Hestia the Invisible Read online

  “Mm-hm. It’s a new recipe,” Hestia went on proudly. “I made it just this morning.”

  Pheme leaned closer, folding her arms on the table. “So you work in the kitchen? Like, for punishment?”

  Since Hestia had just taken her first bite of the bread, she simply nodded but then shook her head. Apollo had said her bread was good. And he was right. A bit too chewy, though. If she made it again, she’d let it rise longer so the texture was softer.

  “Not for punishment. I love to cook,” she explained after swallowing. “Ms. Hydra gave me permission to apprentice with the cafeteria ladies during third period. And sometimes I just go hang out there to try new recipes and stuff, too.”

  “Yeah?” Pheme said. Her warm tone invited Hestia to continue.

  After a brief hesitation Hestia thought of something else to add. “I’m goddessgirl of the hearth. Guess that’s why I’ve always been drawn to kitchens and cooking.”

  Except to Aglaia, she’d never revealed this much about herself before. But Pheme’s interest made it easy to talk.

  “Fascinating,” Pheme said with enthusiasm. Between bites of yambrosia she asked, “And have you created any other recipes? Besides the bread, I mean?”

  “Sure. The yambrosia you’re eating, for one thing,” Hestia told her. Answering Pheme’s questions was proving way less difficult than coming up with things to say on her own. “Celestial salad and nectaroni are my creations too.”

  “I never knew that!” Pheme said in surprise. She grinned at Hestia. “And if there’s something I don’t know, it’s a good bet others don’t know it either.” Her eyes were sparkling. “I bet readers of my Teen Scrollazine column would enjoy a story about you. Want to do an interview sometime?”

  Startled by this unexpected question, Hestia pulled back from the edge of the table slightly. Pheme’s interest was flattering, but would ’zine readers really care to learn more about her? She wasn’t a flashy goddess like Aphrodite, nor athletic like Artemis, nor brainy like Athena.

  “I’m not sure if—” she started to answer.

  “Please say yes,” interrupted Pheme. “You’re practically anonymous. An article about you in Teen Scrollazine will get you noticed. Plus, I really need a topic for this week’s column.”

  In the past Hestia would have said no. Because in the past she wouldn’t have wanted anyone’s notice. But being anonymous was awfully close to being invisible, and hadn’t she resolved to change? Making up her mind, she smiled at Pheme. “Okay. I’m up for it.”

  “Great!” Pheme exclaimed, waving her fork for emphasis like a cheerleader with a pom-pom. “How about after school?”

  “You mean today?” Hestia squeaked.

  “Got other plans?”

  “Uh. No,” Hestia replied, realizing how pathetic that must sound. Other students probably had their Friday afternoon all mapped out with fun trips to the Immortal Marketplace or to the Supernatural Market or playing out in the sports fields with friends. She, on the other hand, had been planning to rearrange the spices in the cafeteria kitchen in alphabetical order. “So where do you want to meet? At the library maybe? Or in my—”

  “Oh, wait. I forgot!” Pheme interrupted again, snapping her fingers. “I’m flying north after school today to write a special feature about an ice sculpture contest.”

  Hestia’s face fell. To her surprise she’d already begun looking forward to her interview. “That’s okay,” she said brightly, in an attempt to cover her disappointment. “An ice sculpture contest sounds—”

  “Here’s an idea,” Pheme said, interrupting for the third time. “Why don’t you come with me to the ice contest? We can do the interview on the way!”

  “Really? Yeah, sure. I’d love to go,” said Hestia. It would never have occurred to her to ask Pheme if she could go along, and she was overjoyed at the sudden invitation. Maybe in addition to the interview, spending time with Pheme would result in a new friendship!

  “Is that hoodie you’re wearing warm? The north can get kind of cold, with all that ice and stuff,” Pheme told her as she spooned up the last of her yambrosia. “Also, just FYI, it will take about an hour to get to where we’re going.”

  “Yeah, that’s fine. I don’t really get cold,” Hestia replied, sipping her carton of nectar. This had something to do with her being able to make flames and being the goddess of the hearth, she’d always figured.

