This World We Live In (The Last Survivors, Book 3) by Susan Beth Pfeffer Page B

global," Syl said. "Maybe an offering to the moon goddess."
    "Not my firstborn," Mom said. "He's not available."
    Syl laughed. "I'm not about to sacrifice Matt," she said. "But there must be something we could give up. Something that matters, that Diana wil accept."
    "Diana's the goddess of the hunt," Mom said. It always amazes me she knows stuff like that.
    "She's also the goddess of the moon," Syl said, proving she had every bit as much useless information as Mom did. "Apol o, god of the sun, is her brother."
    "Maybe he's the one we should make an offering to," I
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    suggested. "We need sunlight a lot more than we need moonlight."
    Syl shook her head. "It al began with the moon,"
    she said. "We should start there."
    I looked around the sunroom. Horton was sleeping by the woodstove. He's gotten thinner the past couple of weeks, but I wasn't about to offer him to any goddess.
    "Maybe Jon's basebal card col ection?" I said.
    "Diana might like a Mickey Mantle rookie card."
    "No," Syl said. "The offering has to come from us.
    We're Diana's handmaidens."
    "I know," I said. "We'l give Diana some fish."
    "No," Mom said. "We need that fish. Diana can eat out on her own dime."
    Syl looked at us. "What do you cherish most?"
    she asked.
    "My children," Mom said. "After them my home.
    And they're al off limits to Diana, Apol o, and any other god who might happen by."
    "My diaries," I said.
    "No," Mom said. "Off limits also."
    I had mixed feelings about that. Mrs. Nesbitt, I remembered, burned al her letters before she died.
    Not that I'm planning to die in the immediate future, but if I burned my diaries, I wouldn't have to worry about Syl reading them.
    "I don't mind," I said.
    "I do," Mom said. "Your diaries are the only record of this family's existence. They're our link to the past and the future. I won't let you destroy them. Not on a whim."
    "I don't have anything else," I said, thinking about how pathetic my life was, that I didn't have a single possession worthy of an offering to a goddess I hadn't known existed
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    ten minutes before. "Oh, I do have some trophies, from when I skated. Maybe Diana would like those."
    "One trophy," Mom said. "That third-place one you got. The tacky one."
    I ran upstairs to my bedroom and found the tacky third-place trophy. I clutched it for a moment, thinking about that competition. I'd fal en twice. If I'd only fal en once, I might have come in second, but the girl who won was real y good, and there was no way I could have gotten first.
    I'd been ten. Mom and Dad were there, and even Dad, who loved to encourage al of us to do better at our sports, could see the difference in quality between me and the girl who won. On the drive home, instead of talking about my practicing more and harder, he said how proud he was of me, the way I'd gotten up after both fal s and continued to skate wel enough to medal.
    I held on to the trophy and thought about what life had been like when Mom and Dad were stil married, when I thought the worst thing that could possibly happen was fal ing during a competition. I'd been so young, so dumb, upset only that fal ing twice had cost me the silver.
    I went back to the sunroom and found Mom and Syl discussing the appropriate ceremony. "I can't believe you're agreeing to al this," I said to Mom.
    "I don't see why not," she said. "I did sil ier things in col ege. I've decided to sacrifice my first book contract. Stay here while I go look for it."
    I put the trophy on the floor and sat on my mattress.
    "Your mother is amazing," Syl said. "I thought she'd be al righteous about this. No pagan practices, if you know what I mean."
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    I shrugged. "I don't think Mom believes in much of anything," I said. "And it's not like we real y think the moon's going to zip back into place just because we give it a tacky trophy."
    "It's a beautiful trophy," Syl said, walking over and picking it up. "You must have been very proud when you won it."
    "Not real y," I said. "Mom's book contract