Pheme the Gossip Page 4

  Pheme rolled her eyes, thinking, Good guess. She didn’t say it, though, because a couple of students were up ahead. She didn’t want them to see her puffed words and think she was talking to herself!

  Finally they reached the fourth floor, and she led Phaeton to her room at the end of the hall. When she’d first come to MOA, she’d roomed with Medusa. But Medusa had developed a mysterious allergy to the cloud-words Pheme spoke. So Pheme had moved out.

  Oddly enough, she and Medusa had started hanging out together soon after that. And Pheme’s puffed cloud-words didn’t seem to be a problem anymore. Weird. It was like Medusa’s allergy had completely disappeared once she’d gotten her way and had a room to herself.

  When they reached her room, Pheme opened the door and ushered Phaeton inside. “Wow. You’re neat,” he said, having a look around.

  “Thanks,” she said, taking that as a compliment. Because Medusa had more or less booted her out, Pheme was among the handful of girls at MOA without roommates. She liked keeping her room orderly. Still, it wasn’t as tidy as Aphrodite’s. That girl was a major neat freak!

  However, Pheme’s wasn’t full of heart-shaped pillows. Instead she’d jazzed things up in her own personal style. She’d bought bold-colored orange and lime-green bedspreads with a geometric design, for example. And she’d hung a cool beaded curtain over the window.

  She’d also hung a dozen orange-framed pictures on the wall above her bed. “Who are all these people?” Phaeton asked, studying one of them. “That’s you in the middle, isn’t it?”

  He was staring at a drawing of her family—thirteen kids plus two parents. She’d sketched it herself the week before she’d left home to come to MOA.

  “Yep, I was a smack-dab-in-the-middle child.” She loved her big family, but she had not loved being overlooked and ignored. That’s how it had felt to her, at least.

  She’d thought things would improve when Zeus had invited her to come to MOA. But among so many amazing immortals, she still didn’t stand out. For instance, even with the clue of her cloud-puffed speech, Phaeton hadn’t been able to guess which goddess she was.

  Well, all that was going to change. When she was a Teen Scrollazine reporter, her name would be right there under the titles of all the important news stories she wrote. She’d be famous and probably travel to exciting places to cover breaking news and meet kings and queens and stuff. Awesome!

  When she opened the doors to her spare closet, Phaeton came to look over her shoulder. “Where’d you get all this stuff? What are these? Office supplies?” He reached into the closet and tugged at a random file.

  “Stop that!” she said, waving him away. “Those are private.” Honestly, this boy was almost as snoopy as she was!

  On the third shelf down there was a stack of MOA forms. Pheme bent to sort through them. Since she had two closets and only needed one for clothes, she’d fitted this extra closet with shelves and turned it into a supply cupboard. This was also where she stored her “snoop” files—alphabetized folders full of newsy tidbits she kept on everyone.

  “The supplies and stuff are from the front office, if you must know. I help Zeus’s assistant, Ms. Hydra, in there on Wednesdays. Sometimes she gives me supplies she doesn’t need anymore. And I also fish all kinds of interesting forms and junk from the wastebasket when she isn’t looking. Which is not exactly easy, since she’s got nine heads. That’s eighteen eyes that could catch me at it.”

  “Why risk it?” asked Phaeton.

  “Because you never know when something might come in handy. Like now, for instance. Bingo!” Pheme plucked out the form she’d been searching for. It was an official student enrollment form, a used one that Ms. Hydra had tossed into the trash when this particular student had left MOA.

  After shutting the closet she went and sat down at her desk with the form. She pushed aside some homework she’d completed the night before, then grabbed her favorite orange feather pen and her special magic eraser. She gave the eraser instructions:

  “Take this form and please erase.

  Then write like Ms. Hydra in each space.”

  Eager to get to work, the bespelled eraser immediately attacked the homework she’d pushed aside.

  “No!” she yelled, diving for the papyrus sheets just in time to save her hard work from being undone. “That’s my homework. It doesn’t need erasing.” She pointed to the form. “That form does.”

  “Wow! Where’d you get that thing? It is sooo awesome!” said Phaeton as the eraser got to work.

  “From a store called Pentastic in the Immortal Marketplace,” she told him.

