CHAPTER FOUR
On Tuesday morning, Sara saw Abe at 10:00. This was her second Tuesday, and as far as she was concerned, they were stuck. He wasn’t mean or anything; he just got in the way, took up valuable time. And now—time was running out, so every minute counted. She only had time at all, she was painfully aware, because she’d been suspended. Which wasn’t about to end, even when people started dying.
And that got her going again, about her school. At Olympic, when you were suspended, you were toast. They didn’t want to see you. Period.
And home schooling was like some cruel joke. Sara had given up on the freeze-dried lady whose sphincter tightened right up—she was sure on this—every time Sara tugged at her nose ring. She raised her black sweater to her elbow, checking her bandage. One of her cuts had been deeper than she’d realized, and it wasn’t healing. Mostly, she didn’t want it to start bleeding again. Sara was checking out the waiting room, wondering what to tell her dad if he noticed her bandages—and he probably would, he was almost as observant as she was—when Dr. Stein, the bear-shrink, opened his office door.
It didn’t matter how many times he changed his sport coat, he always looked rumply. His salt and pepper hair was perpetually like totally tousled. His beard, even when he trimmed it, was uneven. His office always had this messy, smoker feel—she could smell his Butternut Burley pipe tobacco from the waiting room—even when it was clean and aired out. And this guy wanted to help her. How could he fight the Beast if he couldn’t even comb his own hair? Huh? It made her mad, like he didn’t take her seriously or something. She was getting tired of this. Yeah, she was awfully tired and so out of time.
Inside, they started out as usual. She just sat there, and he waited. She figured this waiting business burned up maybe three, four minutes every fifty-minute hour.
This time, he didn’t wait; he didn’t even bother to fire up the blackened bowl of his stinky pipe. “Sara, there’s no point in working together if I can’t help you. So far, I don’t think I’m helping.”
“Right.” Sara nodded agreement. “So far, you’re not helping. You’re hurting.” She watched him take this in.
Abe leaned in. Sara liked how all the wrinkly lines in his face turned down when he was really trying. “How am I hurting?” he asked.
“I already explained this. You don’t hear me, or, if you do, you don’t believe what I say.”
“I do believe you, Sara, always, even when I don’t understand. You can count on that. Please, let’s try again.”
Sara thought about this. She wished she knew a different way to talk about it. She didn’t. It came out the way it was; she could only say what she knew. She’d try her best, too, but she didn’t think it would work. He didn’t have a way to think about what she said. “Do you understand Moira?”
“A little…but I’d like to know more.”
“It’s your fate. It’s stronger even than the gods. If you scorn Moira, you absolutely bring Nemesis.” Sara saw she was going too fast. “That’s righteous anger. Very bad news.” She nodded, sure on this. “When you recognize it—Moira, that is—you just know what to do.”
He considered this. “And do you know your Moira?”
“Yeah. Definitely. Fight the Beast. I have to stop him. It’s time. He’s rising. He’s going to kill soon, if he hasn’t killed already. Like Phaea, the monstrous wild white sow, he knows no mercy. Like Cerberus, the three-headed, dragon-tailed dog who guards the gates of Hell, who permits all spirits to enter but none to leave; he isn’t what he seems. The Horseman is coming. I have to find him…warn him. The Beast is rising—”
“Who’s the Horseman?” Abe asked.
“Theseus’ charioteer.” Sara took a breath, continuing. “The Beast is rising. And no one hears me. No one is even listening.”
“I’m listening.”
She shook her head, no. “The sow killed so may Crommyonians that they dared not plough their fields. Theseus hunted down that wild beast and killed it. He didn’t talk about it. It wasn’t a game. When he sailed to Crete, to face the Minotaur, it wasn’t a game. He knew he had to slay a vicious child-eating monster. Whenever the great earth-shaker, Poseidon, gave Theseus a sign, he listened. I need his help. But he doesn’t hear me. I can’t reach him, no matter how hard I try. Has some god struck Theseus deaf? Why are they angry? What has happened? Poseidon isn’t listening. Apollo isn’t listening. Zeus, the all-knowing, he isn’t even listening.”
“I’m listening,” Abe repeated.
“You’re not hearing.”
“Go on.”
“I need the Gods, I need Poseidon, and Apollo. I need Theseus to fight the Beast. It’s not a trick. It’s not a game. I’m not crazy. When I told them at school, they made me see you. They thought I was mental, you know, troubled. When Cassandra failed to pay Apollo for the gift of prophecy, he spit in her mouth, and thereafter, no one believed her. Has Apollo, the truth sayer, spit in my mouth as well? No one even listens to me. The Beast is rising, and he’s going to kill. He’s going to kill my friends. Can you hear that? He may have killed already.”
“How do you know?”
She stood, pressing the toe of her black boot into the carpet. “You don’t have to watch Poseidon’s wild, white bull mount Daedalus’ wooden cow with Pasiphae hidden inside—lusting for this bestial act—to know that he sired the Minotaur.” Sara looked up at him, defiant. “Can you imagine that? Can you understand it?” she eventually asked. He was studying her, she could tell, even when she stared back down at the floor. Maybe that was how he thought about things. Maybe he thought if he studied her long enough, he could get inside her mind or something.
“No, I don’t really understand,” he finally admitted. And then, after a moment, “Sara, could we try another way? Could we talk about your friends…or your family?… If I could learn more about those things, I might have an easier time understanding how to help you find Theseus…”
Sara closed her eyes and started chanting. What was he thinking? What was he doing? She felt a stirring. Shit. She had to do something. It was bad enough when it happened at school. Why was this happening here? Not today. Unh-un. Without another word, Sara turned and left.
Abe rose, then sat down again, watching her go.
***
Whenever she walked Broadway, Corey felt old. She knew every shop and every stoop. Still, Broadway was as mysterious to her as the mountains on the moon.