One of Those Cold States

First chapter of a novella I wrote for my school newspaper, The Crimson Pride.

One

News

My mom was really into Greek mythology. She took a bunch of classes in college, although I doubt she showed up for them all that much. My mom is not the most responsible woman in the world.

Anyway, by the time she was 26 and married to a hot-shot lawyer from Wisconsin (or Minnesota, I can never remember which. One of those cold states with all the farmers, or whatever.), she’d settled down a bit. But some of that old passion for stories of gods and goddesses and how they messed with humans never left her.

And that’s why my name is Athena.

Apparently Athena was supposed to be the goddess of wisdom. Yeah, like I ever get anything higher than a B- on my report cards. I try to tell my mom that she named me wrong, but she always insists that “grades aren’t any indication of true wisdom,” and that “true knowledge comes from experience.” I think she’s just in denial.

Actually, I think I would make a great Aphrodite. You know, the goddess of love and beauty. Every morning I wake up early to take a shower, blow dry my hair, and then either straighten or curl it. My hair is naturally blonde, but I always have highlights in it. They have to be touched up every so often, and so do my nails and eyebrows, and my makeup supply. I am extremely on top of looking good. As for love, I first noticed in the sixth grade that guys are more than annoying little kids who make rude noises. I’ve been going out with them ever since.

My best friend, Clover (her mom still had some passion for the ‘70’s), is exactly like me. We do everything together: shop, get our hair done, manicures, pedicures, facials. We share everything from dieting methods to beauty products to clothes. We look different—Clover has really dark brown hair and green eyes—but other than that, we are like one person.

No wonder we both decided to run for Shore Queen this year.

Shore Queen—it sounds totally stupid to anyone who’s not from White Sands Beach, California, which is where I live. I know it sounds stupid because my friend Jazanderrah (no idea what her mom had a passion for) moved here last year, and that’s what she said. After she got into the tradition, though, she completely changed her mind.

White Sands Beach is a city that’s right next to this long stretch of—you guessed it—a white sand beach. Anyway, it’s like the most natural and well-kept beach in the entire country, or whatever. So for years, the high school has had this huge dance called The White Sands Beach Party. All the decorations are beach-themed, and all the girls wear long necklaces made of natural seashells with their summer-type dresses. A week before the dance (it’s always on a Friday night in September) the voting results of Shore King and Queen are announced. The King and Queen show up at the dance a little late so everyone can make this huge deal about them. Afterwards, everyone grabs their swimming suits and we run down to the beach to go swimming in the dark. The school is practically on the beach; it’s that close.

So yeah, I guess it is kind of stupid, but it’s been a tradition or whatever for so long that everyone likes it. I wonder how the kids who went to school here when they started doing the dance reacted. They couldn’t just be like, “Oh well, it’s a tradition, you know.” Did they think it was dumb? Probably not, ‘cause in all the movies from back then, the stuff kids thought was cool was actually really lame. The whole idea of the dance was probably thought up by a student committee in like, 1956 or something.

So anyway, Clover and I decided that we should run for Shore Queen. I mean, why wouldn’t we? We were like, the most popular girls in school. We ran against Ashley Donaldson, this really snotty girl who thinks she’s the greatest thing God ever made. So yeah, Clover and I decided that we’d have to beat her. We swore to each other that we wouldn’t get all crabby if one of us won. We just had to not let Ashley be the Shore Queen of 2005. So basically, it was like this Ashley vs. Clover-and-Athena thing, instead of Ashley vs. Clover vs. Athena. Or however that works.

So we all spent two weeks being disgustingly nice to everyone in the school, including the “less-than-socially-accepted” people. I even said hi to Loretta McRae—this really weird girl who talks even weirder, like she’s from the Deep South before the Civil War, or something—one day at lunch. Ew. But I guess it’s like that one guy said, you have to work hard if you want to achieve anything. Who said that? Maybe it was just my dad. Anyway, I hoped he was right.

