But it didn't help. Michael knew Katie wasn't getting his letters because she said so in the ones she wrote him: Maybe you are busy. It happens, especially with things the way they are, one said. Another suggested, Maybe I wrote our address down wrong. Here is the correct one. But it was the same one he'd already had. And he knew it couldn't be his handwriting, because he'd asked Silena to address them for him, and her penmanship was a work of art.

When everyone began to arrive for the summer, he didn't hesitate. He went to the hill and sat by Peleus the dragon where he lay guarding the Golden Fleece that Percy Jackson had brought back the summer before. He sat and he waited for Katie to arrive himself. And when he saw her and Miranda making their way up the hill, he ran down to meet her.

"I wrote, I swear I wrote. I wrote like ten letters, maybe even twenty. For Christmas I sent you this perfume that Silena said you would love. I don't know what could have happened. The address was right, and legible, and everything."

Katie just looked at him, startled and bemused. Then suddenly she smiled. "It's okay, Mike. I believe you."

Behind her, Miranda made a face. Even she was taller than him now, he noted with irritation.

"I'm going to go put my stuff away and then I'll meet you by the lake, okay?" She leaned down and gave him a peck on the cheek, then hurried off to her cabin. He watched her go, hoping no one else noticed the flush in his cheeks.

"'Dear Katie, the time I spend with you is always the best time of the summer.'" The taunting voice behind him snapped him out of his reverie.

He spun around. Miranda was still standing there, grinning at him.

"You!" he said, his good mood gone faster than he would have thought possible. "You took my letters?"

"'When we kissed, all I could think about was how much I wanted your mouth around my hard—'"

"I didn't write that!"

"You might as well have. Every letter was just like, 'Dear Katie, I want to fuck you like an animal. Yours, Mike.'"

He was too angry for words. "What—just—why—"

"Because you're not getting any, I'd imagine."

"I mean, why did you take my letters?"

"To read them, stupid. And I couldn't very well give them to Katie after I'd opened them, could I?"

"You—you are the worst person I've ever met!"

Miranda gave a giggle and a mock-curtsy. "Why thank you."

He advanced on her. "I am going to kill you."

She danced backward out of his reach. "Ah ah, how would your beloved feel if you killed her darling little sister?"

"Yeah, you're a real darling! Taking her mail and letting her worry!"

Miranda tapped her lips with a finger thoughtfully. "Ah, but was she that worried? She seemed all right to me."

"Because she knew there was a reasonable explanation for it!"

She grinned as if he'd said just what she'd wanted to hear. "So wait, was she worried or wasn't she? I'm a little confused."

"You can just fuck right off!" he roared.

Miranda only giggled again. "Temper, temper," she admonished, skipping off down the hill toward her cabin. "The perfume smelled like piss, by the way!"

Michael just stood there, fuming. "What are you looking at?" he snapped at Peleus, who responded with a snort of smoke out his nostrils before he laid his head back down to take a nap.

xxx

But even the little hellion that was Miranda Gardner couldn't ruin things this time. He was determined that he was going to take full advantage of his time with Katie this summer, everyone else be damned.

Unfortunately, the first time an Ares kid set to taunting him about it—a clever and original song about sitting in a tree k-i-s-i-n-g; the Ares cabin was full of such wits—he lost it. Of course, the Ares kid in question was, like most of the Ares kids, at least twice as big as him, so it was Michael who ended up in the infirmary.

To her credit, Katie waited until he could move all his limbs again before she lectured him. "You can't keep doing this, Mike."

"You're right. Next time I'll just shoot him and be done with it."

Katie sighed. "That's not what I meant. Your temper. You always let it get the better of you!"

"So, what, are you saying I should just let people push me around?"

"That's not what I'm saying at all," she told him patiently. "There are more than two possible outcomes for this."

"Not really," Michael snapped.

"Well, take me, for example. I keep my temper in check, wouldn't you say? But people don't push me around."

"Uh, come again?"

Katie frowned. "What? Are you trying to say people do push me around?"

"I'm saying that sometimes you're kind of a doormat."

He knew immediately it was the wrong thing to say—of course it was. He should have realized that before he spoke. But he'd said it, and he couldn't take it back now.