  “Meet me in the courtyard an hour after school’s out, okay?” Pheme said distractedly. Her attention had strayed in the direction of the tray return. Hestia glanced that way too, and saw that Pheme was watching Aphrodite. The fashionable goddessgirl had just emptied her tray and was heading out the cafeteria door, her sparkly pink handbag swinging from her shoulder.

  “Okay,” Hestia replied.

  “Ta-ta for now, then,” Pheme said, leaping up from the table. “I need to ask Aphrodite where she got that fabulous new handbag of hers. My readers will want to know!” Her small, iridescent orange wings flapped gently at her back, scooting her swiftly across the room.

  “Bye!” Hestia called after her as the lyrebell chimed the end of the lunch period. Since Pheme had forgotten to take her tray, Hestia stacked it on top of her own and then started across the room to empty them both. She was already mentally planning the snacks she’d bring along for their trip evening.

  Halfway to the tray return, Asca appeared next to her. Only this time, he was semitransparent, which startled Hestia so much that she nearly dropped the trays. “Oh!” she said, rebalancing her hold on them.

  “Sorry. Forgot I was blending in,” he said. He began solidifying till he looked more like a boy than the cafeteria wall and was therefore easier to see. “ ‘Camouflage’ is the technical term,” he said, grinning. He took Pheme’s tray off the top of Hestia’s stack to help her out.

  How sweet! she thought. “Thanks,” she told him.

  He fell into step with her the rest of the way to the tray return. “So Pheme’s going to interview you for that scrollazine she writes for?” he asked. Seeing the question on her face, he pointed up, explaining, “I saw her cloud-words. Pretty much everybody could.”

  Hestia nodded as they dumped their trash and placed their trays in the return. “Oh, yeah. I sort of forgot about those when we were talking. Nice of her to want to interview me, though, huh?”

  Before Asca could reply, Heracles called out to him from a group of guys about to leave the cafeteria. “Capture the flag game after school. On the farthest sports field. You in?”

  Asca nodded in Heracles’ direction. “Yeah. Later!”

  With his skill at camouflage he was probably really good at games requiring stealth, thought Hestia. He could sneak up and steal the other team’s flag, and they’d never even see him do it.

  Asca’s attention swung back to her again. “About that interview. Pheme doesn’t always get her facts straight, and well, just be careful what you say to her.” With a quick smile and a wave, he left the cafeteria, changing color till he blended in with the walls again.

  Hestia watched him go—or stared at the place where she thought he might be, anyway. It was hard to tell since he was now camouflaged. I don’t know what you mean, she wanted to call after him. Why the warning? Had he been speaking from experience?

  Vaguely, she remembered reading an interview Pheme had done with Asca in one of her columns a while back. Maybe once she was in her room again she could find the issue among the stack of ’zines on the shelf above her desk and reread it for details. Hoping she hadn’t made a mistake in agreeing to the interview, she hurried off to her next class.

  5

  Preparations

  AS SOON AS SCHOOL WAS out, Hestia rushed to the cafeteria. Ms. Xena was sitting at a table in the now empty dining area near the snacks counter. She was reading a scrollazine called Exotic Eats. Hestia wondered if it had recipes for things like cricket crêpes or flea flan. Hestia preferred bugless fare herself, thank you very much. Ms. Xena was who she was, howeve
r. Whatever she liked to eat was her own beeswax.

  Ms. Xena looked up as Hestia reached into a bowl for a couple of apples. “Snacks for a trip,” Hestia explained. “Pheme invited me to go to an ice sculpture contest with her.”

  “Nice!” Ms. Xena approved. “I didn’t know the two of you had become friends.” Letting her scrollazine snap shut, she got up from the table. “You should take some of those chocolate ambrosia bars you made a few days ago too.”

  “I thought they were all gone,” Hestia said.

  “I saved a few,” Ms. Xena told her.

  Hestia followed her to the kitchen. “Pheme’s not really a friend. Not yet, anyway. She only asked me along because she wants to interview me for Teen Scrollazine.”

  “Really? An interview?” Ms. Xena said as the two of them pushed through the swinging door and into the kitchen. “That’s pretty terrific.” She went straight to a cupboard where she’d apparently hidden away a few of the chocolate ambrosia bars.

