× Mercury

"Hello, darling!" my grandmother said through the phone.

"Hey!" I responded. "What's up? Anything new over there?"

"Well," she started to say. I heard a gust of wind through the receiver and guessed she was outside, probably attending to her guardian. "That is why I'm calling you, actually. I had a strange visitor last night, a handsome young boy asking for you."

I probably would have scolded her for opening the door to strangers at night, but I was too overwhelmed by what she said after to discipline. My heartbeat speed up and my hands started to shake. Grandma didn't need to give me a name of the boy because there was only one boy I knew who was crazy enough to go out of his way to find me.

"Lynn? Are you alright, dear?"

"Yes! Yeah, I'm fine," I managed to say as I started digging in my dresser to find an outfit to wear for the day, but my hands didn't seem to work right. My head didn't seem to be communicating with my fingers as I picked up shirt after shirt absentmindedly. "What- what did you tell him? Did he give you a name?"

"Yes, he did. Oh, what was it? Braeden... Brenton... No, maybe it was Brandon-"

"Was it Bradley?"

"Yes! Bradley was his name! Oh, he looked like a lost puppy when I told him you left to London. Why wouldn't you tell him you were leaving?"

Because I had broken away from his trance and saw how much of a pig he really was, I thought. Why would Bradley go to my grandma's place? And why would he be looking for me now? It had been almost two weeks since I left, so what happened to make him realize that I wasn't by his side anymore? What made him come crawling back to little ol' me when he had other girls on the side?

"I just- I..." I fumbled. "Did he say why he was looking for me?"

"No," she stated simply. "But he looked eager to find you."

I decided just to change the topic of discussion. Grandma didn't need to know who Bradley was in my life and I was going to keep it that way. We chatted about what we usually talked about, her garden and the annoying dog from next door and I told her how much I missed her.

When there was a knock on my door, I finally had to tell Grandma that I needed to leave.

"Sure, dear. But I really think you should get a hold of that Bradley fella," she reminded.

"Okay, Grandma." Like that was going to happen, I thought.

"Oh! And have a wonderful first game tomorrow."

"I will. Bye, I love you."

"Goodbye, darling. I love you, too."

I hung up the phone and and padded across the wooden flooring to the door just as there was another knock. I had to blink a couple of times once I opened the door to make myself believe who was actually standing there.

He was in a plain white shirt and light blue jeans and Converse. His hair wasn't styled up like it usually was, but sticking up in every direction like he had been running his fingers through it all morning. He also had a laptop under his arm along with a notebook and a backpack over his shoulder.

"What are you doing here?" I asked as I quickly tried to run my fingers through my hair to make it a little presentable.

Niall had made it pretty clear last Saturday that he was going to keep his distance from me, so I was rather confused as to why he was at my door so early in the morning

"I need your help," Niall explained a little bitterly, like he didn't want to admit that he would ever come to me asking for help. "With English. I haven't done anything with the assignment that's due today."

I tried to gather my thoughts on what he was talking about. There was an English assignment due today? What day was it even? Friday! I looked over at the clock to see what time it was and saw that we had two hours before class started.

"You haven't done any of it?" I asked him.

He shook his head. "I don't even know where to begin. I don't know anything about this Greek shit."

I sighed and tilted my head back. My plan for the day was to sleep in. I was up late last night and had a hard time staying asleep when I finally fell into slumber. Of course, that plan had diminished as soon as my grandma called, but I still wanted to be mad at Niall so I was just going to blame him - I was still pretty pissed at him for kissing me, after all.

"Okay," I said as I grabbed my laptop from my desk. "Come in, I'll help you."

Niall looked surprised that I actually agreed to help, but he stepped inside nevertheless.

I grabbed my English book from my backpack and sat down on the floor, flipping through the pages until I got to the right one.

"Did you take these?" Niall asked.

I looked over to see what he was talking about to find him leaning on my bed. He was looking at my photographs I had taken back home that I had tacked on the wall.

"Yeah."

Niall shifted his weight on the bed to look at the other photos. "They're really good," he said. He pointed to one of the photographs of a river in California, moss was covering the branches of trees and rocks. There were large boulders that went along the water and toward the sun peeking through the trees. "I like this one."

"Thank you," I said as I stretched my legs out in front of me.

I placed the textbook on my lap. Niall came over and took the seat next to me and placed his laptop and notebook beside him.

"Okay," I started. "The assignment was to write a short essay about a Greek myth and how it represents your life, or a time in your life. Have you, at the very least, found a myth you want to use?"

"No..." Niall said. "What did you choose?"

I hesitated on answering him. Aside from my brother, Coach Sharp, and my grandma, no one knew what happened to my parents. Three people was a long enough list, but I didn't find any harm to tell Niall what my essay was on considering he was clueless when it came to this stuff.

"Prometheus and Pandora," I answered him truthfully, but didn't explain more to it.

