Eddie read and re-read her second-quarter schedule when Polanski hurled himself into the desk behind her.

Besides the police officer seated in the back corner, they were the only two students who'd arrived early to Classical Mythology. Eddie had arrived very early; too early for her liking, but most of the after-school extracurriculars called for an early attendance. She would have rather showed up half an hour before class started than have points docked for arriving five minutes late.

Eddie twisted herself to look back at Polanski. His head rested on his arms, his body hunched forward, his eyes closed. He looked as if he'd been asleep for days.

"Wanna hang after class?" she asked. "Heard RC's havin' a party."

With his head still down, Polanski knocked twice. It was their personal code for yes.

"In-N-Out after?"

Two knocks.

"Can I copy your homework?"

Polanski slammed his hand sown on the desk and sat up. He stretched his arms above his head and sighed heavily through his nose. The police officer sent him a pensive look.

One knock was their personal code for no.

"How 'bout you do your own damn work and leave me be." It wasn't a question. Polanski was tired of being Eddie's go-to when it came to her repetitive procrastination. It wasn't hard to Google the cross-cultural influences between Mesopotamian myth and Hesiod's Theogony or the theory behind the "Great Goddess."

Eddie blew out a sigh with indignation and turned back around. She scrubbed the back of her shaved head and read her schedule again. With this year being her last and having flunked most of her classes last quarter (last school-year, inevitably), Eddie's schedule bristled with classes she'd already taken and a number of study sessions. Senior year was going to conspire to destroy her.

Eddie could feel Polanski messing with her gauges, flicking the back part that dangled, while she squinted at the board to read the day's class agenda. Without her glasses, the teacher's furious handwriting looked like jaunty scribbles, barely readable.

"What are we doing today?" she asked him.

Polanski hummed and moved on to rub the back of Eddie's head, brushing his calloused fingers over the prickly hairs. "We have a speaker. Some guy named Doctor Ian Jenkins. Senior Curator." He cupped his hands around her ears and blew on the back of her neck. The police officer cleared her throat and Polanski reared back. Public displays of affection were against school rules.

Eddie narrowed her eyes at the white board. She could just make out the name Jenkins.

The school bell rang. Polanski kicked the holding basket beneath Eddie's desk. Eddie twisted around and slapped the back of his hand. The police officer started to stand, but thought against it when students began come in. Desk legs scrapped the floor, backpacks and messenger bags were carelessly dropped, notebooks and binders slapped worktops. It all gave Eddie a sort of forgone nostalgia that made her nerves splinter and her chest ache.

For the next few to many minutes of class, students chattered with each other about what they'd done over winter break. Eddie tried to eavesdrop, but someone cuffed the back of her head. She muttered a string of curses and looked up.

Looming above her was Tabitha Limner, nicknamed Pinhead, not for her stupidity, but for the plethora of piercings she had on her face.

"Hey," she said. "You goin' to RC's party tonight?"

Eddie rested her feet on the holding basket beneath the desk in front of her. "Maybe," she said.

"Definitely. We'll be there." Polanski leaned forward, his breath warm against Eddie's ear. He gave Tabitha a wicked grin. Tabitha returned that grin with a wicked one of her own. She patted Eddie's shoulder and moved on, making quick stops to chitchat with a few classmates.

The students kept coming in. Polanski kept screwing with Eddie's gauges. Conversations kept going on. The late bell rung, but still, the teacher never showed. Dr. Ian Jenkins wasn't the teacher instructed to teach the class. Mrs. Henderson was. She was this tall, tan-skinned, wide-eyed woman who had a history of living in a handful places around the world. She was fluent in four languages and had a thing for dates and insignificant events that may or may not have actually happened.

When things started to get loud and chaotic, the police officer stood and cupped her hands around her mouth. She shouted, "Ladies and gentlemen! Please, have a seat. The professor will be here momentarily."

Just as she said momentarily, a very old and very fat man stepped into the classroom. As he made his way to the front, every student watched him. He was this hunched, wrinkled thing. The veins on the back of his hands were blue and bulging, the fat under his chin doubled. The messenger bag he had swelled with filed papers and worn book edges.

As he passed through the first aisle, Eddie thought he smelt of musk and something of jasmine and vanilla when he brushed past her. It was a nicer version of that unexplainable old people smell.

This old professor swept his bag off his shoulder and dropped it onto Mrs. Henderson's desk.

"My name," he said, turning to face the class, "is Ian Dennis Jenkins. Mister or Doctor Jenkins is fine." His voice was heavily accented. Eddie couldn't tell whether it was Cockney or Estuary English, but Dr. Jenkins sounded a lot like the celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay.

Dr. Jenkins continued to talk. He talked about himself — his time as Senior Curator, his expertise on Ancient Greece, his specialization in Ancient Greek sculpture. He talked about the number of books and the hundred of articles he'd published. He talked about how he lead excavations at the British Museum and that he'd been involved in the debate over the ownership of the Elgin Marbles.

Because everyone knew what Elgin Marbles was.

Eddie flipped up her hood up and buried her head in her arms. Someone's earbuds blasted music on the other side of the room. Someone kept kicking the wall near the back. No one was listening to what Dr. Jenkins had to say about himself, so the police officer had to make some kind of motivational speech about listening and the such.