  “Hope so,” Hestia said, watching her rummage around on a shelf inside the cupboard. “Asca—he’s that godboy with the lizard tail—told me I should be careful with what I say to her. Because she doesn’t always get her facts straight.”

  “That’s likely making a mountain out of an anthill,” said Ms. Xena, at last handing her a papyrus-wrapped package of two ambrosia bars. “All publicity is good publicity. I read that somewhere.”

  “Probably in Pheme’s Teen Scrollazine column,” Hestia joked.

  Ms. Xena chuckled. “You could be right.” She cocked her head at Hestia. “It may not have occurred to you, but an interview in Pheme’s column could be just the publicity you need to help you win that Service to Humankind Award.”

  “Think so?” said Hestia. It honestly hadn’t occurred to her. It was a nice thought, but her only real service to humankind was her creation of public hearths back when she was eight. Those hearths ensured that there would always be a central place in every town for villagers to get fire for cooking and heating. Useful, to be sure. But, like kettles, hearths would make a terrible symbol. They would be hard to draw, lacked pizzazz, and didn’t really stack up against other students’ contributions. Or so it seemed to her.

  Ms. Xena nodded. “Couldn’t hurt,” she said before heading back out to the cafeteria to return to her reading.

  Spotting a few leftover slices of rosemary-olive bread on the counter, Hestia began making sandwiches to take along, since she and Pheme would likely miss dinner.

  When she finally left the kitchen with her bag of food in hand, there was still about a half hour left till she needed to meet Pheme. She decided to go upstairs to let her roomie know where she’d be. However, Aglaia wasn’t around as she entered their small room.

  It had identical beds, desks, and closets on either side. A window directly across from the door overlooked the front of the Academy and the marble courtyard down below. A quick peek showed her that Pheme wasn’t out there early.

  After dropping the bag of food onto her bed, Hestia decided to scribble a note to her roommate. Aglaia might worry where she was, since Hestia rarely went anywhere. But before she did that, she pulled out the recipe card with the list of tasks she’d assigned herself that morning and quickly reread them.

  A smile came over her face as she realized she’d accomplished three of the five tasks already! She’d sat with Pheme—well, technically, Pheme had sat with her. But still, she’d made an effort to befriend the gossipy girl, so same diff. And she’d chatted with Asca, a boy. And she’d said yes to Pheme’s interview request and invitation to the ice sculpture contest.

  Grabbing a feather pen from her desk, Hestia checked off the completed tasks with a flourish.

  1. Sit with someone new at lunch.

  2. Stand up for someone.

  3. Talk to a boy.

  4. Try something I’d normally say no to.

  5. Take a truly big, bold cooking risk!

  Just two more to go! She slipped the list back into the pocket of her chiton. Spotting the stack of old Teen Scrollazines on her shelf, she remembered she wanted to search for the column that had something about Asca in it.

  As she pored over several scrollazines, trying to find the right one, she came across a reader poll Pheme had conducted a while back. In the poll, mortals on Earth had chosen a Best of MOA list, naming their top twenty Mount Olympus Academy students and their best traits. Among the ten girls named, Athena had been voted Most Academic; Aphrodite, Most Glamorous; Artemis, Best Athlete; and Pandora, Most School Spirit.

  Naturally, Hestia had received no mention at all. If there had been a Most Invisible category, she could have won that one hands down, though, she thought. And that was no joke!

  Two issues later, she found the column she’d been looking for in a scrollazine that had come out only a month and a half ago. In her interview with Asca, Pheme had discussed his skill at camouflage. Her article ended with a warning to readers:

  If you should see Ascalabus, be careful not to startle him. If frightened, his lizard tail could break off, and then he would be left with just a stump!

  Whoa! Was that true? wondered Hestia. She plunked onto her bed, her mouth open. Lucky thing she hadn’t startled him so much that his tail had broken off. But wait. Asca had said that Pheme didn’t always get her facts straight. So was the tail thing true? Or not?

  Snap! She let the scrollazine roll itself up and then put it back on the shelf with the others. She wished she could ask Asca for the truth about his tail, but she wouldn’t want to hurt his feelings by bringing up a sore subject. Sore in more than one way, since a broken tail would really hurt.

