result of the fortunes she was sending to MOA, which was kind of worrisome. And there was one fortune that had Cassandra more than a little unsettled. One of the two she was sending to Zeus himself! It read simply: Carousel. What was that about? She really didn’t know!

  She was almost at the Hermes’ Delivery Service headquarters at the far end of the Marketplace. She craned her neck, trying to see ahead. Hermes’ silver-winged delivery chariot was already piled high with packages beyond the two glass doors that led outside the IM. She watched as he bustled from his office out to the chariot, adding one last load before he would take off for Earth, Mount Olympus Academy, and other magical lands.

  Oh, no! She had to catch him before he left. The cookies with her fortunes would be stale by tomorrow and get thrown away. She put on a burst of speed. “Wait!” she called. But he couldn’t hear her from outside.

  A dozen steps later she burst out of the IM’s glass doors. The chariot’s wings had begun to flap. Hermes was starting to lift off.

  “Incoming!” she shouted to him. Bounding for the chariot, she lobbed the basket of cookies high. Plunk! They sailed into the chariot. “It’s the Oracle-O cookie order for MOA!”