Chapter 12: I Nearly Lose A Friend At A National Landmark

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I slept through two states and a short stop in Chicago, which was a pity since I would have liked to catch a glimpse of the Sears Tower. However, our next stop was miles better. We rolled into St Louis under the Gateway Arch and from the time it loomed on the horizon, curving majestically above the whole city, I couldn't tear my eyes away.

The Gateway Arch was one of those monuments that had defied arguments against its design and construction to become a proud city centrepiece. Its detractors had claimed it was useless, of no practical value as a structure, but here it was now, fifty years later, still rising proudly against the city skyline. I'd read that it was actually a memorial to the pioneer explorers of America, but seeing it in person, I felt it was more than that.

In a way, all architecture was a shrine to some ideal, and those, like the tenets of civilisation, were founded upon the gods. Whether or not a designer believed, it was the gods who patronised their work, and most of all, it was my mother, Athena, patroness of crafts, who appreciated the labours of great architects.

Creating a structure like the Arch was an enormous undertaking: it needed years of planning, developing painstaking blueprints with layers upon layers of design. But it was an investment that would pay off. At the end, your hard work lasted for centuries. The Gateway Arch was one of the younger monuments, but there were structures across America that had stood much longer as evidence of their architects' ingenuity. And in the ancient lands, the ruins of monuments proved that the legacies of an architect could remain after millennia.

I wanted to do that, too.

'What?' Percy said, making me jump. He was looking at me curiously. I realised I must have spoken aloud.

'Build something like that.' I gestured to the Arch. He looked dubiously up at it. 'You ever see the Parthenon, Percy?'

'Only in pictures.'

Okay, so had I, but that wasn't really the point. 'Someday, I'm going to see it in person,' I told him. I knew it would be my muse, the structure that would inspire a masterpiece. 'I'm going to build the greatest monument to the gods ever. Something that'll last a thousand years.'

'You?' Percy laughed disbelievingly. 'An architect?'

I felt angry. Where did he get off belittling my dreams? 'Yes, an architect,' I said haughtily. 'Athena expects her children to create things.' I glared at him. 'Not just tear them down, like a certain god of earthquakes I could mention.'

Percy shut up, a wounded look on his face. Immediately I felt guilty. I thought of how desperately he seemed to cling to the notion that his parents were great. After a moment, I sighed.

'Sorry, that was mean,' I conceded.

'Can't we work together a little? I mean, didn't Athena and Poseidon ever co-operate?'

The old story from the Iliad, the book Chiron had given me, flitted into my head: Athena and Poseidon collaborating over the chariot. I hadn't thought of it since I'd first read it, but now I remembered, along with her saying, Sometimes it is necessary for us to move past our rivalries, for the greater good.

I told him about the chariot project. 'My mom invented it, but Poseidon created horses out of the crests of waves. So they had to work together to make it complete.'

He smiled tentatively. 'Then we can co-operate, too. Right?'

I wanted to say it had to work both ways-he still hadn't apologised for laughing at my dream-but that probably wouldn't be all that co-operative of me. 'I suppose,' I said.

'We are arriving at St Louis Station,' a pleasant female voice said over the intercom. 'Passengers travelling onwards are reminded that there will be a three-hour stopover at this station. Thank you for riding with Amtrak, and we wish you a pleasant journey.'

Excitement washed over me. We had three hours to kill and we were about five blocks from the tallest arch in the world. I knew exactly how I meant to spend my time.

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Percy and Grover weren't too thrilled about checking out the Arch, but I was too excited to care. I was glad we'd raided Medusa's cash register, because we had to add ten bucks from it to our leftover change from Gladiola's reward in order to pay for the tickets. I thought it well worth it, though. We had to catch the elevator up—a curved elevator!—from the underground museum, which had a display on pioneer life in the 1800s. While we waited in line for our turn at the elevator, I drank in the panels that showed pictures of the arch being constructed. There was a wealth of information, more than the short paragraphs in my books had revealed.

'Did you know it only took them two years to build the whole thing? And they allowed people to watch.' Wistfully, I traced the black-and-white photograph showing a thirty-foot tower where spectators could observe the Arch growing before their very eyes. It had to be really cool. 'They even had radio shows about it.'

'People must have been starving for entertainment back then,' Percy muttered.

A smaller poster, skipped over by most tourists, showed a few of the early blueprints, along with several geometric equations the primary architect had used. I wished I had a pen and paper to copy it down. I had to resort to trying to commit it to memory.

