The Weight of the World Read Online Free

were too many bugs outside
for her liking. She tipped her head back and glanced up at the stars.
It was a clear night. The starry sky was made less-brilliant by the
lights of the city around them. Even so, sitting in the quiet, in the
relative dark, and looking up at the sky as the crickets chirped,
Devon felt small. Alone.
    She
closed her eyes and took a deep breath. She just couldn’t wrap her
mind around the idea that she was going to be a mother. This whole
day didn’t seem real.
    When
Devon opened her eyes, Adam was staring over the fence at her. He
looked away quickly.
    Devon
smiled. Still
got it, she
thought. I’m
going to be the sexiest mom alive.
    “ Goodnight,
Adam,” she said, turning to head back into the house.
    “ Goodnight.”

“ The
will of Zeus was accomplished. ”
    -Homer

    iii.

    After
she was pushed out of her mother's womb,
    the
goddess turned to help deliver her twin,
    and
in that time she saw her mother suffer
    the
curse of woman.

    Terrified
by the sight of bloody child-birth,
    She
vowed to never observe the touch of man.
    So
when Lord Zeus placed the girl upon his knee,
    that
was her one wish.

    She
only desired to run on her own
    with
flora, fauna and nymph, but never man.
    Her
father thought that this was a foolish wish
    but
granted it, still.

    So
when Actaeon stumbled upon a cave
    and
saw her naked back as Artemis bathed,
    he
could not avert his eyes with enough speed
    to
save his own life.

    As
he fled through the woods, changed into a beast,
    his
own hunting hounds tore apart his haunches.
    And
so she helped Zeus grant her personal wish,
    keeping
her own boon.

“ Friends
are as companions on a journey, who ought to aid each other to
persevere in the road to a happier life.”
    -Pythagoras

    III.

    The
sky had only cleared after dinner, but the late summer sunset had
given it extra time to dry the earth below. Now the sun was showing
its last glow along the horizon, and the people of Olympia Heights
were venturing out to enjoy the reprieve from the rain.
    The
fair came into town for the first two weeks of the summer in Olympia
Heights and then left for cooler-climates and beach-front towns.
After the weekend it would move on, but on Friday night it was
buzzing with young families and rogue teenagers.
    Astin
and Diana Hill moved through the crowd with cotton candy in hand.
Diana was carrying a large stuffed unicorn that she had won from one
of those target shooting games that were supposed to be impossible to
win. She stopped as they crossed a group from the track team, hanging
out on a picnic table. Diana asked Astin to hold on before running
over to her team mates.
    The
varsity track team consisted of five people, aside from Diana and
Lewis Mercer. Jimmy and Joey Cooper were brothers, two years apart.
They were both six feet tall and extremely skinny. Alexis Ruiz was a
tiny freshman with a lot of energy. She had black hair, large eyes,
and over-sized ears that stuck out. Her boyfriend, also on the team,
was Scott Snyder. Scott had curly ginger hair and freckles that fused
together in place of a tan. The last member of the team was Ryan
Bear. Ryan’s mother was Kenyan, and he had inherited her sharp
cheekbones and almond-shaped eyes.
    Alexis
and Scott were too busy making out to greet Diana. The Cooper
brothers stopped whatever they were talking about to high-five Astin
and praise him for a show he had played last week at the youth
center.
    “ Got
enough Unicorn?” Ryan asked Diana. The stuffed toy was nearly three
feet long and had a rainbow mane.
    “ You
can never have enough unicorn,” she said.
    “ I
didn’t think it was possible to win one of those things.”
    “ I
have good aim.”
    Ryan
rubbed the back of his neck and glanced over at Astin. In mere
seconds his conversation had turned from receiving praise to a
lecture from Astin about pop music’s part in the decline of modern
entertainment. Ryan looked back at Diana, revealing a dazzling smile.
    “ Want
a snow cone?”