Love in Ruins

Chapter One

I'm just stepping off a plane, but it feels like I'm throwing myself off a precipice. My whole life-at least, from the moment I got my five-year-old hands on the pages of D'Aulaires' Book of Greek Myths-has been building toward this moment. Now that it's finally here, my primary emotion is sheer exhaustion. Momentous life moments simply should not happen right after ten hours of sitting upright in the world's smallest chair.

Liam bumps against my shoulder as we follow Ms. Barlowe down the Jetway to customs. I would be well cast in "The Princess and the Pea," but he has the magical ability to fall asleep anywhere. The pep in his step is absurd.

"Can you believe we're here?" he asks, hoisting his duffel higher across his shoulder.

"Honestly?" I look around the customs line. We're surrounded by gray walls, fluorescent lighting, and a blue carpet underfoot, thick with dirt. The view from the large windows gives out onto nothing but an airplane parking lot. Airports are too stuck out of time for the moment to sink in, even with the Greek letters printed on every sign. "It doesn't feel real."

Most of our cohort seems to feel similarly. George is staring through the winding customs line as if the room were empty, and Bodhi stands next to him with equally vacant eyes. Amalia is practically asleep on Lucy's shoulder. Henry's yawns are so huge, I can see straight to his tonsils. Liam and Ms. Barlowe are the only ones who seem capable of registering their surroundings.

"That's what you get for watching Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again instead of sleeping on the plane," Liam tells me.

I flick him lightly on the temple. "Don't disrespect Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again like that. It's art. And I wouldn't have been able to sleep, anyway."

The toddler behind me saw to that. Not that I begrudge him the two a.m. sobfest. Kids have just as much of a right to be on a plane or any public space as adults do, and they're allowed to do normal kid things like cry when there's turbulence. But I'm an insomniac in the best conditions. Spotify crowns me as a proud top 1 percent listener of "10 Hours Air Conditioner Noises" every year for a reason.

Despite my exhaustion making time feel stretchy and slow, I make it to the front of the line, the customs officer approves me, and I follow the group to baggage claim. There are seven of us in total, plus Ms. Barlowe. The eight biggest nerds in our school. The only ones not just willing but desperate to give up a free period every day to study classics. Once a day we meet in Ms. Barlowe's tiny classroom to throw ourselves into the ancient world and everything it has to offer. And now, thanks to Ms. Barlowe winning a grant from some fancy teacher fellowship program, we're spending a month of our summer break in actual Greece.

Even though I'm here, staring at the baggage claim carousel and waiting for my blue sticker-covered suitcase to appear, I can't wrap my head around it. I'm in Greece. My first time out of New York City, and it's to actual, real-life, where-the-myths-originated Greece. I keep repeating it in my head, hoping it will sink in.

I connect to the airport Wi-Fi after successfully guessing which Greek-lettered buttons to click on, and my phone immediately lights up with a billion notifications. I ignore the ones from the family group chat, which might as well be renamed "Lizzie's Wedding Planning Committee, Where We Only Care About Weddings" at this point, and swipe to the classics cohort's group chat instead.

No-Murder Secret History

LUCY: i am so tired

AMALIA: we are all standing next to you

LUCY: simply too tired to talk

HENRY: FAIR

"Not fair," Liam teases, grinning as he nudges Lucy. "We're here. Wake up."

"Need bus nap," Lucy groans, tipping her head onto Henry's shoulder. He pats her thick brown curls.

Liam yanks his falling-apart notebook out of his backpack and flips through it. Every page is covered in tiny penciled notes all crammed together, his thoughts so piled on top of one another that they are unintelligible to anyone but him. It's my favorite thing he owns, because it feels like a map of his brain, all interconnected thoughts and overlapping sentences, an appearance of scatterbrained energy that still isn't enough to hide the brilliance beneath. He stops when he gets to an uncharacteristically neat numbered list.