  When the eraser had finished its job, she picked up the pen. She filled in the first line, and the pen dutifully made her writing look like Ms. Hydra’s, as instructed.

  “No. With a P-H, not an F,” Phaeton corrected when he saw how she’d written his name.

  Pheme erased again and started over. “Maybe you’d better help me,” she suggested.

  Phaeton dragged over the chair from the other desk. Then he sat by her and nodded toward the form. “What’s this for, anyway?” he asked.

  Raising and lowering her brows in a mischievous way, she tapped the enrollment form with the feather end of her pen. “It’s your ticket into MOA. At least it will be after we finish filling it out. Now, what’s the name of your old school on Earth?”

  “Why do you need to know that?” Phaeton asked.

  “The form wants to know. Not me,” she told him. “Just answer.”

  “Okay,” Phaeton said reluctantly. “First word is I-M-A. Second word, L-U-Z-E-R. Then, ‘Middle School.’”

  Pheme wrote the four-word school name. Rereading what she’d written, a giggle escaped her. “Ima Luzer Middle School?” She glanced over at Phaeton.

  He sighed. “I know, I know. It sounds like ‘I’m a Loser Middle School.’ Ha. Ha. Ha. That’s just one more reason I’d rather go to MOA.”

  “Understandable,” Pheme sympathized. As she added class and locker assignments, her pen continued imitating Ms. Hydra’s handwriting.

  “Who’ll I be rooming with?” Phaeton asked when they came to the dorm room assignment line.

  “How about Heracles?”

  His face lit up. “Are you serious? The mortal hero Heracles, you mean? The one with the awesome club weapon?”

  Pheme nodded. She’d remembered Athena mentioning once that Heracles didn’t have a roommate. Well, he did now! Quickly she went to her closet and fished out the room assignment list she’d copied from Ms. Hydra’s desk. Finding Heracles’ room number, she wrote it in the required blank.

  “All done!” she announced once all the blanks had been filled in. After rolling up the faked enrollment form, Pheme grabbed the latest issue of Teen Scrollazine from a shelf above her desk.

  “Now what?” asked Phaeton.

  “Now we go to the office. Where you let me do the talking,” she told him. A quick check of the sundial outside her window showed they had about ten minutes left before fifth period ended. “And then once you’re enrolled, you’ll tell me who your dad is, right? I’m taking a risk here, so don’t back out on me later.”

  “I won’t,” Phaeton promised. He held his middle three fingers downward, so they resembled the letter M. “Mortal’s honor.”

  After scurrying through the hall, they crept down the marble staircase to the main floor, then made their way to the office. The minute they reached it, Pheme de-invisibled him.

  “You’re visible now, so don’t do anything or go anywhere. Stay right here outside the office door until you hear me say your name,” she instructed him.

  “Will I get to meet Zeus?” he asked in an excited voice.

  “No. Ms. Hydra is our best shot at getting what we want. Just do what I tell you, okay?”

  Phaeton gave her a disappointed look but nodded.

  All nine of Ms. Hydra’s heads looked up when Pheme came through the door. “Hi there, Ms. Pinky,” Pheme said, addressing Ms. Hydra’s pink h
ead. Although everyone knew that was her nickname, Pheme was the only student who usually called her that. She and Pinky were friends because they had something in common—a love of gossip!

  Pheme held up the Teen Scrollazine she’d brought and waved it from side to side enticingly. “Have you read the latest about that new mortal rock star Orpheus?”

  “Ooh. No! Let me see that,” said Pinky. Pheme set the scrollazine on the counter, and Pinky craned her long neck to read it.

  Ms. Hydra’s other eight heads did the same. Most of the time they couldn’t care less about the kind of tittle-tattle Pinky adored. But no one was above a little celebrity gossip from time to time. And right now Orpheus was the biggest craze ever on Earth. Lots of girls at MOA were fans too.

  While Ms. Hydra’s heads were distracted by the scrollazine, Pheme slipped the altered enrollment form from her pocket and placed it on top of a stack of papers on Ms. Hydra’s countertop.

  “Oh,” Pheme said a few seconds later. “I almost forgot. I’m here to help the new boy get his textscrolls.”

