I looked at the telephone by my bedside. I thought about calling Rachel Elizabeth Dare. My mom had asked me if there was anyone else I wanted to have over tonight, and I'd thought about Rachel. But I didn't call. (pg. 359, BOTL)
Then another thought crossed my mind. Annabeth was staying in New York with Chiron. She should still be here. I hadn't exactly left things the best with her, but as I thought about it, my party felt lonely. Incomplete. The people I wanted to be with most were Tyson, Grover, and Annabeth. I had Tyson here already, and Grover was out spreading news of the death of Pan. Annabeth, however, was only a call away.
I walked out of my room back to the living room, where my mom, Paul, and Tyson still were.
"Mom?" I asked, not wanting to seem like anything was wrong so I wouldn't worry her.
She turned to me, a concerned undertone in her eyes. "Yes, Percy? Do you need more cake, or something?"
I shook my head. "When we were here last, Annabeth left her phone number with you in case you needed to talk to her, or reverse, right?"
She smiled. "Yeah, I have it. Any particular reason for asking?" she asked with a wink.
"It just- I mean, it seems like a pretty pathetic party without- I- can Annabeth come over, too?" I said, stumbling over my words as a blush spread like wildfire over my cheeks. Tyson, too, looked at my mom with hope. She had a twinkle in her eye as she said, "Yeah, sure, honey. It's by the phone in the kitchen." As I turned around I noticed Paul mouthing, "Who?" to my mom, and my mom mouthed "girlfriend" back.
"She's not my girlfriend!" I say, flustered, as I rush out of the room. Tyson realizes Annabeth might come and he starts clapping with delight.
As I walk into the kitchen and dial Annabeth's number (noting how weird it is that Rachel Elizabeth Dare and Annabeth have the same last four digits in their phone numbers), I nervously tap my fingers on the marble countertop in a tap-tap tap-tap tap-taptap-tap pattern. As the numbers dial and it rings more and more times, I start to have second thoughts. She's probably busy. She might not have her phone with her, as she normally doesn't. Maybe I should have Iris-messaged her. She had IM'ed me this morning to wish me a happy birthday.
Right as I thought I wouldn't have a chance to ask her (the phone would send me to voicemail in a few rings more), she picked up.
"Hello?" she asked, half curious with a mix of concern and a bit of irritation.
"Uh, Annabeth, it's Percy."
"I can see that, Seaweed Brain. I have caller ID."
"Oh, well, just double checking. How's Chiron? Are you still in New York or did you leave yet?"
I hear her sigh over the phone. "Yeah, I'm still here. I'm gonna stay until he's fully healed. He's getting better, really slowly though. He's just agitated he can't do much."
"Makes sense. So, look, my mom's throwing me this party at my house, and, um, I wanted to know if you wanted to know if you wanted to come…?"
A pause on the other line. Silence. I heard her take a deep breath. "Yeah, I'd like that," she finally said. "I'll see you in an hour. Hope you don't expect a present."
When Annabeth finally rang the doorbell, most of the cake was gone. This was a major problem to Tyson.
"It is a party without cake!" he wailed. "There is never a real party without cake. What will Annabeth think? Do we have any peanut butter? What about peanut butter cake?" he rambled, his thoughts making less and less sense as they left his mouth. Since nobody else was getting up, it seemed I had to answer the door. I opened the door to see Annabeth in something other than campwear, which was not something I expected. Her hair was down, she was wearing her typical shorts, had a blue shirt and a grey zip up hoodie on with her usual owl earrings, but also had a sparkly necklace with an 'A' on it. Whether for Athena or Annabeth or architecture or albino Sasquatch, I have no idea. But seeing her without a camp shirt was a rare sight.
"Are you going to let me in or not, Seaweed Brain?" she said with a slight smirk.
"Oh, yeah. Welcome to my house, and all that. You've been here before, bathroom's down the hall to the left, yadda yadda yadda." I move out of the doorway so she can walk inside. As she walks through the doorway, she takes her sweatshirt off and puts it over her shoes. My mom clears her throat.
"We, uh, have a coat rack for a reason," I say, rubbing the back of my neck. Annabeth rolls her eyes.
"Obviously. I can hang my own jacket, or just keep it on, to save us both some trouble." She slips her shoes off a few feet from the door and slips her sweatshirt over her arms again. She greets the rest of the party, if you even want to call it that, and looks at me, unsure of what to do next. My mom breaks the silence by asking if there's any cake left.
"Uh, I don't think so. I think I have a slice in my room, though," I say, realizing after I say it how bad it probably sounds to my mom, Paul, and Annabeth. Tyson found an old train set to keep his mind off the cake problem and was now hotwiring toy trains.
My mom raises a suspicious eyebrow, but doesn't say anything but, "Okay. Don't get crumbs on your carpet."
I bring Annabeth to my room, which luckily my mom cleaned while I was at camp, so it was only slightly dirty. I had only been home two days, at any rate, and it's hard to mess things up when you haven't been home long. I opened the door and kicked some empty chip bags under my bed as Annabeth walked in. She smiled when she saw I actually did have a piece of cake on my dresser.