I was really nervous the Friday that the results would be announced, even though I tried not to show it. I wasn’t too concerned about who would be King, since all three guys that had been nominated were extremely hot. In case you were wondering, girls run for Queen, a.k.a. pick themselves, guys are nominated, a.k.a. other people (usually girls) pick them. It’s more manly, I guess.

Anyway, one of the guys, Nick Miller, was my boyfriend. Of course it’d be awesome if we both won, but I wasn’t picky. Just as long as Ashley and Nick didn’t win.

So there I was, slouching in my chair during Mrs. Pierson’s boring 8th period American History class, waiting for the last two minutes of the day. Finally they came, and our principal’s scratchy voice came on over the equally scratchy intercom.

“And this year’s Shore Queen is…” she paused forever, “Athena Schultz!”

I shrieked so loudly that even Mrs. Pierson, whom I’d always thought was deaf, jumped. I leaped out of my seat and began hopping up and down, yelling “I-won-I-won-I-won!” all in one breath.

By the time I finally shut up, I had missed hearing who Shore King was. The bell rang, and I ran out into the hall to find Clover. She was standing by the locker that we shared, digging through it slowly.

“Did you hear?” I practically shrieked again. “I won!”

“Yeah,” she said, not looking at me.

“Well, who’s the King? I missed it,” I grinned.

“Nick.” She still wasn’t looking at me, and her voice sounded funny, like she had a cold or something.

“Really?! Oh that is so totally awesome! Omigosh, I can’t even believe it, can you?!”

“Nope.”

“Hey, what’s wrong? You’re not mad, are you?”

“No.”

“’Cause I thought we said we wouldn’t get all cranky about it. Right?”

“Right,” she said. But she turned around suddenly and walked toward the doors.

“Hey, aren’t you gonna wait for me?” I called, but she just kept walking.


Nick had a senior meeting after school, so there was no point in waiting for him. I figured I’d talk to him later that night. I liked walking to and from school when the weather was nice, since I didn’t live far away. On my way home I heard so many “Way to go, Athena!'s that I was totally cheerful when I got there. I ran up the steps to our three story white house that my parents had built for themselves and banged the heavy front door on my way in. I was met by both of my parents, which was weird because Dad always worked until seven, or later.

“Athena,” my mom said. “We have to talk.”

“Talk? About what?” My first thought was that someone had died. Probably my Grandma Minnie, who was ninety years old and refused to live anywhere but her ancient little house with her ancient little maid and her ancient (but not so little) tabby cat.

“About your dad and me. Here, let’s sit down in the living room.” Mom’s eyes were red, like she’d been crying.

“What about you?” I was getting confused, but I also had this weird feeling in my stomach, like someone had dropped heavy rocks into it. My mind was racing, thinking of all the uneasy feelings that I’d been feeling the past few months whenever my family had been in the same room together. Feelings that something wasn’t right.

Dad’s abrupt voice broke into my frantic train of thought. “We’re getting a divorce, Athena.”

I couldn’t believe what I’d just heard. My head was spinning so fast I thought I was going to throw up and I couldn’t think straight. A divorce? A divorce? My parents were getting a divorce? They couldn’t. They couldn’t do this to me. And yet, in this strange way, maybe I’d been expecting this. All the fights, the stupid fights about stupid stuff… Mom bought the wrong kind of milk, Dad said he’d be home at seven and came home at eight. They tried to hide it from me, but I noticed anyway. Especially when I’d go downstairs at night for a snack and notice that Dad was sleeping in the guestroom for the third time that week.

But why couldn’t they just grow up and get along? Nick and I had fights sometimes, but they were never that stupid and we always worked it out. Why a divorce? Breaking up a family, that’s what divorce meant! But were we a family?

My thoughts strayed to Dad, always gone at the office, leaving on business trips, which had become more frequent and longer lasting lately. To Mom, always wrapped up in whatever she was doing at the moment: one month Latin dance classes, another month scrap-booking, and another swimming. Were we really a family anymore?