  Ms. Hydra’s grumpy green head turned to gaze at her. “What new boy?”

  “Phaeton,” Pheme said loudly.

  On cue Phaeton entered the office. “Is this the office? I’m Phaeton, a new student. Someone told me to come here for textscrolls.”

  “Oh, dear! I don’t recall seeing your enrollment form,” Ms. Hydra’s gray head told him. It was her most efficient head, but it was also a worrywart.

  Pheme pointed toward the stack on which the form sat. “Is it in there, maybe?”

  “Yes, here it is,” said Ms. Hydra’s impatient purple head, snatching it off the top of the stack. “Odd. I don’t remember seeing it before.”

  The green head glanced at it. “Neither do I. But one of us must’ve filled it out. Look at the handwriting.” Luckily, the other six heads were too fascinated by the scrollazine to weigh in on the enrollment form.

  Within minutes Phaeton’s arms were loaded down with textscrolls for the five classes he’d be taking. After the two of them left the office and found his locker, Pheme got down to business.

  “Okay. I did my part of our bargain. Now, who’s your dad?” she demanded.

  “Outside,” Phaeton replied, nodding toward the main doors of the Academy.

  Pheme looked at him in confusion. “You mean he’s here? At MOA?”

  Phaeton laughed. “Not exactly.” He stowed his scrolls and slammed his locker door shut. “Come on,” he said, grabbing her arm.

  More intrigued than ever, Pheme allowed him to pull her down the hall to a window that faced west.

  “Up there,” said Phaeton, pointing. “See him?”

  Pheme glanced upward, shading her eyes from the bright light of the sun. But there was no one in the sky as far as she could see. No one except . . .

  “You mean Helios?” she guessed in surprise.

  “That’s right,” Phaeton said proudly.

  “The god of the sun? He’s your dad?” she repeated, just to be sure.

  “Shh!” Whipping out an arm, Phaeton waved away the cloud-letters that had puffed from her lips.

  Helios was so bright that no one dared look directly upon him. Still, Pheme could make out the outline of his magnificent chariot, which carried the sun across the sky every day. If Phaeton’s story was true, this was big news indeed!

  “Isn’t his chariot amazing?” he said excitedly. “When I finally meet him, I’m going to get him to let me drive it!”

  Pheme stared at him, aghast. “But wouldn’t that be dangerous? Helios’s chariot is fiery hot. And it’s pulled by fierce horses that breathe out flames. You know that, don’t you?”

  “I could handle it,” Phaeton insisted, sounding cocky as usual.

  Pheme just shook her head in disbelief. “But—”

  Ping! Ping! Ping! The lyrebell chimed, signaling the end of fifth period. “The school day is now over,” MOA’s herald announced in a self-important voice that echoed through the whole Academy. Doors flew open all along the hallway. Students began streaming out.

  Pheme could feel the news about Phaeton and Helios bubbling up inside her. It would probably be smart to keep it to herself for now. At least until she could tell Zeus and get back on his good side. She wouldn’t want him to get wind of the gossip and question Phaeton right away. She couldn’t chance Zeus finding out that she’d helped Phaeton trick his way into enrolling at MOA.

  Still, she felt like she was going to explode if she didn’t tell someone right that second. She couldn’t help it. Keeping news this big quiet was just not in her nature. After all, she was the goddessgirl of gossip. It was practically her duty to shout it to everyone in school. Just imagine their excitement! Imagine how they would listen with wide eyes, hanging on her every word!

  “Um, I’ve got something to do,” Pheme told Phaeton. “Can you find your own way to your dorm room? Fifth floor?” Turning from him, she joined the stream of students hurrying toward the Academy’s front doors.

  “Sure, no problem. But hey, wait,” Phaeton called after her. “I still don’t know your name!”

  Pretending she hadn’t heard him, Pheme pushed on through the doors. Outside, the pent-up gossip burst from her immediately. She flitted around the courtyard from group to group spreading her news about “the new boy.” Being the one in the know and answering everyone’s questions about him gave her a rush.

  Even if she did get a few of her facts a little mixed up: “Yes, that’s right, he’s obsessed with chariots. And his dad is Helios. Uh-huh. The sun god! And he comes from a school on Earth called Ima Dumbhead Middle School.”