"So you do actually have cake in here," she commented, picking the slice of cake up. "Why is it blue?"
"I sorta have a thing for blue food," I say. "Whenever possible, my mom gets me blue food. It's a tradition, almost. I always have blue cake on my birthday. It makes my mom awesome."
She smiles and takes a bite of the cake. "Your mom makes good cake. That's another reason your mom is awesome." She sighs and sits on my bed, which my mom made me make in case Tyson decided to stay the night again. "I wish my dad was like your mom. Your mom is so loving towards you."
I feel a lump in my throat. We've had conversations like this before, and they usually go the exact same way. I swallow the lump and say, "Well, your dad seemed pretty cool last winter, swooping down in his Sopwith Camel to save all our butts."
She twirls a section of her hair around her finger, staring at her socks. They're mismatched, one pink, one white with pink polka dots. "Things are getting better with him, but my stepmom still doesn't seem to think of me as one of her own children. She thinks I can't see the looks she gives me when I turn away sometimes, but I can."
I sit down next to her. "She's trying, though. She feels bad she can't be the mother you want." I remember when we left Annabeth's house in San Francisco during the winter, and the look on her face when she said "Tell Annabeth she will always have a home here." She looked distressed, and you could tell by looking in her eyes she still felt bad for forcing her to run away when she was 7.
Annabeth turns to face me. "You're an only child, though. Godly and mortal. She treats Bobby and Matthew better than she treats me. I can tell in the way she talks to them, and stuff. They're her real children. I'm adopted, to her." The sadness in Annabeth's eyes is too much for me. They look like storm clouds, dark grey on the outside swirling around a lighter grey in the center. I wrap my arms around her and we sit on my bed, her tears dripping silently onto my shoulder.
Suddenly, she pulls away. "What's in your pocket?" she asks, wiping her tears and not bothering to wait for an answer. She sticks her hand in my shirt pocket and pulls out a small piece of fabric. She places it in my hand. I realize it's the moonlace from Calypso's island. I hadn't realized I was wearing the white cotton shirt Calypso gave me on my two-week mid quest vacation. I never told Annabeth what happened, although I knew she had her suspicions.
I open up the cloth. Sure enough, the little clipping of moonlace is there. Small and shriveled up after being in a cloth, forgotten, for two months, but there. It smells faintly of the garden, and it makes me sad. I take a deep breath and say, "It's a plant from the island I landed on. I told the girl there I'd plant it here, in Manhattan." I stand up, facing the fire escape. There was a planter on there that my mom kept to plant things in the spring. Annabeth did the same.
"So this girl, on the island," she says quietly. "Was she…"
"Yeah," I say. "It was Calypso."
We stand there in silence, not facing each other for a while, before she grabs a nectar canteen off my nightstand. "Well, we have to plant it, right?" she asked me. I nod and step onto the fire escape, Annabeth right behind me.
I dig a small hole with my fingers and place the moonlace into the hole. As I push the dirt back into the hole to cover the roots, Annabeth asks me, "What was she like?"
I try to think how to describe her. "She was like a morning shower, fresh and clean. She smelled like cinnamon and had secrets like you couldn't believe. She kept to herself, built up walls, and tried to hide the reason I was there. But eventually, she told me that every once in a while, to make her punishment a real punishment, the gods sent her a hero she couldn't help but- but fall in love with. The problem was they could never stay." Annabeth pours the nectar over the moonlace, and looks at me expectantly, like I should finish my story as the moonlace perks up, little by little.
"She was heartbroken and always sad, because every person she ever loved had to leave her, for one reason or another. They had an event to go back to, or- or someone else keeping them from staying." I couldn't meet Annabeth's eyes. She stepped a little bit closer to me, and used her pointer finger to push my chin up so my eyes met hers. "They wanted to save her, but there was no way they could do it. Something was holding them back." I blushed as my eyes looked everywhere but Annabeth's. The little freckle on the side of her cheek. The point of her nose. The pimple on the side of her eyebrow. Finally, they met her eyes, a soft shade of grey much different from the storm clouds from before.
"Why did you leave?" she asked me softly. Her arms snuck up behind me and slid up onto my shoulders, slowly pulling us together until our noses were an inch away from touching.
Words were failing me. I felt like I was back in the presence of Aphrodite, where I could barely remember my own name, let alone how to talk. How smart Annabeth was a curse sometime. She knew exactly why.
"A certain daughter of Athena, maybe?"
She couldn't let my face just show it. I had to say the words.
"Y-you," I whispered, my heart beating like bass drums in my ears.
She closed the gap between us and kissed me again, not as quick of a kiss as in the volcano. Her lips felt hot and forbidden, like what happened in Mount St. Helens, but there was no lava to blame. She pulled away and I was left with the taste of mint and vanilla in my mouth and on my lips, in my nose and clogging up my brain to where I felt I would never think again.
I would have stood there all night, under the moon, staring at Annabeth, had I not noticed through the glass doors leading back into my room, my mom standing in the doorway with a camera in her hand.