"Okay," he says, tilting the page toward me. "Our Grecian bucket list. I've already added steal a boat, visit the ruins at night, and find a secret beach. Anything you want to add?"

"I have some I wanna remove," I say, eyeing the first item on his list.

He circles steal a boat twice. "Not, like, steal steal. But we simply must find ourselves on a boat at some point this summer."

Can't argue with that. I take his notebook-I'm the only one aside from him who's allowed to hold it-and examine the list more closely. Before he can stop me, I add go to Delos in pen. It's Artemis's birthplace, and there's no way I'm coming all the way here just to miss it. He nods in approval when I hand the notebook back to him. He knows better than anyone that I was practically born with an Artemis obsession stamped into my DNA. When I look back, my obsession with the goddess of the moon and hunt was baby's first sign of lesbianism.

Well, that and my very transparent crush on Katara. My lifelong love for Avatar: The Last Airbender has always had an agenda.

"This is going to be the best summer ever," Liam says as he snaps the notebook shut. His tone is ironic; he's painfully aware that he sounds like he's reading a cheesy line of dialogue from an old straight-to-TV teen movie, but I can tell that the sentiment behind the words is real. I squeeze his hand in agreement.

"It will be."

Once we all have our bags, Ms. Barlowe leads us toward the sliding doors to the pickup area. A handful of people mill around on the other side of the doors, some holding signs welcoming relatives or offering overpriced taxi services, and as we walk through the doors to the passenger pickup area, everyone swivels our way to see if their arrival is about to emerge. Most people look away again when they register us, going back to searching for whoever they're here to pick up, but a tall brunette woman rushes toward the door to greet us.

"Welcome to Greece," Ms. Galanis says, throwing her arms around Ms. Barlowe's shoulders. "I can't believe you're here."

Ms. Galanis is our fellowship-funded Greek educator. We've met with her on Zoom once a week for the past few months, and all of us have multiple notebooks filled to the brim with everything she's taught us in preparation for our trip.

"We're so excited," Ms. Barlowe says, glancing around. Even though we're still at the airport and in that this-could-be-anywhere feeling, the Greek language explodes around us in cries of welcome as people in the crowd recognize loved ones coming through the doors. It's starting to make it all feel a little more real. "I can't believe we're actually here. Is your daughter still joining us?"

"Of course," Ms. Galanis says with a smile. "She'd never pass up the opportunity for a free trip around the country."

Our two teachers turn to us, beaming. I can't believe Ms. Barlowe has enough in her to maintain her usual level of sunshine energy.

"Our bus will be meeting us in the back parking lot, so you'll have to lug your suitcases for a bit," Ms. Galanis says apologetically. "My daughter, Melanie, is going to join us for the trip and for the . . . Well, I'll let Ms. Barlowe do the honors when we get on the bus."

They exchange winks, and I glance at Liam. He shrugs back at me. What have they concocted for us now?

"Regardless, she'll meet us at our first stop in Syntagma Square," Ms. Galanis says, gesturing toward the airport doors. "Shall we?"

We troupe out of the airport and drag our suitcases down the sidewalk. It's only midmorning, but the summer sun has already warmed the air. A trickle of sweat forms on my neck, and not for the first time, I wish that our itinerary allowed for a shower stop before we begin our first day of sight seeing. Still, even though all I've seen of Greece so far is the flat gray concrete of this parking lot surrounded by thick-leaved shrubs, I'm already in love.

In spite of the sweaty conditions, we make it to the bus, which is parked along the curb, storage doors open to greet us. The driver introduces herself as Kendra and helps us load our bags into the bus's storage area before we all find our seats.

Ms. Barlowe warned us an alarming number of times that we simply had to sleep on the plane because we would be arriving to a full day of activities whether we were well rested or not. But as exhausted as I am after ignoring her advice, there's no way I can try to catch up with a nap on the bus. Liam and I find seats near the front, and from the moment the bus pulls out of the airport, I'm glued to the window.