'Hey guys,' Percy said, pulling me away from a display on the construction equipment that had been used. He offered the cheerful thought that Hades might be watching us under his Helm of Darkness. How he could have got that from the displays around us, I couldn't fathom. Grover, already jumpy at being underground, shuddered.

'Well, this should make you happier, then.' I pulled them along. It was nearly our turn at the elevators.

Grover looked relieved at leaving the museum, but strangely, the elevator seemed to terrify Percy more than the idea of an invisible Hades hiding in the shadows. I figured he'd perk up once we started moving. I mean, how many times in your life do you get to ride an elevator that goes in a curved line? Even if he couldn't appreciate the physics of it, he had to be at least a little awed by that.

It took us four minutes to travel up the curvature of the Arch. The three of us were squeezed into the elevator with a fat lady and her Chihuahua. There wasn't much to do on the upward journey except make polite conversation. Grover sneezed a lot, as though he had an allergy. I felt mildly disappointed. The experience would probably be lots better if they'd constructed a glass elevator so we could watch the earth curve away from us.

The view from the top was spectacular, though. We were over 600 feet above the city and I could see just about everything, all the way to the other side of the Mississippi River to the east, and the whole of St Louis over to the thin streak that was the Missouri on the west. When I looked down, if I craned my neck, I could see to the feet of the Arch, so carefully constructed to absorb the full weight of the structure in the foundations. I marvelled at the fact that the carpeted floor beneath me was in fact spreading my weight diagonally downwards. It would be cool if I could look straight down—like if the observation deck was constructed with glass all the way around. There'd be no need for tourists to squeeze at the windows then, with panoramic views from every angle.

I studied the design of the deck and then closed my eyes, thinking. There had to be a way to do it properly.

'They're closing!' Percy said, tugging at my sleeve. 'We'd better go.'

He practically dragged me and Grover to the elevator and pushed us in. He was about to step in himself, but the attendant on duty held him back.

'Only four allowed at once. Next car, sir.'

I moved to leave. 'We'll get out—we'll wait with you.'

The other two tourists scowled at me. The attendant looked dubious; the next in line were a couple and their kid, who wouldn't have been able to all fit in either.

'Naw, it's okay,' Percy said. 'I'll see you at the bottom.'

It shouldn't have been a problem. It was only a three-minute ride down.

Unfortunately, that was apparently enough time for trouble to find Percy.

The elevator had just deposited Grover and I back in the museum and shut its doors behind us when we felt the tremor.

'Annabeth,' Grover said, 'is that … an earthquake?' His eyes widened with terror. 'We should get out of here.'

'But—' I looked at the elevator doors, which were still closed. I imagined the car was rising back up to where Percy was waiting. 'We can't leave without Percy!'

The walls around us shook. A blaring alarm went off.

'This is an emergency!' a cool female voice announced. 'Please make your way to the nearest exit immediately. In case of fire, the elevators should not be used.'

Grover and I exchanged a look. As the foundations of the Arch shook around us, we raced through the throng of tourists rushing for the exit and burst out onto the boulevard.

The good news: the Arch was still standing and the ground beneath us didn't seem to be quaking. The bad news: a column of flame sprouted from the Arch observation deck overhead.

National monuments didn't just catch fire out of nowhere.

'Grover!' I pointed up at the Arch. 'Did you notice anything in disguise when we were up there?'

'Oh, no, no, no,' Grover wailed. 'I don't know. My nose was all blocked from being underground … there might have been …'

I wanted to scream at him. But the truth was, it was my fault we'd gotten separated. I was the one who had wanted to see the Arch. I'd let Percy stay behind while we took the first elevator car down. Now he was trapped in an enclosed space, possibly with another minion of Hades—or worse, what if it was Hades himself? Percy had put out that idea earlier and I'd ignored it. It was all too easy to believe now that those could be the flames of hellfire shooting from the top of the Arch.

'Okay, calm down, it's okay,' I said, though I was trying to convince myself more than Grover. 'Percy's smart, he'll—I don't know, there must be an emergency escape route. A set of stairs or something. We'll just find it and he'll be there.'

Then something came falling out of the air, a tiny figure growing larger as it descended. It zipped over our heads in a graceful arc and plummeted towards the river. Grover and I exchanged another horrified look.

'Oh gods, no.'

We dashed across the boulevard. Cars swerved and blared their horns.

Even though rationally, I knew no one could have survived a fall like that—the acceleration to terminal velocity alone would have been fatal—I couldn't help scanning the river. The surface gave no sign that anyone or anything had crash-dived in.

