I couldn't believe she talked me into it. I'd held out for six years, and she'd finally talked me into it. But it wasn't too late. I could still back out. I would just tell her to her face that I was horrible at this, and didn't like it at all, and....

"Ready?" she asked, her grey eyes shining with excitement.

"Can't wait," I replied. What can I say? I'm a sucker for those eyes.

She settled herself on the other side of the picnic table and grinned at me across the chessboard. "You are going down, Seaweed Brain."

"Yeah?" I threw back. Not one of my better comebacks. I moved the third pawn from the left up two spaces. "Bring it, Owl Face."

She paused, index finger resting on a black knight. "What did you just call me?"

"Owl Face?"

"Is that a question? You don't even know?"

"I didn't call you that if you don't like it. Didn't like it," I hedged.

She shook her head in disbelief and moved her knight. "Owl Face."

"Come on, Annabeth," I said, nudging my queen out a few spaces. "It's not like a real insult. You call me Seaweed Brain all the time."

"For good reason," she said, moving her knight to challenge my queen. "What happened to Wise Girl?"

I snorted in disbelief and moved another pawn up two spaces. "Seriously? That's not even a mock insult. That's...that was a pathetic attempt at countering Seaweed Brain."

"Pathetic is right," she said, capturing my queen. Ouch. I'm horrible at chess, but even I should have seen that coming.

I edged a pawn to a space diagonal to her knight and she was forced to draw back. Her forehead wrinkled in what I hoped was simple concentration, and I moved a pawn out of the way of a bishop. She countered by moving a pawn right into the path of one of mine, which I thought was a bit of a slip of her own until I took the pawn and she stole one of mine with her knight.

"Anyway," I said, "I made up that nickname when I was eleven. It's pretty juvenile."

"Like 'Seaweed Brain'?" she said. She moved her queen out. "Check."

"Uh," I said, moving a knight to block her, "not exactly. I...."

Goodbye, knight. Goodbye, train of thought. The next few minutes were a blur. She blocked my every move and thwarted my every stratagem until at last the fog (the seaweed?) cleared from my brain and it was just her, me, and a chessboard with a few black and a lot of white pieces next to it.

"Checkmate," she declared. "You were saying, Seaweed Brain?"

I wouldn't have remembered if she hadn't prompted me like that.

"I kind of like 'Seaweed Brain,'" I said sheepishly. "There's a lot of history behind it."

"And only you would ever have thought that calling me Wise Girl was anything other than a weird form of compliment," she said. "It's a very Percy sort of nickname. Kind of clueless...a little bit slow..."

"Hey!" I protested.

She leaned across the table and put a hand on my cheek. "...but really sweet."

I took her hand. "If it works for you, it works for me, Wise Girl."

"My nickname for you isn't so derogatory, either," she said. "There are some forms of kelp in the depths of the ocean that are thought to be sentient."

"Really?"

"Of course not, Seaweed Brain." She dropped my hand, jumped up from the table, and began putting away her chess set. "But that was impossible to resist."

"Kind of like you."

She smiled. "I knew there was a reason I liked you." She raised the black queen to me as if she were making a toast.

The white king had fallen pretty hard.