Free The Immortal by Christopher Pike Page B

waked me up," she said. "Now I'm going to be up all night."
    "I only just got back." I set down my snorkeling equipment.
    "Where did you go?"
    "I visited a few beaches I hadn't seen before."
    "Which ones?" Helen asked, with a note of suspicion.
    "I don't remember their names." I chuckled. "It was all Greek to me."
    "Did you see Tom?"
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    "No. How could I see Tom?"
    "I was just wondering. So you didn't go to Paradise?"
    "I told you, no."
    "No, you just told me that you didn't see Tom. I didn't know if you went to Paradise or not." Helen paused. "How's your chest?"

    "My chest is fine. My breasts are getting a tan."
    "You took off your top?"
    "I almost took off my bottom. I think I will tomorrow."
    "Are you hungry?" Helen asked. "I'd like to get something to eat."
    It was a long time before we were supposed to meet Tom and Pascal at the restaurant. "No."
    "You don't want to go into town?"
    "Later."
    "What are you going to do now?"
    I sat down on my bed. "Rest for a while. Read."
    "For how long?" she asked.
    "I don't know."
    "I was thinking of calling Tom, getting together with him later." She let the remark hang, waiting for me to respond. When I didn't, she asked, "Would you like him to see if Pascal's available?"
    "I don't know. I think he was more interested in you than me."
    "Is that another way of saying you're more interested in Tom than Pascal?" she asked.
    Right then I almost told her that Tom and I had
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    already made plans. I would have if I could have started fresh, without all my lies behind me. I stretched out on the bed.
    I yawned. "You have the imagination."
    "You're the one with the imagination. I don't think your father can write a word without you."
    I closed my eyes. "He wrote wonderfully well for many years when I was a little girl."
    "You were there to help him," Helen said, her tone distant and disturbing. I refused to open my eyes. The more we talked, the more she'd see through me. Tom was right—Helen was not stupid. Her words followed me into my nap. You were there to help him. They made no sense to me, yet they rang with truth.
    Once more I dreamed of paradise—not the beach, but the realm of the gods. Wearing my same white robe, I rode paths of sunlight that led to pleasure gardens unimaginable on the Earth below me. They could be found between the worlds, and they took on form as I passed through them on my way to my destination. Mount Olympus was vast, made up of many dimensions. Yet all these realities were connected. For all flowed from the sun, and had as their benefactor Apollo. Legend now said that he was born directly of the light from the eternal flame, and not from the loins of Zeus. But who could say with any certainty? Apollo wouldn't, he seldom spoke at all; and Zeus was long gone—to where no one knew.
    But I did not ascend the staircase of the sun to seek pleasure but, rather, to worship at the secret altar of 80
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    Apollo that I had built for myself out of the material of mortal dreams. It existed on the dark side of the moon, and I had to pass into the shadow of that great orb to enter it. Ah, that was my great secret—that I worshiped the god of light in darkness. No one knew, except perhaps Apollo himself. But of that I wasn't certain. I only knew that when I paid him obeisance, my power to create grew very great.
    I found my altar empty. The flowers I had left on my previous visit were dust that stirred on the cold wind that blew for all time from the empty blackness of space. I had brought fresh flowers with me, from the gardens of Leto, and these I placed on my altar as I bent my head low and prayed humbly for fresh dreams to give to my human devotees, visions to replace the ones I had taken from them. Visions of love and laughter, of song and dance, of adventures bold and beautiful—enough to stir life in the depth of even the most oppressed soul. The gods needed them as much as the mortals, if not more. ...
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    Chapter 5
    My