Katie just sat there staring at him for a long moment. "I think I should go now."

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean—"

"Yes, you did." She got to her feet and headed for the door. "You never say things you don't mean, Michael." And she was gone.

"Bravo, Romeo."

Michael looked up as Will appeared in the doorway through which Katie had just left. If he'd been in the shape to do it, Michael would have gotten up and punched him right in his smug face. "Got nothing better to do than eavesdrop?"

"I've got loads of better things to do, actually, but unfortunately I'm on duty right now so it's my job to make sure you're healing properly. I waited until you two were done and unfortunately I couldn't help overhearing a few things."

"Yeah, whatever. Just do what you need to do and get the fuck out."

Will held up his hands. "Hey, hey, don't blame me for your characteristic complete lack of tact."

"That's rich coming from you, King of the Ramblers," Michael snarled.

Will shrugged as he began giving Michael a cursory examination. "I only know that nothing I've said to Katie has ever made her get up and leave a room just so she didn't have to talk to me anymore."

"Yeah, because you and Katie are such good friends."

"Actually," Will said, flexing Michael's once-broken arm harder than was necessary, "we are pretty good friends. I'm going to teach her how to play the guitar."

It was his words that really hurt, but Michael was determined not to show it. "I know how to play the guitar."

"Yeah. That's funny, isn't it?"

"You stay away from her."

Will frowned. "Last I checked, Katie can spend time with whoever she wants to spend time with."

"You just wait, Will Solace," Michael hissed. "We may share a father but if you do this I will have no reservations whatsoever with taking you out."

"I'm not doing anything," Will said. "Katie was the one who asked me. If I wanted to date her—and who says I even do?—I would just let you continue to sabotage yourself. Drink this and you should be able to go back to the cabin by tonight." He left a glass of nectar on the bedside table, then turned to leave. On his way out, he paused at the door. "You know, Michael, contrary to what your persecution complex might lead you to believe, I'm not actually out to get you. You were the one who called Katie a doormat, not me. Think about that."

When Michael was finally alone, he grudgingly drank the nectar. It tasted like the salt water taffy he'd shared with Katie just the week before. He closed his eyes and in spite of himself, his last words to her went around and around and around in his head.

xxx

"You aren't a doormat."

Katie looked up from the small garden just outside her cabin that she was tending. "Wh-what?"

"You aren't a doormat," Michael said again. "You're… a peacemaker. You let other people think they've won because a fight isn't always worth it. A lesson I should probably learn at some point."

She placed the watering can carefully on the ground beside her. "Yes, it is."

"Do you think maybe… you could teach me?"

She looked him over. "I could try."

"I… would like that."

She stood up and walked over to him, taking his hand. "You weren't entirely wrong, either. I am a doormat sometimes. That's… why it bothered me so much when you said that. Because I knew it was true."

"I shouldn't have said it."

She shrugged. "Maybe you shouldn't have. I criticized you first, though, remember. I'm not going to sit here and pretend I'm perfect and let you think you're the only one who ever does anything wrong. Because maybe you're not perfect, but I'm certainly not either. And… even if I wish you wouldn't be so angry all the time, I… I admire it about you, in a way. You have a lot of passion and conviction. I wish I could have half as much as you."

Michael could feel himself getting flustered. "Stop it. Nobody wants to be more like me. Everybody loves you, and with good reason. If you started acting more like me, people would say I was a bad influence on you."

"Maybe I need a little bit of a bad influence."

He shook his head and stared out at the forest. "You don't need any influence at all. I don't want you to change, Katie. The way you are right now… that's the way I like you."

She gave a small, nervous laugh. "Here I am telling you that you need to change and you just accept me the way I am, faults and all."

"That's because you're already a good person," he muttered.

"And you're not?"

He shrugged. No, he almost said, but he couldn't force the word out of his mouth. Next thing he knew, he'd be writing poetry about the blackness of his soul.

She kissed him, light and sweet. "You are a good person, Michael Yew. End of story." She squinted up at the cloud-free sky. "It's a gorgeous day today. Want to go for a ride?"

"With you? Of course."