Free Three Girls and a God by Clea Hantman

those shoes with no pretty points or tiny heels—they were horrible. My “sneakers” were soaked through and squeaked with every painful step I took. And Josh, well, Josh hadn’t looked at me once the whole time. It’s no wonder—I was soaked to my insides, and my hair was flatter than a nymph’s in Hades. I missed the Beautorium!
    The tall trees around us blocked any possible small bits of sunlight that might have been able tosqueak through the rain clouds, so it was just dark, which only made it feel colder. And you know what, it was uphill! Josh had said the first part was flat, but it wasn’t.
    Some of the more serious kids were ahead, and Polly and I were back in the last pack of students, struggling to keep up. Everyone was silent. All I could hear was the roar of the wind echoing against the trees.
    “I can’t…do it…. I can’t…run…anymore,” Polly said very quietly through short, deep breaths.
    “Me neither,” I said, and we fell behind the last group in an instant. We began to walk.
    “I…hate…you,” she said, barely.
    “Fine, I don’t care. Your own fault. Allergic to paint,” I said. “Hey…do you have a mirror…in your pack?”
    “What? I’m dying over here, and you want a mirror? Are you insane?”
    “No, I just have a gift,” I said.
    “Excuse me?”
    “I can see the beautiful in a bad situation. The beautiful in this situation is, well, if I can get a mirror and a little mousse and maybe a towel, is, um, me.”
    “Grrrrrgrgrrgrgrgrhhhh!” My sister had let out one of those primal wails, the kind that would be perfectly acceptable in, say, the Peloponnesian Forests, but here, in the empty wooded lot behind NovaHigh, was totally and completely unacceptable. You’d think she would have had her earthly etiquette down by now.
    “Polly, please, no yelling,” I said.
    “No one can hear us, Era, we’ve fallen behind the crowd. We’re in the forest. It’s raining and windy. And we’re going to fail! Ggggrrrhhhhhhhhh! ”
    “So, do you have a mirror, maybe a hairbrush?”
    “Era, my silly, vain sister, my mystically blind little sister, do you have any idea how infuriating you are? Do you understand the consequences of failure?”
    “You don’t have to call me names.”
    “Era, listen to me and listen good.” She stopped walking, and I broke into a slow jog to keep up. “Your priorities are haywire. We are in the pouring rain, on the weekend, running for what seems like all eternity, failing one of our classes because you, you thought another random boy cute. So cute that you would join a class you have no desire in taking, a class that you have no business being in, a class that goes against your very nature, your very being, your…very…soul.”
    My hair clung to my face for dear life. Polly’s just looked like it weighed her down, her shoulders slouched toward the ground. We began to walk again. “I didn’t sign you up for this class. For that, you can only blame yourself.”
    “No, I can blame you,” she said, practically hyper-ventilating. “I can blame you because once again, Ihave to take care of my sisters….” But before she had even finished the last s in sisters, she knew. I didn’t have to say it.
    But I did, anyway.
    “ Take care of your sisters, huh? Well, I see you, too, have learned a lot here on earth. Because that is the one old habit you are supposed to be correcting.”
    She looked solemn. Beaten down. Utterly exhausted and totally distressed. I felt horrible. She then said, “You’re right. How can I criticize you for falling back into your old ways when I, too, surrender so easily to my nasty habits?”
    “Right. See. Now, let’s stop fighting. Do you have a mirror or not?”
    “Oh my goddess! You are insufferable! At least I realize the error of my ways, but you, you, you!”
    “Look, Pol, Daddy didn’t tell me not to care how I looked, he told me to not blindly follow others. And face it, I didn’t blindly follow anyone into