AUTHOR’S NOTE: I have been working on this chapter for WAAY TOO LOOONG! I’m a busy high schooler, so I guess that can be my excuse, if it can be accepted. 
Stupid-tupid homework. But I hope you enjoy! I think the first chapter came out well over a month ago… THE LONG-ANTICIPATED OR MAYBE NOT ACTUALLY ANTICIPATED AT ALL CHAPTER OF POMEGRANATE IS UNLEEEEEASHED! And now you can read it.
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The basement is pretty much my “evil lair.” It’s where I keep my books, sit and think, do homework, and keep a secret stash of pomegranates. They’re my favorite fruit, and have been ever since I tried one when I was three. The little cooler sits in the corner of the basement, which is just one room, and not really that big. Inside the cooler is a few ice packs and my stash. Pomegranate season is from about October to January. The unfortunate thing is that, once that time is over, they’re very hard to find. The other bad thing is that I constantly have to replenish my stash, because they’re so good that I continuously eat them. On the far wall, I have my desk, covered in various papers and books, laptop sitting slightly right of the center. The laptop, of course, is black, and a Dell. I hate Mac computers. Too many times have I put up with the loading wheel, or Spinny Wheel of Doom, whilst working at school, so I refuse to use a Mac anywhere else. Against the right-hand wall, concealing the cooler from view, is a bookcase which stands about four feet tall, four shelves inside it, each filled with books. Most of the books are science fiction. Some old school projects, such as a children’s book I wrote for Spanish class, were shoved in there as well. Along the top of the bookcase there are stacks of more books, not too tall so that they don’t topple. Besides that, there never was much else in the room, besides a lamp to the left of the desk and a beige carpet on the floor, just brown enough to not clash with the white walls. Of course, it was difficult to see the walls anyway, because they’re covered in posters. The posters were movies, books, authors, musicians, bands, and plays. I’m sure that, at some point, you could see more than a square foot total of the wall, but now that’s not exactly the case.
If ever I truly wished to quit school and live in a hole in the ground, perhaps with the dead people, for the rest of my maybe quite long life, it would have been the day Apollo destroyed my hope to ever be good enough to prove to my brothers that I could get Persephone’s attention, and that she wasn’t just some blonde (she was brown-haired, anyway) like Demeter (also brown-haired), who cared about nothing more than being pretty and smelling flowers.
Now, most would hope to believe that Apollo is a really cool guy. And sure, he is, but he’s also a not-very-cool guy. If there is one clique in the school he doesn’t like, it’s definitely ours, not that I would call us a clique. We’ll take nearly anyone. Apollo is strong, covered in muscles, on the football team (among others), an archery champion, a horseback rider and a general heart throb to most females: he is popular. All the teachers love him for no reason, and all the students love him for every reason.
But I don’t.
It was a Friday in mid-October, and the days were getting dark and the air was getting cold. I had missed the day before because I was sick, and thus missed a day of gym class. The teacher told me to come in after school, but I did not know that this meant watching basketball try-outs and then playing a little once the candidates went out to run a mile around the field. Nobody noticed me sitting on the bleachers until I stayed behind when they went out.
The teacher threw me a ball and headed into his office, while his assistant went outside to watch the kids trying out for the team. I, a non-athlete and a non-carer for the sport, half-tried to shoot some baskets. I did just enough to make sure the coach could hear me and think I was being a good boy in detention. And maybe just six minutes later, Apollo came into the gym, sweating just barely and sipping a water bottle. He spotted me and came over.
“What’s up, Hades? Trying out for the team? Were you late?” he asked, trying to start conversation.
“No, I’m here for detention.”
“Chewed gum?”
“I was sick. It’s not technically a detention, but I’m pretty sure it’s the same thing I’d be doing if it were one.”
He watched me shoot the ball and miss horribly. Apollo then went over to pick up the ball and throw it back to me.
