Hunter

Chapter Thirty Five - Figuring It Out

The next day, I was back in school, lying to people about why I had a scar on my forehead. The night of the cave incident, my mom went and told Dee's dad what had happened. He was devastated, and when he came over to tell us what was currently happening to her, we couldn't look at each other. He had informed us that, since we moved her body, her spirit was unable to return to the material world. She was stuck in the Underworld. I felt empty after hearing that, but he mentioned the possibility of a solution, albeit dangerous. My mother stopped him at that, knowing that If I had heard the rest of it, I would've done whatever I could've to get Dee out of there. So that's what my goal was at that moment. I wanted to figure out how to get Dee out of the Underworld. I was-

"Hayley?" I looked up, scowling at the person that interrupted me before I realized that it was my math teacher.

"What?"

"I expect you to pay attention in my class. It's not fair that you're leaving Aiden to do all the work. I asked you a simple question: what is the answer?" I showed her the full page proof that I had copied from Aiden's book into mine. She didn't look amused.

"That would've been impressive had you done your own work." She turned away from me and continued to teach her class.

Aiden hadn't been talking to me ever since the cave incident. I didn't want to press the topic since it was a very tender situation for all of us, but he seemed to be avidly avoiding me. I had wanted to talk to him that day, but Mrs. Avis stopped me after class.

"Here's all the work that you missed last week when you were out. I hope your flu is better. I understand that you have work to make up in other classes, but I need this done by tomorrow." I looked at the three packets that she handed me.

"There's no way that I could have this all done by tomorrow. Give me until Friday, at least." She shook her head and I groaned. I grabbed the three packets off of her desk and stormed out of the room to the cafeteria. I sat at an open table and banged my head on it.

"What's wrong?" Jasper asked.

"Everything!" I snapped at him. I looked around the cafeteria and noticed that people were giving me strange looks. I took a deep breath and exhaled through my nose. "I'm sorry. I just really don't like my math teacher. She gave me three packets to finish by tomorrow." Jasper dug around in his bag and handed me a complete replica of the packets. I smiled at him, thankful for the lessened workload.

"Has Aiden been talking to you?"

"Yeah, why?"

"He seems to be avoiding me." He didn't look at me, meaning that he knew what was up. "What is it?"

"I don't know."

"You're lying."

"I'm not lying: I don't know why." I narrowed my eyes at him, but he didn't relent, but what he said next caught my attention. "But I have an idea of how we can get Dee out."

* Ω *

During my free period, I met Jasper in the library. The room was large enough that we were able to find a quiet corner where we could be free of eavesdroppers. We traversed all the way to the back of the room, sitting at one of the tables. His foot was tapping rapidly on the ground as I waited for him to start talking. He was obviously thinking of a way to tell me what he needed to, but his silence was making me impatient. Eventually, he pulled two silver coins with a doodle I couldn't make out on one side and a head on the other. He handed one to me, and I held onto it, running my thumb over the engravings.

"What are these for?"

"These are Charon's Obols. On one side, there's Hypnos, the god of sleep, and on the other side, there's a Pink Rose. If we keep this under our tongue, when we reach the Underworld, we should be able to cross the River Styx, get past Cerberus, the three Judges, and into the Fields of Asphodel. One there, we'll navigate our way to the Palace of Hades."