  Overhearing, Athena came up to her. “If he’s interested in chariots, tell him I’d be happy to show him my chariot designs sometime.”

  “Sure,” said Pheme, remembering that the chariot was one of Athena’s many inventions.

  “I’m kind of surprised my dad invited another mortal kid to MOA,” Athena went on. “I mean, having Heracles here has worked out great, but there are some others I could name—” Her voice trailed off, and she looked over at Artemis, who was talking to a boy named Actaeon a short distance away.

  Although Actaeon was mortal, Pheme figured Athena was probably thinking of a different mortal boy. One named Orion. He had only been at MOA a short time. But during his brief stay he’d caused plenty of trouble while pursuing his dream of becoming a famous actor.

  In fact, he’d practically ruined one of the school plays, skipping out on his starring role when a better opportunity opened up on Earth. An opportunity that actually hadn’t panned out. Served him right. Because he’d also broken Artemis’s heart. A juicy bit of gossip Pheme herself had helped spread at the time.

  “Did you hear that the new boy and Heracles are going to be roommates?” Aphrodite asked, coming over to them.

  Athena nodded. “Heracles only just found out. I think he’s gotten used to having a room to himself.” She smiled. “He’s so cute the way he takes care of that big knobby club of his. I wonder where he’ll put it now.”

  “The one he uses to battle monsters?” Persephone asked, joining them too.

  “Exactly,” Athena said. “He told me that every night he lays it on top of his spare bed. He’s so fond of that thing, I sometimes wonder if he tucks it under the blankets before he goes to sleep on the other bed.”

  Pheme joined in the girls’ laughter at that, filing away this delectable morsel of gossip. It was so unusual for Athena to let down her guard like this. Awesome!

  As if it just now dawned on her that Pheme had been there the whole time she’d been talking, Athena gave a start. “I . . . oh . . . I have to go now.” She began to back away.

  “Okay. Ta-ta, then,” said Pheme, giving her hand a little flutter in farewell.

  “Nice fingernail polish,” Athena commented. “Looks kind of familiar for some reason.” She scrunched up her brows, thinking.

  Pheme’s heart gave a hard lurch, and she yanked both hands behind her
back. Was there a hidden meaning in Athena’s words? Had she guessed about Pheme reading her diaryscroll?

  But Athena only smiled and said, “You should wear red more often. It looks good with your hair.” Then she and her friends walked away.

  “Uh, thanks,” Pheme called after her. Phew! That was too close for comfort!

  6

  Caught !

  PHAETON WAS AT A TABLE WITH SOME GODBOYS when Pheme got to the cafeteria for dinner that night. How nice that he was already making friends! As she passed them, Ares spoke up in a teasing voice.

  “Ouch! Somebody hand me some sunglasses!” he said. “Phaeton’s so bright, I’ve gotta wear shades!” The other godboys at the table laughed.

  Catching her eye, Phaeton scowled at her. Uh-oh! Sounded like some of her gossip about him was making the rounds. He had to know she was responsible. This was always an awkward moment—when the gossip-ee (Phaeton) met up with the gossip-er (her).

  She smiled at him weakly, pretending she didn’t know what was up. Then she hurried to the cafeteria line.

  The eight-handed lunch lady was ladling up bowls of celestial soup. As Pheme stood in line with a tray, her stomach growled. So far today all she’d had was breakfast and a few snacks. She was starving! After grabbing one of the eight full bowls being handed out, she started toward the table she usually shared with Medusa and Pandora.

  But Phaeton was waiting for her, blocking her path. “You rat! You told!” he hissed at her. “You promised you wouldn’t, but you did!”

  “Shh!” Pheme darted a look beyond his shoulder. All the boys at his table and the one next to it were looking at them. Keeping her voice low so that the cloud-letters she puffed would be as small as possible, she bent close to his ear. “But I didn’t actually promise, remember? I only said that if you shared your secret, I’d help you get into MOA. Which I did.”

  Unfortunately for her, his new friends had excellent eyesight. “She’s the goddessgirl of gossip, dude! What did you expect?” Ares yelled from the boys’ table.