Instead of explaining what Elgin Marbles was, Dr. Jenkins thanked the police officer and announced that he would be putting on a movie. At that, the class turned their tides. Everyone seemed all too eager to have Dr. Jenkins shut up.

The "movie" was a forty-two-minute-long YouTube video of Young Dr. Jenkins talking about the Greek gods; how they were like, their attributions to Western civilization, and how the Romans essentially borrowed their gods to form their own (give or take a few). The current and old Dr. Jenkins sat at Mrs. Henderson's desk. He was either taking attendance or checking whether the class was paying attention to his younger self explain Zeus's frivolous prostituting.

Polanski fell asleep halfway through, but Eddie watched it until the end.

The hour-and-twenty-minute after-school period went by faster than Eddie thought. Since there was no bell scheduled to go off at 5:10 p.m. and since Dr. Jenkins was the class substitute teacher, the police officer was the one who dismissed the students. They all filed out through the door, chatty and ignorant. The police officer wished Dr. Jenkins to have a good day and left. Dr. Jenkins mumbled something incoherent in reply.

Eddie stayed behind, so Polanski did too. As he leaned against the wall by the door, Eddie consulted the professor about the chthonic deities. They small-talked for a while, never staying on one subject for very long before one of them changed it with a renewal of thought. It went on like that for most of their conversation.

Dr. Jenkins gave Eddie his business card and bid her a farewell.

Eddie, keeper of her jejune reputation at Kingsmen High, did not thank the professor. Instead, she crumpled the card he gave her, shoved it in her back pocket, and turned her back on him to meet Polanski by the door. Together they left without another word.

"So..." Polanski bumped shoulders with Eddie as they made their way toward the pickup circle at the front of the school. "The fuck was that about?"

Eddie looked offended and let out an exasperated laugh, a single ha?. "What? The doctor?"

"Yes, the fuckin' doctor." He emphasized the word doctor like it was an insult.

"Come on, don't be a shit-head." Polanski shrugged, like he couldn't help it. "But, no. We were just talkin' about Hecate."

"Hay-who?" He raised an eyebrow at her.

"Hek-ate. Hek-uh-tee? Hek-it?" Eddie brushed her ear against her shoulder. "Well, somethin' like that. Basically, she's the goddess of magic and crossroads and necromancy and stuff."

"Magic," Polanski said. He said it like a huff, like a huh. "Like the crazy shit your mom does when she ain't huffin' paint in her studio?"

Eddie faked a laugh. "First off, she's my step-mom. And she doesn't huff paint fumes, she smokes white sage. It helps with her headaches and —" she made circular gestures with her hand by her ear — "sinus infection. Second, it's not magic, it's witchcraft. There's a difference."

Polanski snorted and said, sarcastically, "Right, because that's so much better."

"I"m serious!" Eddie smacked his arm with the back of her hand. "I told him about the whole psychic business. Oh, don't give me that look, Polanski. Prediction-trading is popping up a lot more than you'd think. Anyway, he told me that Hecate was the Crone Goddess of Wicca and the third phase of the Moon Goddess."

Polanski looked like he wasn't sure what he was supposed do, so he scrunched up his nose and gave a passive shrug.

"And then he told me that I was lucky. Said that all her children were psychic-bound." Polanski gave her that look, so Eddie elaborated. "Her as in Hecate."

"He called you that wench's daughter?"

Eddie, for a moment, was shocked at the ferocity in Polanski's voice. She expected him to have at least a little remorse, especially when she knew that he didn't even know who Hecate was. She didn't understand why he seemed so mad at some fairytale god(dess)head he knew nothing about.

"Technically," she said, "a daughter of Hecate refers to female psychics. Since Amery did teach me a few things, I suppose I can be considered a daughter of Hecate. Plus the whole Wicca thing, too."

Polanski rolled his eyes. "Great."

"Oh, hey!" She smacked him again. "Don't be sarcastic. Being a daughter of Hecate also means I'm a demigod. So, ha!"

Eddie laughed because it was rediculous. Polanski said nothing, but his face said everything. Or, really, it said everything and nothing at the same time. Eddie wasn't sure what to make of it, so she smacked him again and got him to ooff.

"Come on," he said finally, and slithered an arm around Eddie's waist, pulling her to him. "In-N-Out's still open if you're hungry."

Eddie put her arm around his waist and looked up at him, bemused. "First RC's and then In-N-Out. I thought that was the plan."

He untangled himself from her and trotted ahead, then turned around and opened up his arms. "Fuck RC!" This he hollered to her. "That guy can go fuck himself!" This he hollered to the heavens.

"I bet he would." Eddie jogged to catch up with Polanski, who brought up a hand to rub the back of her head. "So, what? We ain't goin' now?"

Polanski bit the nail edge of his thumb, tearing the little bit of skin off. He shook his head. "Nah, nah. I told Pinhead we were comin.' Might as well go."

"See!" She smacked him in the stomach. The hand that was on her head dropped to cover the sore spot. "Who else is coming? Alice? Pom? Exo? Newman? Jester?"

"Jester!" Eddie couldn't tell if Polanski was horrified or delighted. He flicked her ear. "We'll get ready before we go. I'll call up Marsh to get us a ride."

"Where is it anyway?" she asked.

He gave her his wicked grin. "You'll see when you get there."