Apollo was wearing a light blue wife beater and yellow basketball shorts. His golden hair caught the light in that godly way that lets you know he’s right up there with Zeus when you’re talking popularity. His muscles were smooth and if I didn’t live with Zeus my entire life, I would have been amazed muscles could get that big. But it was no longer all that impressive to me, until I looked down at my own stick-like arms. I was pathetic in comparison. I was pathetic without comparison! And the black ink on my fingers and palms, the black t-shirt and basketball shorts I wore for gym class purposes, and the somehow white hair on this teenager’s head, tips still black from the last time I tried dying it, just made me look even more pathetic. I had the appearance of an emo little boy. I wasn’t all that little, but in comparison to the men I lived with, I was nothing. Even Poseidon was cooler than me. Poseidon was on the swim team, and had some friends there. He even sometimes got women. Artemis called them nymphs, for she believed they were only on the swim team for the “sexy men” like Poseidon (I cannot bear to call my own brother sexy). She also had a theory that the girls only felt bad for him, for having a brother like me, and for being the out-shined younger brother of Zeus. So, in other words, I was nothing, when you looked at the people around me.
The man of hot muscles and popularity threw me the basketball. I did not catch it. It slipped between my hands and bounced away from me. I went to go get it, as two other boys came in, panting from the effort of running a mile. Who knew there was anyone almost as fast as Apollo?
“Hey, guys, want to play a quick game with me and Hades while we wait for the others to get back?” Apollo asked them with friendliness in his voice.
The boys looked me over skeptically, then agreed to play. Apollo would be on my team. The others would be their own.
Knowing nothing about the game of basketball, I was sure to lose us the match. My teammate scored all the baskets and never threw me the ball. I didn’t mind, of course, but it was mildly embarrassing. All these people I’d never known were now getting the first impression that I was a wimp and a loser, as they filed back into the gym one to three at a time.
Then the door to the gym opened and I saw that familiar light brown hair pass through the doorway, followed by the rest of her elegant body. She glanced my way, and I was trapped looking at her. She kept walking, though, to the gym teacher’s office. Persephone shifted her backpack to the table outside and opened up the outermost pocket, took out an envelope, re-zipped it, and went inside. I continued to watch the door. Apollo wasn’t about to pass me the ball, anyway…
But finally, without me even realizing it, the orange ball was rocketed towards me and I had only a second to react before it made contact with my chest and knocked me to the ground. I had only the time to say, “Wha–?”
All the boys trying out for basketball laughed. I could not understand why. Sure, I had fallen on the ground, but was there actually something to laugh at?
“Dude, are you okay?” one questioned me through a fit of laughter as I shakily tried to stand up.
I wanted to answer yes, but I didn’t speak. Apollo was laughing harder than the rest of them.
“I called heads up to you, Hades! What was that? You should join the comedy club,” he told me between chuckles of his dying fun. I was glaring in his direction. Comedy? Me? No. But that wasn’t what made me mad. I knew nothing about the rules of basketball, but it would certainly make sense to make sure that a person is making eye contact with you when you pass them the ball.
Deciding it was no use to attempt to send darkness across the court to him, I looked away, towards the coach’s office, to make sure Persephone hadn’t seen that. But she was watching from the doorway, and at just that moment the teacher appeared behind her. She turned to tell him what had happened, and the coach made his way over to us.
“What in blazes just happened, boys?” he fired at us all.
“Nothing, Coach, Hades just took a fall. It was nothing,” said one of the boys Apollo had asked to play with us.
Something about the coach’s expression made me believe that he knew it wasn’t true. Something hidden in his athletic clothing, behind where the whistle fell on his front, had a hunch that I didn’t just fall for no reason. A coach is supposed to install discipline in the boys and girls who make up his teams. But this teacher only taught me that, similarly to how I’ve had to learn this the hard way every year, nobody cares unless your head cracks open and your liver explodes on the pavement. ”Well, be more careful. We can’t afford injuries in the real games,” was his only response.
