FIFTY-NINE
The Terror That Is Middle School
Before I could plummet to my death, someone grabbed me and pulled me back.
‘Whoa, there, cowboy,’ Sam said.
She was dressed in a new peacoat – navy blue this time – with dark jeans and boots. Blue wasn’t my favourite colour, but it made her look dignified and serious, like an air-force officer. Her headscarf was freckled with snow. Her axe wasn’t at her side; I guessed it was tucked in the backpack over her shoulder.
She didn’t look surprised to see me. Then again, her expression was preoccupied, her gaze stuck somewhere in the distance.
My senses started to adjust. Jack was still in my hand. For some reason, I didn’t feel any exhaustion from his recent slaying of the giant sisters.
Below us, the patch of asphalt was not exactly a playground – more like a holding area between school buildings. Inside the chain-link fence, a few dozen students huddled in cliques, chatting in doorways or pushing each other around the icy ground. They looked like seventh-graders, though it was hard to be sure with everybody in their dark winter coats.
I willed my sword back into pendant form and returned it to its chain. I figured I shouldn’t be walking on the roof of a school with a broadsword.
‘Where are we?’ I asked Sam.
‘My old stomping ground.’ Her voice had a bitter edge. ‘Malcolm X Middle School.’
I tried to imagine Sam down in that courtyard, mingling with those cliques of girls, her headscarf the only splash of colour in the crowd.
‘Why did Thor send you back to middle school?’ I asked. ‘That seems especially cruel.’
She smirked. ‘He actually transported me home. I appeared in my bedroom, just in time for Jid and Bibi to barge in and demand to know where I’d been. That conversation was worse than middle school.’
My heart sank. I’d been so focused on my own problems I’d forgotten that Sam was trying to balance a normal life on top of everything else. ‘What did you tell them?’
‘That I’d been staying with friends. They’ll assume I meant Marianne Shaw.’
‘Rather than three strange guys.’
She hugged her arms. ‘I told Bibi I tried to text her, which is true. She’ll assume it was her fault. Bibi is hopeless with phones. Actually, Jotunheim just has no reception. I – I try not to actually lie, but I hate misleading them. After everything they’ve done for me, they worry I’m going to get in trouble, turn out like my mom.’
‘You mean a successful doctor who liked to help people? Gee, that would be terrible.’
She gave me an eye roll. ‘You know what I mean – a rebel, an embarrassment. They locked me in my room, told me I was grounded until Doomsday. I didn’t have the heart to tell them that might be tonight.’
The wind picked up, spinning the old metal roof fans like pinwheels.
‘How did you sneak out?’ I asked.
‘I didn’t. I just appeared here.’ She gazed down into the courtyard. ‘Maybe I needed a reminder of how it all started.’
My brain felt as rusty as the roof fans, but one thought gained traction and started to spin. ‘This is where you became a Valkyrie.’
Sam nodded. ‘A frost giant … he’d got into the school somehow. Maybe looking for me, maybe hunting some other demigod. He wrecked a few classrooms, caused a panic. He didn’t seem to care if there were mortal casualties. The school went on lockdown. They didn’t know what they were dealing with. They thought some crazy human was making a scene. They called the police, but there was no time …’
She slipped her hands into her coat pockets. ‘I taunted the giant – insulted his mom, that kind of thing. I lured him up here to the roof and …’ She looked below us. ‘The giant couldn’t fly. He landed right there on the asphalt and shattered into a million shards of ice.’
She sounded strangely embarrassed.
‘You took on a giant single-handed,’ I said. ‘You saved your school.’
‘I suppose,’ she said. ‘The staff, the police … they never figured out what happened. They thought the guy must’ve fled the scene. In the confusion, nobody noticed what I’d done … except Odin. After the giant died, the All-Father appeared in front of me, right where you’re standing. He offered me a job as a Valkyrie. I accepted.’
After my conversation with Hel, I didn’t think it was possible for me to feel worse. The loss of my mother still stung as painfully as the night she’d died. But Sam’s story made me feel bad in a different way. Sam had brought me to Valhalla. She’d lost her place among the Valkyries because she believed I was a hero – a hero like her. And, despite all that had happened since, she didn’t seem to blame me.
‘Do you regret it?’ I asked. ‘Taking my soul when I fell?’
She laughed under her breath. ‘You don’t get it, Magnus. I was told to bring you to Valhalla. And not by Loki. By Odin himself.’
My pendant heated up against my collarbone. For an instant, I smelled warm roses and strawberries, as if I’d stepped through a pocket of summer.
‘Odin,’ I said. ‘I thought he was missing … hadn’t appeared since you became a Valkyrie.’
‘He told me to say nothing.’ Sam shivered. ‘I guess I failed in that, too. The night before your fight with Surt, Odin met me outside my grandparents’ house. He was disguised as a homeless guy – a ratty beard, an old blue coat, a broad-brimmed hat. But I knew who he was. The eye patch, the voice … He told me to watch for you and, if you fought well, to bring you to Valhalla.’
Down in the courtyard, a period bell rang. The students headed inside, jostling and laughing. For them, it was a normal school day – the kind of day I could hardly remember.
‘I was wrongly chosen,’ I said. ‘The Norns told me I wasn’t supposed to be in Valhalla.’
‘Yet you were,’ Sam said. ‘Odin foresaw it. I don’t know why the contradiction, but we have to finish this quest. We have to reach that island tonight.’
I watched the snow erase footprints in the empty yard. Soon there’d be no more trace of the students than there was of the frost giant’s impact from two years ago.
I wasn’t sure what to think about Odin choosing me for Valhalla. I suppose I should’ve felt honoured. The All-Father himself thought I was important. He had chosen me, no matter what the Norns said. But, if that was true, why hadn’t Odin bothered to meet me in person? Loki was bound on a slab for eternity. He’d found a way to talk to me. Mimir was a severed head. He’d made the trip. But the All-Father, the great sorcerer who could supposedly bend reality just by speaking a rune – he couldn’t find the time for a quick check-in?
Hel’s voice echoed in my head: Do you really belong in Valhalla, Magnus?
‘I just came from Bunker Hill,’ I told Sam. ‘Hel offered me a reunion with my mother.’
I managed to tell her the story.
Samirah reached out as if to touch my arm, then apparently changed her mind. ‘I’m so sorry, Magnus. But Hel lies. You can’t trust her. She’s just like my father, only colder. You made the right choice.’
‘Yeah … still. You ever do the right thing, and you know it’s the right thing, but it leaves you feeling horrible?’
‘You’ve just described most days of my life.’ Sam pulled up her hood. ‘When I became a Valkyrie … I’m still not sure why I fought that frost giant. The kids at Malcolm X were terrible to me. The usual garbage: they asked me if I was a terrorist. They yanked off my hijab. They slipped disgusting notes and pictures into my locker. When that giant attacked … I could’ve pretended to be just another mortal and got myself to safety. But I didn’t even think about running away. Why did I risk my life for those kids?’
I smiled.
‘What?’ she demanded.
‘Somebody once told me that a hero’s bravery has to be unplanned – a genuine response to a crisis. It has to come from the heart, without any thought of reward.’
Sam huffed. ‘That somebody sounds pretty smug.’
‘Maybe you didn’t need to come here,’ I decided. ‘Maybe I did. To understand why we’re a good team.’
‘Oh?’ She arched an eyebrow. ‘Are we a good team now?’
‘We’re about to find out.’ I gazed north into the snowstorm. Somewhere in that direction lay downtown Boston and Long Wharf. ‘Let’s find Blitzen and Hearthstone. We’ve got a fire giant to extinguish.’