'Percy!' Grover wailed. 'I'm a total failure,' he sobbed. 'I've gone and lost—I'll never forgive myself …'

'Grover!' I shook him sternly, although I was tempted to plonk down next to him and start bawling my eyes out, too. 'Maybe that wasn't him. We need to look for him, okay?'

I dragged him back across the boulevard. People had gathered to gasp and point at the flaming Arch. Someone must have called 911, because sirens were already blaring, police cars and ambulances weaving up the streets with flashing neon lights. Security staff circled a door at the foot of the Arch. A troop of firefighters went charging in.

'Get back!' a police officer ordered. He started unrolling a ball of crime scene tape, roping off a wide radius around the Arch. We were pushed back with the other curious onlookers.

There was a crackle over the officer's portable radio. A tinny voice announced, 'Explosion contained, four survivors, over.'

'Survivors,' I said. 'See, Grover, it'll be okay.'

Three paramedics ducked under the police tape and headed through the Arch door. The officer went back to yelling at everyone to get back from his crime scene.

The next few minutes were a blur as we waited, ears peeled for any information on the police radio.

'Three adults, one child, sending child down first,' the radio announced, followed by a burst of static.

'There was another kid,' Grover said dubiously. Sometime during the wait, we'd grabbed hold of each other's hands and were clinging tightly, hoping …

A firefighter emerged with an unconscious, sandy-haired boy of about five years old slung over his shoulder. My insides seemed to crumple at the sight.

It wasn't Percy.

I didn't know what to do. I'd never felt so helpless in my life, not even when I'd lost Thalia. At least then, our journey had been at a close. Now we were hundreds of miles away from camp, the leader of our quest was missing or dead—my mind kept arguing with itself on that point—and I had no idea what happened in that case. I'd told Percy a few days ago that the quest would end if he got killed, and that was how things usually went, but failing for us meant that there'd be a war in a week. Did that mean we had to keep trying without him? Did we even have a prayer of hope at it?

Please, mom, I thought, tell me what to do. And then, to a god I'd never imagined I'd beg, Lord Poseidon … he's your son. Please …

I didn't even know what I was pleading for in my head. I squeezed Grover's hand so hard it must have hurt, but he was already crying really hard.

At some point, we started walking away—I think it was right after they brought the elevator attendant who had separated us down—and wandering in the direction of the riverbank. The crowd had grown impossibly larger, with news reporters and TV crews having joined the fray, scrounging for a juicy evening headline.

'Oh my Lord Pan,' Grover said suddenly. He let go of my hand. His head perked up, nose sniffing the air. I felt a wave of hope. 'PERCY!' He took off at a run.

I caught sight of his tousled black hair a split-second before Grover slammed into him, almost bowling him over. Grover clung to him for almost a minute, half-laughing, half-crying. When he finally let go, Percy's green eyes locked on me.

I wanted to be angry at him for putting us through the last half-hour, but the relief at seeing him standing there was too great. I wanted to hug him and smack him at the same time.

I settled for a scold. 'We can't leave you alone for five minutes! What happened?'

'I sort of fell.'

'Percy!' So it had been him tumbling towards the river. But how? 'Six hundred feet?'

The paramedics pushed between us with a third survivor from the Arch fire on a stretcher. She was babbling away about a fire-breathing Chihuahua. I sucked in a horrified breath. That had to be a monster, no doubt about it. Though I'd yet to read about an ancient fire-dog. I remembered a Chihuahua in the skywards elevator, with that fat lady we'd made polite conversation with. The Mist must have warped things, though clearly not enough.

'What—' I started to ask Percy.

'That's the boy!' the lady survivor said, struggling against the paramedic's restraining hand. She pointed a finger straight at Percy.

Percy grabbed me and Grover. 'Come on!'

'What's—going—on?' I panted as we ran down the street, away from the Arch. 'Was she talking about the Chihuahua on the elevator?'

'Not a Chihuahua,' he said, 'a Chimera.'

'What?'

'It was Echidna,' he said. 'This reptile lady. With, um, scales, and—'

'I know who Echidna is,' I said. 'Daughter of Gaia and Tartarus. The mother of all monsters.'

'Er, okay. Anyway, she set the Chimera on me. It burnt a hole right through the observation deck … hit the Arch, too.' He looked guiltily at me, like a kid who'd destroyed someone's favourite toy by accident.

'Never mind that,' I said quickly. 'So you fell—six hundred feet—through the hole? And survived?'

He shrugged. 'I prayed really hard to my dad?'

Well, I thought wryly, so did I. I wasn't about to tell him that, though.

'I'm glad you're okay,' Grover said. 'I'm so sorry I didn't sense it!'

