A Shrine to an Unknown God

LAZING

EZRA AND I quickly settle into a routine. Most days we spend with Dahlia, whose moms both work long hours. She usually has their place to herself. We use this as an opportunity to shower and as an easy source of food.

We usually go down to the beach while we're there, so we use getting the sand off of ourselves as an excuse to need to shower. Plus, Ezra cooks for all of us, so Dahlia doesn't mind us depleting the contents of her food pantry.

Sometimes, Dahlia will leave us alone in her house while she goes off to "rehearsal." While we're there by ourselves, we work on my English. We listen to a lot of Mamma Mia! at first, using Dahlia's computer. It gets to the point where I can not only sing along with him, but I fully understand the lyrics and what they're all so passionately singing about. Next, he introduces me to ABBA, and then a lot of other musicals—recent phenomenons like Be More Chill and classics like Carousel and everything in between—though, of course, we always come back to Mamma Mia! and ABBA. He even shows me those singers he was talking about, Hozier and Florence Welch.

Besides music, I read picture books from Dahlia's childhood, and cereal boxes, and online menus, and everything I can get my hands on. Ezra shows me a lot of TV shows and movies, with Greek subtitles on—both of the Mamma Mia! movies, Lemonade Mouth, Parks and Rec. We also talk a lot, my English halting at first, and virtually nonexistent. But every day I learn new words, and how to properly string them together.

As a half-god, I'm a quick learner. As Antigone Katsaros, I never stop wanting to learn more. It doesn't take long until I'm able to form actual complex sentences that make sense. Ezra and I start having entire conversations in his mother tongue, with me only substituting a word or two for the Greek one, or mixing up a handful of grammatical concepts.

The words themselves are easy. The grammar is an actual nightmare to learn.

Despite all of Ezra's efforts and all of the time we spend together, Marisol is the biggest help in my quest to learn English. She makes me these little things called "flashcards" with grammar rules and vocab words and has me color-coordinate them by category to help my brain link related concepts. She also brings me workbooks, and grades each of the lessons that I fill out herself with a pink sparkly pen. After, she goes through what I did wrong with me and explains how to fix it.

The days that are the roughest are the ones we don't spend at Dahlia's, where we're stuck cooped up in the little storage room to stay out of the heat. On these days, Ezra often leaves me alone up there for long stretches of time. I spend the day with nothing to do other than studying my workbooks or memorizing flashcards or reading whatever book I most recently borrowed from Dahlia.

Back home, this would seem a luxury to me. Spending all day lazing in the shade with something intellectually challenging to occupy my mind. But here in America, there is so much to do, so much to see, so much to explore, so much always going on around me. Spending all day cooped up inside makes me restless and panicky.

When Ezra is here, and I'm not alone with my thoughts, being in this tight space doesn't bother me. It feels cozy, homey. Safe and tucked away from the rest of the world. But when I'm alone, the walls start to close in on me. It starts getting hard to breathe.

Once, someone even came into the storage room. They turned on a bright buzzing overhead light.

I quickly switched off the lantern and held my breath. Be still. Don't move.

After a moment, they turned the light off and left.

When Ezra came home that night, I told him about it. He just shook his head and shrugged.

"Antigone, this is where we're staying until the cops drag us out by our ears."