Hey guys! So uh, yeah – this is my first story for the Percy Jackson and the Olympians fandom. It's supposed to be during the time of The Lightning Thief right after Percy got to Camp Half-Blood and proved himself to everyone after the toilet battle with Clarisse. I hope you enjoy this one shot! Please R&R.

I Lie About a Peony

I thought I must have been hallucinating.

I mean, as many crazy things as I had seen lately, this had to be the worst. Minotaurs, finding out my best friend was a satyr, having a god for a dad – that was all bizarre. But seeing Annabeth planting flowers was the weirdest thing ever. She was kneeling by one of the flower beds beyond our cabins, picking the flowers up out of their containers, planting them carefully in the ground, and then dusting the loose dirt gently from their petals.

I thought maybe she had been punished or something.

"Hey, Annabeth!" I called to her from the basketball hoops, where I had been creaming some of the guys from Apollo's cabin.

She looked up sharply, and then went back to her planting as I started to walk over.

"What?"

"Are you planting flowers?" I knew that was a stupid question as soon as I asked it.

"What does it look like I'm doing, genius?" Annabeth said, still planting. "The polka?"

"Ha ha ha," I said sarcastically. "You know what I mean."

"No, I don't."

"You just don't seem like the type of person who would plant flowers."

Now she put her hands on her hips and looked up at me. "How come?"

"Well like…your mom is the goddess of wisdom and battle. Plus you always beat the guys at sports, sword fighting…"

"So?"

Now I was starting to feel like the weird one.

"Are you planting flowers as a punishment?" I finally asked.

"No, stupid," she sighed, clearly exasperated from my questions. "I like planting flowers. It helps me think. I think you forgot that one of my mother's strengths is intelligence – you don't get that by constantly playing basketball and not taking time to think."

That was directed at me. Ouch.

"Hand me that water can," Annabeth then instructed.

My eyes focused to where she pointed, and there sat a yellow water can that had pink flowers dotted all over it. Two thought entered my mind – first, how the heck did that get in Camp Half-Blood? I could just imagine Mr. D. or Chiron going shopping and bringing that thing back to camp from the Dollar Store. And secondly – I wondered if I would be the laughing stock of the demigods if someone in the commons area saw me holding a girly water can that should have only belonged to a grandma.

"Well are you just going to stand there like a doofus?" Annabeth asked, as she dug another hole in the flower bed. I figured I better hand it to her before she went all jiu-jitsu on me. I picked it up and squatted down next to her.

"So being girly helps you think?" I teased. "If you ever have to solve a really big problem, you can always just fix me a sandwich."

Annabeth jerked the water can out of my hands and flashed me a look that kind of scared me more than any monster I had met yet.

"You don't understand," she muttered.

Now I felt sorta lousy.

"Sorry – what are you thinking about?"

"My mom."

Athena. I knew that Annabeth's parents were sort of a sensitive topic.

"Do you miss her?" I asked.

She looked off into the distance, but I could tell she wasn't really watching anything except was going on in her mind.

"I sometimes wish she would make more contact with me – like help me more, or give me a gift or something." She looked back down at her flower bed and got to work. "It's whatever though."

"Nah, it's more important a problem than that," I said. "I know what you mean. I wish my dad would contact me, too. It makes you feel kind of…worthless."

Annabeth looked at me, and I could see sympathy in her stormy-gray eyes. "Yeah," she whispered. She looked down at her flowers. "Oh shoot, this one was eaten by some bug." Sure enough, there were tiny holes all in the petals of one of the plants. She sighed and set it aside.

I decided to leave her alone a little while, so I got up to leave. But then, something really weird happen.

I kicked over the water can by accident, getting some water on my hands when I picked it up. Then, I moved the flower Annabeth had discarded from the line of fire (the water that had leaked out of the can), and the holes in the petals just closed up where I had touched them.

"Why are you holding that flower?" Annabeth asked, looking up. She obviously didn't realize it was the flower that had had the holes in the petals. I don't know why, but I felt like maybe I should hide what just happened.

"Um…can I keep it?" I asked, shifting on my feet. "Please?"

Annabeth looked confused.

"I guess…" she said, "if you want."

"I – I do."

"Okay," she said, squinting at me like she suspected I wasn't telling her something.

"So uh…see ya."

"Bye," Annabeth said, shaking her head as I turned around to walk back to cabin eleven.

I was wondering how I would explain to Luke that I'd like to keep a peony next to my Minotaur horn.