But why couldn’t they just fix it? Why break it up? I mean, it’s like my grandma’s antique vase that I knocked over once. A chip fell out of it, and Dad had to glue it back on. He didn’t just grab a hammer and smash the whole thing to pieces, like “Oh well it already cracked and it can’t stay that way, but what’s the point in fixing it? Let’s just wreck it completely.” After a divorce, they couldn’t, they wouldn’t get back together. No one ever does, it’s all permanent and they separate their lives and everything is ruined forever. How could they do this to me?

Slowly, my thoughts stopped whirling around like a tornado inside my head. Other questions began to come to mind. Besides broken families and ruined marriages, divorce meant someone moving out, and me possibly moving out with them. Where would we live? Probably at the other end of White Sands Beach. I doubted we’d stay in the same neighborhood, even though there were some nice houses for sale. I mean, the last thing you want to see when you open the door to get the morning paper is your ex doing the same. Or worse, your ex’s new “friend.”

And what about the whole custody thing? Would I have to live with Dad half the time, and Mom the other half? How hectic would that be? My stuff would be all over the place, and since I’m not sixteen yet (I’m a junior but the youngest in my class), I don’t have a car to drive myself around. It would be a total mess.

Suddenly I realized that tears were streaming down my cheeks, and had been the entire time I was thinking all that stuff. My parents hadn’t moved at all: Mom was sitting on a footstool close to the armchair I was slumped in. Dad was standing across the room, arms folded across his chest. My mom looked like she wanted to hug me, but was holding back. Like something told her that I needed to be left alone for a minute to get rid of the sick dizziness that was in my head and stomach. I looked at her and saw that she was crying, too.

“Athena, honey,” she said gently. “Are you okay? How do you feel?”
“I don’t know,” I started, and then lost control and started sobbing. My mom put her arms around me and stroked my hair, the same way she did when I was five years old and had just woken up from a nightmare. “Can’t you and Daddy just fix it?”

“Oh, baby, I wish we could. And we’ve tried. It’s just not working. It’s not going to work.”

“Well, couldn’t you try one of those marriage counselor things?” I was ready to grasp at straws.

“We’ve tried, Athena. We’ve tried everything we can think of. It’s just not going to work.” She repeated the phrase as if it were familiar to her. Kind of like she’d used it a lot lately and knew she was going to have to use it a lot more.

“Athena,” my dad sounded really short and tense, which I knew meant he was nervous and concerned. “There’s some more aspects of this that we need to discuss.”

“Oh, Rob, that can wait. We don’t need to throw everything at her at once,” my mom hissed. “For Pete’s sake, give her a chance to take it all in.”

“What?” I asked. “What’s going on?”

Mom started to answer me, but stopped. They both looked so serious that suddenly I was really, really scared. I tried to say something but couldn’t and instead just waited for my mom to finish her sentence.

“Your Dad is moving back to Wisconsin, and you’re going with him.”

I stared at them. Every single emotion I’d been feeling vanished. I only felt mad now. Really, really mad. So mad that I couldn’t even talk. My voice was frozen. When my throat became unstuck, though, it came out loud and strong. “What? WHAT? WHAT? WHY?!”

“We feel it would be best…” Dad kind of trailed off, like he didn’t know what to say. “Your mother needs time to sort things out… to get her life organized…”

“Well what about me? What about MY life? What about Clover, and Nick, and White Sands Beach, and everything?”

“Athena…”

“When are we leaving? When am I leaving?”

“Wednesday.” Mom had started crying again. “Dad has to get to his practice as soon as possible, to get things all set up.”

I could feel the blood rushing to my face. Wednesday? That soon? But the dance! I was supposed to be Shore Queen! I screamed this bit of information at my parents as I started to bawl harder than I had been before.

“I’m sorry, Athena. But it’s essential that I be there as early as possible, and Wednesday is what works. I’m sure your classmates will understand.”

I ran upstairs to my room and flung myself on the bed. I cried for a long, long time.