AN: Hello people. If you are just joining us, you may want to know the irrelevant information that this is my first AN of this story. I never really liked it when fanfic authors were too cool to write an AN. So after I realized I was being a hypocrite, I thought real long on it and decided to write one. An AN, that is.
Just want you to know that the reviews are really cool and I love it when I get them, so please take a second to write one if you can. As if you never heard that before.
Anyway, this chapter is shorter, but (in my mind) important. Enjoy.
Present day
They decided to ditch the cars. Both were out of gas anyway, so what use would they be?
It was silent walking back to the small town they had departed from. By the time they got back it was well into the night.
The two searched for a while, looking carefully for a car out of the way enough that no one would miss it much. When they finally found one that suited the criteria, it was already unlocked.
Percy slid into the driver's seat before Annabeth could protest. She stood there staring at him until he asked, "What?"
"Do you know how to hotwire a car?" she asked, in a bored voice.
Without comment Percy stepped out of the car. He got in the passenger side while Annabeth frowned at her reflection in the mirror and fiddled with a piece of stray hair that looked to have been singed a bit on the end. She gave up after a minute when she caught Percy looking at her. She muttered quietly, "Do you have a knife, or something?"
Percy pulled Riptide out of his pocket and uncapped it. "Or something," he said, offering the handle to her.
"Never mind," she huffed, before reaching over his legs to the glove department. She let it fall open, and began rummaging through the contents.
Percy quickly put away the sword, feeling like an idiot. He uselessly stared at her as she found a plastic knife and fork. She went to work prying the panel under the dashboard up, catching it when it was a finger width out from its usual spot, and pulling with white fingers until it snapped off with a crack.
Percy let his eyes wander out the window. The town was really in the middle of nowhere. Texas was too big of a state to keep track of, what with all the repeating colours in every city. Dust brown, chalky gold, dull green, a bit of smoky red here and there. Percy suspected he was wrong though. He had only had time to keep his eyes on the back of Annabeth at all times while on his chase.
And now they were together. Finally. This is what he'd wanted the whole time. For years this is what he'd wanted.
But not like this. This wasn't the comfortable picture he had been hoping for when he returned. This was just awkward.
He didn't know what to do in this situation. He didn't even know what to title the situation, and he wasn't going to try.
A grumble sounded from the car before it hummed to life under them. The headlights illuminated the ground in front of them. Annabeth put the car in reverse and drove around to the front of the building, down the main road of the tiny town, then gunned it, jerking the car forward.
The headlights led the way as the car drove onward, swerving slightly when a large enough obstacle came into view.
"Where are we going?" Percy asked.
"New York," was her short answer.
They drove a long time. Percy wasn't sure how long, the digital clock on the dash wasn't blinking, it had read 7:45 since they started driving. Neither talked, no matter how badly Percy needed to ask about this Cody.
At one point Annabeth pulled the car over in a big city -the first one they had reached- for gas, and when she got back in Percy asked, as if there hadn't been any time in between questions, "Why New York?"
"Connor Stoll left the message on my phone that Cody had disappeared from camp," Annabeth said, as she pulled back into traffic. Percy saw her knuckles whiten on the steering wheel. "He didn't give details, and he isn't answering his phone. Therefore we need to talk to him face to face."
"Okay," Percy said, looking out the window. The car smelt really bad. The previous owner obviously smoked, and never bathed. He focused on that for a while; thought about how he could potentially fix it. It sort of helped clear his head. He yanked on the windows roller, but it was stuck tightly, so he quickly ran out of things to think about.
"Annabeth," he said.
He thought he saw her eyes flash at him for a split second, but he was probably wrong.
"I'm sorry," he said.
No answer was given.