I'm 4,921 miles away from my home in New York. That's the farthest away I've ever been, and right now that feels pretty good. Between Lizzie yapping about nothing but her wedding, Andrea invading every space of the home with her leaving-for-college prep, and my parents only taking a break from either to ask me pointed questions like How was therapy this week, Natalie?, I can use all that space and more. Especially if the other end is the site of my dreams.

Our bus barrels down the curved highway, and as we emerge from a tunnel, Mount Hymettus bursts into view, its greenery punctuated by the white slate of rocky paths. White buildings crowd the landscape below it. Athens unfurls in front of our eyes as we trundle down each bend in the road. Even from a distance, the view promises the bustle of a modern city exploding around its ancient roots. I'm too far away to make out any details, but I can spot the central hill on which the ancient Acropolis has been resting for thousands of years, surveying the landscape that has changed so much around it. Today it's surrounded by a crowded sprawl of apartments and office buildings. And it finally sinks in. After years of studying the ancient beginnings of this place-the language, culture, literature, art, and philosophy of this land-I'm actually here.

What better escape is there?

The traffic around Syntagma Square might be the most chaotic driving I've ever witnessed, and that's really saying something, as all the driving I've seen to date has taken place in New York City. The bus swerves and lurches as a zillion cars and motorcycles leapfrog around us. Car horns and overlapping voices shout through the street. I'm not prone to motion sickness, but I find myself desperately scanning the horizon to stave off the carsick feeling brewing in my guts as Kendra careens into a narrow, cobblestone-paved side street.

Mercifully, we stop here.

Ms. Barlowe grips the back of her seat to stand shakily in the aisle. The bus comes with a rickety microphone that sends a screech of feedback through the bus. We all cringe alert, and Ms. Barlowe flashes us an evil grin as she stows the microphone back into its port behind the driver.

"You'll just have to listen closely," she half shouts in that teacher-projection kind of way. "We're here at our first stop. We're going to tour Syntagma Square with Ms. Galanis and her daughter, Melanie, who will be joining our trip, and then we will be benevolent rulers and free you for lunch and shopping in the surrounding area."

From the back of the bus, Lucy cheers. She's been ready and waiting for her first Greek meal since the moment we found out about the trip.

"But first," Ms. Barlowe goes on, smoothly ignoring Lucy, "I have an exciting announcement."

We all sit up a little straighter. The last time she had an exciting announcement, we found out we were spending half our summer break in Greece.

"As you know, part of this summer will be spent researching and working on your special projects," Ms. Barlowe says.

Liam and I exchange excited looks. Given that our cohort includes the eight biggest nerds in the school, we're all actually excited about our projects. As soon as she found out about the trip, Ms. Barlowe designed an open-ended assignment to let us research any aspect of ancient Greece we want and present our findings however we decide. It feels like the most grown-up, academia-y project I've ever gotten to do in school. Plus, I finally get an outlet for all my research into the stories and myths about the followers of Artemis.

Liam is already deep into his project. He's incorporating his research on the Battle of Marathon into a novel in verse. His drafts of the opening pages are stunning, and I'm already obsessed with them. And not just because, as one of the fastest girls on the school's track team, I've been his main source for "what running feels like." Even Liam has boundaries he will not cross in the name of research, and exercising outside of the school's pool is one of them.

I have no vision for my project. Just a heart full of love for Artemis (and four notebooks full of research).

"The Stephen Goddard Research Institute Fund for Precollegiate Scholarship." Ms. Barlowe pauses. "Phew. The guys who gave us the money to come here have developed an academic decathlon, in which you're all invited to compete. There will be ten events, your special projects being one. The rest range from academic challenges like speech and debate to summer-camp fun along the lines of scavenger hunts and talent shows. In addition to the money to come here, these guys also gave us prize money totaling five thousand dollars, to be awarded to the student who wins the most points in this summerlong decathlon."

There's a pause, and then the bus explodes into a cacophony of questions.