Niall looked at me, but I kept my face turned to the book in my lap. I didn't want to give anything away. It was hard enough to write a paper on the incident, I didn't want to relive it in front of Niall.

"That's what I need help with," Niall said, changing the subject. "All I need to know is a story to go off of."

"How about I go down the list giving you short summaries and then you can pick one you can write about."

"Whatever."

The list seemed never ending as I told him short synopsis about each one. He kept making comments, some rude and some sexual, which I found amusing for the most part, but also annoying. As I went down the list, I distantly noticed him getting closer to read the book along with me.

He smelled really good, like a woodsy smell. He was leaning on one hand that was resting behind me on the floor as he leaned. Once and awhile I felt his hair tickle my cheek and small shivers would run up my arms.

"How about Alcestis?" I asked him, pointing my finger to the person on the list. "As Apollo was in exile from Olympus, he enjoyed the generosity of Admetus. As a reward, Apollo had settled that Admetus can live past his time of death if he can find someone willing to die in his place. Alcestis, his wife, agreed to take his place when no one else would." Niall looked at me, slight confusion on his face. "She killed herself, Niall. For her husband to live on."

Niall's eyes were dark and unreadable. He leaned away from me and the warmth he was radiating left with him. "I'm not doing that one," he simply said but his eyes were still hooded.

I nodded. "Okay, how about King Midas?" I asked him, pointing to his name on the list. "Dionysus and his followers were out walking when one of them stumbled away. Midas found him and returned him to the God, who offered Midas a single wish. He wished that everything he touched would turn to gold." I paused and looked at Niall to see if he was even paying attention. He was fiddling with a loose string on his jeans, but he seemed like he was listing. "Midas loved his new power, but he eventually realized that everything he touched turned to gold, like his food and drinks. He was starving when Midas begs Dionysus to take back the wish."

"That's it?" Niall asked, looking over at me. "That's vacuous. What's the moral of the story?"

I shrugged. "Lots of things. Like one being that money can't buy happiness. Another one is that you should be careful what you wish for."

Niall reached over and grabbed his laptop. I watched him as be brought up a Word document and typed in the title "King Midas". I looked away as he started typing away, knowing that it wasn't my business to know what the story was about in his life.

I stood up as Niall continued to type and grabbed my things to change into for the day. "I'm going to go take a quick shower, are you going to be here when I get back?"

He looked up from his laptop at me. "I'm not sure, maybe?"

"Well, if not, I'll see you in English," I told him as I stepped out the door.

"Lynn?" Niall said from behind me. I turned to look at him. "Thanks for... helping me."

I just nodded at him before I closed the door behind me. I made sure I was quick, I didn't much like Niall being alone in my room, but I didn't have much choice. I needed a shower before class started in a half hour.

Once I stepped out of the shower, I quickly dried off and put on a pair of jeans and a simple black shirt before grabbing my things and rushing out of the room and up to the third floor. When I got to the door of my room, I stopped. I could hear voices coming from the other side.

I slowly turned the knob and opened it, peering inside suspiciously. Niall still sat on the floor, his back to me, and Chloe was sitting next to him, reading something from his laptop.

"I don't freaking know," Chloe was saying as I shut the door behind me. "There's so many weird names and different places, my God, like why is this even important? What the hell is the Trojan War anyways?"

"A war about... condoms?" Niall guessed, making Chloe laugh. Her short blonde hair was pushed to the side with a butterfly clip and she was wearing a revealing pink top and jean shorts.

I had to hold myself back from snapping at them. How could they not know about the Trojan War? I mean, apparently, the Trojan Horse was an actual thing that happened in actual history. Were they sick when they were talking about that in their History class?

"You know, I wouldn't doubt it," Chloe agreed. "There is a dude who ate his own children and a lady who was born from sea foam. Naturally, there has to be a war about protection like that. Zeus was a manwhore, someone had to of complained about all the babies he was making."

"The entirety of Greek mythology is just Zeus shagging anything in sight, and that's how Europe was made."

I ignored their ignorant chatter and walked around them to my side of the room. I put my toiletries back on my desk and threw my clothes I slept in inside the laundry bin to be washed.

"Cupid was kind of a dick, too," Chloe continued after her laughter had subsided. "I mean, he brings this chick to his place and tells her that she isn't allowed to look at him? He leaves her alone all day and only comes back to spoon her at night. They don't even have sex."

"That's because he wants to know if he has her trust," I retorted. Chloe and Niall both looked at me in sync, their smiles fading from their faces. "Psyche eventually disobeys and looks at him, which broke his trust. She has to go thought these tasks to earn Cupids loyalty back. It's quite a beautiful story, really."

Chloe nodded at me slowly. "Fascinating," she said in a way that clearly meant the opposite.

I just looked away and grabbed my backpack from the floor and started putting my stuff inside.

"I'm going to English," I tell them as I reached down in front of them to grab my textbook. Then I walked out the door.