And with that, the gym teacher, complete with stupid mustache and disgustingly amazing fitness in his old age, headed off to his office.
“Jeez, Hades, you almost got us in trouble,” Apollo said to me, slapping me on the back. I looked up at his blizzard blue eyes, and I burned with hatred.
“You shouldn’t have passed to me if I wasn’t paying attention,” I tried to tell him, but he only might have heard me, as he turned to his buddies and said:
“What’s he even doing here, out in the sunlit areas of the school? Bohemians don’t play sports.” Mockery.
“I’m not artistic, and I told you I’m here because I missed class.”
Nobody heard me. I retreated to the bleachers, until try-outs were finished and we were all allowed to go into the locker room and change back into day clothes.
My locker opened smoothly on the sixth try, at which point most of the basketball boys were close to/fully naked and/or talking about how many girls they banged last night at the party to which I, fortunately, was never invited. In my efforts to keep the amount of male bodies I saw to a minimum, I tried to have myself facing a corner and keeping my eyes on the ground. When I was just poking my head through the hole at the top of my shirt, a big, strong hand came down on my shoulder.
“Hades!”
“Apollo.”
“Look, man, I wanted to talk about me passing you the ball earlier,” he attempted to start off coolly. I knew there was more to the story.
I turned to face him. “You mean, you want to talk about how you threw a ball at me in such a way that I would fall and get hurt.”
He didn’t seem to have actually listened to what I said, as he followed through with, “Yeah. Right. So. I’m sorry about that, man. You see, sometimes I get negligent of other people’s abilities, and my competitiveness kicks in.”
“I don’t really know where you’re going with this.”
After a few tries at hinting towards the direction he wanted the conversation to go, he just made a “whatever” face and moved on. “You saw that girl walk into the gym?”
Something set fire inside my chest, for just a fraction of a second. “Persephone, yeah.”
Apollo’s next words came out in a fluent, quick sentence that summed up the entire afternoon: “Yeah, keep your hands off her.”
“Excuse me?” Playing stupid can go either of two ways: The persecutor will drop the subject, or the persecutor will trudge onward.
“She’s just not into guys like you. It would end much better if you would just let her go on her way.”
“I don’t understand what you’re saying.”
“She could do much better.” Apollo’s eyes blazed with possessiveness as he closed in on me and added, “Like me.”
It was only then that I realized how the locker room was mostly empty, and in a minute or two we would be the only ones left.
He went on: “I just think that you should be going for someone more in your league. Maybe Artemis, or Hestia, would be good for you. I just don’t want to see you get your heart broken. You know, a man looking out for a man.”
I didn’t say anything back to him. In a hypothetical situation, I suppose I could settle for Artemis, but she was too tom boyish for me. I wanted something more feminine. But to stoop so low as Hestia would just be pathetic. And who was Apollo to tell me who I could and couldn’t like?
“You still don’t get what I’m saying?” I decided to play it smart and shake my head. He sighed, frustrated with me. How could he possibly be more blunt? “Persephone is into men who can protect her, men who can bring her places, someone a little taller, with a little more muscle– well, a lot more muscle — on his arms, a man who can prove himself in the world. You just aren’t any of those things. You gonna just have to… you know… beat it, never look at her again, and stay away at all costs.” His last words came at the same extreme speed as the summary sentence.
“That’s a blow to my self esteem,” I muttered.
“I wouldn’t lie to you.”
And with that, Apollo clapped me one more time on the shoulder, and left the locker room, calling back at me, “Just think about what I said, all right, Hades?”
Oh, yeah, I’d think about what he said. I’d think about it every night before I fell asleep, for the rest of forever, if I couldn’t help myself to do otherwise.
And this is why I believed my hopes to have been dropped, right where I had stood, in that locker room, and swept away by the janitor later in the evening. I was a useless, wimpy boy, who wasn’t good at sports, wasn’t good at art, wasn’t good at music, wasn’t good at video games, wasn’t good at girls. What was I ever going to do with myself?
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