So, this is a new story, because I totally need something to forget to update. Enjoy!
"Time to listen to my confession / I'm much less than I wanted to be" -Lock me up, The Cab
:::
Ever since she could remember, Thalia Grace had been a spy. (Life of crime- now with literal meaning!) It wasn't that she wanted to be one or anything... It was the family business. Her first mission had been when she was five- of course, she hadn't known it then. It took place at the candy store...
Steven and Chris, two of her dad's employees had been with her. They were her babysitters back then, honorary uncles. They were also brothers.
"So, you want the blue Smarties, doncha?" Chris said, crouching down to meet her eye, careful to avoid knocking over a display of gummy bears.
"Yep," Thalia responded earnestly, nodding, all doe-eyed.
"You see that lady over there?" Steven asks, pointing at an unfortunate woman, who had the day before, been in the wrong place during the wrong time.
"Yeah..." She rocked back and forth on her heels as she spoke, impatient. She wanted candy!
"Well, if you go up to her and tell her you can't find your mommy, I will buy you all the blue Smarties you want." Chris proposed.
The little girl put her hand on her chin, clearly mulling it over. She frowned. " But that's lying, and when I lied about brushing my teeth last month you said it was bad."
"It was only bad because you didn't brush your teeth, Thalia. Not because you lied," Steve told her, gritting his teeth. Hades, he hated his job.
"So I can tell all the lies I want?" The raven-haired girl's eyes widened, electric blue depths expansive, endless. "Okay!"
"Excuse me, ma'am but I can't find my mommy..."
:::
Now, Thalia sat in front of the impressive, ornately carved walnut desk that was her father's, waiting for him to finish getting his coffee. Thalia almost feels like propping her feet up on the tabletop, which is strewn with documents and pens and a half-empty coffee mug or two, just for a sense of good old teenage rebellion from when she was obsessed with punk rock. She still is, but no longer feels the need to flaunt it in her hairstyle or clothes.
"You're going to Venice," Her father barges in suddenly, no sorry i'm late or any such lead-in.
"For a vacation, or is there some ulterior motive you're referring to?" Thalia raises an eyebrow, abruptly feeling like she should put her four-inch-Manolo-clad-feet onto his desk, just to piss him off further. They always settle back into this routine, it seems, this push and pull of ticked off and i need you back to do this.
"Don't be a smart-ass, Thalia. I didn't raise you that way."
She bites back the you didn't raise me at all as he continues, "There's a mole in the company, and they're taking money, killing our agents. I have someone tracking the Monte Carlo branch and you're doing the Venice one."
Thalia perks up immediately at the sound of a mission. "When do I leave?"
"Tomorrow. The suspect needs to be someone influential, so you're on the guest list of every major gala that's taking place there."
"What, Venetian high society?" She suppresses a snort at the thought.
"No, American elite in Venice. New York, people like that."
"Red-eye flight?"
"Yes, but you get the company jet."
Oh, well. Comfortable trip there.
She just doesn't know if the mission will be anywhere near that comfort level.
:::
The pilot, Charlie, whom has been employed by her father since she was young asks, "You nervous?" But with his thick Boston accent it sounded more like neh-vous.
"No. They are all the same, anyways. Go there, do whatever I have to, get out."
"And then happily ever after," He replies sardonically (he has been here too long to think it'll be anything but tragic) before continuing, "But I meant are you nervous about flying."
Oh. "You know that answer."
"Still, I keep hoping it'll change."
"Don't bother. We both know it won't," she told him, fighting back a yawn. No matter what the adrenaline from nerves said, it was still three in the morning.
"Don't be so sure." The words were accompanied by a chuckle. Thalia put her earbuds in and let Linkin Park blast out her fears- or at least try to. She pulled out a book, finished it, amused herself with Instyle and People and Faux magazine, bored herself to death with love lives and scandals and people whose biggest problems were what to wear.
(There were exact moments when she wished they were her life and others when she acted like they were. Most of the time, they overlapped.)
:::
She has to stop in London, transfer to Venice, then take a boat ride to the hotel. Boats make her only slightly less nauseous than planes, so this trip is off to one of the worst starts. Ever. Thalia makes it, though, and tips the guy driving the boat a hefty sum (the way her father would). By the time she's in her room she is grateful for the leggings and zip-up hoodie she always wears on planes- even ones with leather seats and orange juice served in champagne glasses- because crash doesn't even begin to define what she wants to do.
It's two hours later that Thalia wakes up, jet lag pulling her from slumber. A change of clothes and nice shower are on the to-do list to making her vaguely presentable. After she finishes changing into a black slip dress featuring inch-wide straps and a fluted hem with burgundy cork-soled wedges, hair wet because blow-drying is such a waste of time, Thalia ventures out. She only makes it to the edge of a canal with stone steps leading into the water, which clearly used to be white but now are splotched with rust and ruin, wear and tear, flotsam and jetsam.
(who used these steps, the poet in her wonders, a mermaid?)
Some small, childish part of her wants to be a mermaid at that very moment, hiding in the water, tipping gondolas to scare the tourists, giggling with some other sea-creature, coming up at dusk and slinking back into the ocean at night. It sounds a helluva good time, a lot more fun than going on this mission, this death sentence for everyone that isn't her- on the outside.
She stands there for a while, before moving on to a garden enclosed with a gate, full of statues and plants (a zoo for things that don`t move) but eventually makes her way back to the canal, which has become occupied since she left it, by a guy her age holding a cigarette.
"Care for a smoke?" asks the guy, with only a trace of lilting Italian accent. Surprising.
She takes the proffered cigarette as an invitation to sit, settling down beside him and tugging the linen of her dress over her knees.
Thalia receives the cigarette with a nod and a rueful "Trying to quit, though."
"Aren't we all." He laughs, a dark laugh, the sound like a trapped butterfly rarely released, or an exotic hummingbird in a gilded cage."You look like you've been clean for a while, though."
"I just smoke after long flights. Takes the edge off."
"Ah." The word is accompanied by another drag, pale smoke curling out like a white flag, surrender to this toxic, lethal drug. But then, to steal his words, aren't they all? (toxic and lethal, that is.)
Thalia blows out smoke, watches it drift over the sunset-hued water, tinted peach and coral and lilac. If she squints, the smoke is a cloud and the boy next to her, someone she might lean over to kiss playfully, tenderly. And if her vision blurs enough, she is a schoolgirl on vacation and this is a summer fling.
They are two strangers smoking, and she won't tell a fairy-tale-rom-com-flavoured lie to say that this is love at first sight, but the atmosphere is galvanic, electric the way novels talk about kisses. Like them killing themselves slowly is more intimate than any touch. And it is, isn't it? After all, she's kissed dozens of people where it hasn't counted, all for purposes- wants not her own.
(and that's why you should leave, says the little voice in her head, because love is a distraction at best and always, always bad for you.)