CHAPTER 8

THALIA POV

It was really funny when they woke up Jessie and of course, you guessed it, it was Thalia's idea. The look on Jessie's face was

when they said they were being attacked was a real kodak moment and Thalia savored it. Once everything was packed up,

they had eaten and all other things were taken care of they headed off towards ST. Luis. Almost as soon as they started

walking Jessie asked a question that Thalia was surprised that she herself hadn't thought of

"Is Percy Jackson real?"

"Ya, he would have been here but he is visiting the god's." Arden answered. That took us all a few moments to digest then we

all stayed silent and that got me to think of 2 days earlier.

*FLASHBACK*

Jessie had just got back from a little talk with Annabeth about where to go and she was readying Cappy so he too could go

on the quest when Chiron came by

"What are you doing with that dog Jessie?" He inquired

"I'm getting him ready to go on the quest with us." She answered stead-fastly with that 'i'm not letting you take him' look

on her face.

"Trust me Jessie, you would not want Cappy to go if you knew about the quest." He laughed a humorless laugh "In fact you

wouldn't want anyone to go." and he trotted away. It was creepy and not one of them could understand what it meant,

not even Arden.

*END OF FLASHBACK*

"Hey guys we just crossed into Indiana, maybe we should take a lunch brake." Jessie said, breaking the silence

"How do you know that we're in Indiana?" I asked.

"I read the sign over there." Jessie said pointing to a colorful sign with Welcome to Indiana on it and also 35,867 square

miles and population- 6,271,973 people. I felt stupid, so I said

"I thought it was a Mc Donald's sign." I regretted that one even sooner since, only like a second after I said it everyone esle

fell to the ground laughing. Eventually they stopped and when my cheeks turned back to their normal shade we walked

to a near by tree and sat, ate and talked over a gourmet lunch of cold spaghetti O's, iced tea in a can and some dried fruit.

Then we started walking again in as always, silence when all of a sudden Jessie veered off our straight/ diagonal path and

turned to the left.

"Hey," Mary Kate said "where are you going?" she was obviously confused.

"To the train." Jessie said matter-of-factly as if we should know that.

"Why?" It was my turn to ask a question

"Don't you want to get there faster?" Jessie asked, raising an eyebrow. Then it dawned on me that we could ride the train

to ST Luis but I wouldn't ask why we didn't do that earlier because I felt like I had said enough dumb things for today so I

just went with the flow and followed Jessie and Arden, who were whispering together in a way that made me and obviously

Mary Kate un comfortable. I looked at Mary Kate and caught her eye, giving her a 'what do we do now?' look. She just

shrugged her shoulders and kept on walking.