  Well, she’d just be careful what she said to Pheme, but not worry too much about it. Like Ms. Xena had said, “All publicity is good publicity.” So not doing the interview would be the worst possible choice if she wanted to shed some of her invisibility.

  Glancing out the window, Hestia saw from the sundial below that she needed to meet Pheme in a few minutes. She grabbed a piece of papyrus and a feather pen to scribble a note, but then her roommate appeared in the doorway.

  “Oh, there you are,” Hestia said. “I was just going to write you a note. Pheme invited me to go to an ice sculpture contest with her. I didn’t want you to wonder where I was.”

  Aglaia’s pretty brown eyes lit up, and she smiled. “Awesome!” she enthused. “Pheme’s fun, so that should be, well, fun!” She giggled.

  “Uh, thanks,” said Hestia. She could tell that Aglaia was genuinely happy for her, but couldn’t she have acted a little sorry that they wouldn’t be able to hang out together this evening? Maybe her roommate thought it was about time Hestia made other friends to do stuff with. Had she been depending too much on Aglaia?

  “By the way,” Aglaia added as she kicked off her sandals. “I’m sleeping over with Calliope in her room tonight.”

  “Oh. Well, have fun,” said Hestia. Calliope was a younger sister of MOA’s Science-ology teacher, Muse Urania. Like Amphitrite, Calliope had only just started at the Academy, but it sounded like she was already making new friends. Hestia felt a tiny stab of jealousy. What if Aglaia’s new friendship with Calliope meant that she would have even less time for Hestia from now on?

  Remembering it was time to go, Hestia said a quick bye, picked up the bag of food from her bed, and quickly made her way downstairs. In the Academy’s entryway she shucked off her everyday sandals and grabbed a pair of winged ones from the basket by the big front doors. She slipped the sandals on. The silver wings at their heels were bound together, but she wouldn’t need to free them till she was ready to fly. After pushing through the doors, she took the granite steps downward.

  There were lots of students outside enjoying the sunny afternoon. Some were sitting with friends on the steps. Others were reading, studying, or visiting on benches around the marble-tiled courtyard below. Still more students were standing around, laughing or talking in small groups.

  It was good flying weather. The air w
as so still that the anemometer in the middle of the courtyard—a gadget that measured wind speed—was barely moving. The figures of four wind-brothers—the godboys Boreas, Zephyr, Notus, and Eurus—had been carved onto the gadget’s main post by a famous sculptor named Pygmalion. Their cheeks were round and puffed, as if blowing out swirls of wind.

  Hestia was halfway down the steps when she saw Pheme. The goddessgirl of gossip was easy to spot, with her bright orange hair and dazzling orange wings. She was fluttering from group to group, sharing the newest gossip. She was the least shy goddess Hestia knew, absolutely unafraid to approach anyone and start a conversation.

  I can learn a thing or two from her, Hestia thought. And with that in mind, she zipped down the rest of the steps and all the way across the courtyard to Pheme’s side.

  Since the girl’s back was to her, Hestia tapped her on the shoulder. “I’m here,” she announced breathlessly. “Ready to go?”

  6

  The Journey North

  YEAH, I’M READY!” SAID PHEME, turning toward Hestia. She nodded to the group she was with, which included Aphrodite, Persephone, Apollo, and Artemis. All of them stared curiously at Hestia, making her flush. If any of these very familiar immortals asked who she was, she was going to scream. Not really, but she’d sort of want to.

  “In case you don’t know her, this is Hestia,” Pheme told the others before anyone could say anything. Grinning, she spelled the name out, just as Hestia had done at lunch, “H-E-S-T-I-A.” Of course, cloud-letters were already rising above Pheme’s head, making the spelling completely unnecessary. “The only free seat in the cafeteria at lunch today was across from her,” Pheme went on. “So that’s how we finally met up!”

  The only free seat in the cafeteria? Ducking back into her hood a little, Hestia flushed even more. Her light freckles were probably turning beet red! She looked up as cloud-letters spread Pheme’s every word far and wide. The gossipy girl surely didn’t mean it the way it sounded, but her introduction had made Hestia sound like a loser. Spelled L-O-S-E-R.