'It's all right, G-man. Turns out, I had a pretty useful swim in the river. I didn't know it before, but I can actually breathe underwater. Cool, huh?'

'No way!'

'Uh-huh. And I met this lady—she said she was a messenger from my dad—and, um, said a bunch of stuff, but the gist of it was to go to the beach in Santa Monica. She was kind of insistent about that. She said my dad needed me to go there before I went to the Underworld.'

'Whoa,' Grover said immediately. 'We've got to get you to Santa Monica! You can't ignore a summons from your dad.'

While this was probably true—especially after we'd just prayed to Poseidon for help and got it—something about Percy's story was tugging at my brain, trying to make a connection. If only I'd been up there to face Echidna as well. I could have tried to get some answers from her about what Hades was up to. Although I had a feeling neither Grover nor I would have survived a fall from the Gateway Arch as easily as Percy had.

Anyway, as Percy seemed to be the hot topic of all the news channels around St Louis, we all agreed that getting back on board the train was the wisest course of action. Amazingly, given all the excitement we'd just been through, we hadn't exceeded our three-hour stopover.

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As we rolled across the flat nothingness of Kansas, I tried to make a plan. We would arrive in Denver the next afternoon and then, not only did we need to get to Santa Monica on less than twenty bucks, we also needed to figure out for sure if we were heading in the right direction with our quest.

I still felt like we were missing something important, something that our entire quest would hinge on.

I hoped the answers might be in Santa Monica, but that seemed a little too neat. Besides, I was a little afraid that when we got there, Poseidon would take one look at me and send me packing because of who my mom was.

We ate in the dining car, spending the last of our dollar bills on overpriced soup and potato salad. It came on disposable paper plates and bowls, which was fortunate because Grover snapped them up, too, and I thought the train attendants might be a bit annoyed if their crockery got eaten.

As we ate, I grilled Percy about Echidna and the river spirit, trying to extract every detail he might have missed. His encounter with Echidna seemed like she's actually been sent by Zeus—in retrospect, that sort of made sense, as he'd kind of encountered her in the sky. I cursed myself for forgetting that being up in the air wasn't the safest place for a son of the sea. About the river spirit, he just repeated that she'd told him to find the beach in Santa Monica, and not to trust the gifts.

'What gifts?'

'I don't know, she kinda disappeared then. I think the river was just too polluted for her.'

'Exactly!' Grover said. 'That's what I've been saying all along—the real problem in the world is all the pollution!'

'Not now, Grover,' I said, exasperated. 'Percy, tell me exactly, what did she say before she told you about the gifts?'

Percy's face turned red. 'Just that I had to go to Santa Monica.'

'There's got to be more than that.' I looked at him suspiciously. He was looking carefully away, twisting his napkin in his hands. I wondered, feeling a little annoyed, just what kind of spirit had shown up.

'She reminded me of my mom, okay? And she called me "brave one." And …' His face went deep magenta, but when he spoke again, there was a tinge of pride in his voice. 'She said my dad believes in me.'

That shut me up. I thought of my mom, telling me to make her proud.

I guess we all wanted our godly parents' approval.

That night, our last on the train, I hoped that maybe I'd get a useful dream, something that might help me put together all the clues we'd gotten so far. Instead, I got to be seven years old again.

I was running into the woods, away from a large white mansion. Thalia limped along next to me, her hand pressing on my shoulder. It threw my balance off, and it was all I could do not to trip over the mess of tree roots underfoot.

'Luke!' Thalia yelled. 'Luke, wait up!'

He was way ahead of us and he didn't seem to be slowing anytime soon. My actual memory of this time was fuzzy, but in the dream, I knew that he was really angry and I thought it was someone in the house behind us who had made him mad, only maybe it was us because he was running off and leaving us behind.

I stumbled over a patch of uneven ground and my knees buckled. Thalia and I both crashed to the ground.

'Luke!' Thalia yelled again. 'Damn it, Luke, stop!' He was beginning to fade into the shadows of the trees and I was terrified, suddenly, that they would swallow him up and I would never see him again.

I started to cry. 'Luke!' I screamed.

There was a rustle of leaves and suddenly Luke was there, kneeling next to me.

'Hey—no, Annabeth, don't—I'm sorry, okay?'

I wiped my sleeve over my face, a little embarrassed. 'Are you mad at us?'

'No, no! It's—look, I'm sorry, I just … my parents are kinda … it just got to me. I'm not mad at you, Annabeth, I promise.'

Thalia punched Luke in the arm, hard. 'Jeez, Luke,' she said. 'I get that you've got issues with family—heck, we all do—but chill out, man, okay?'

'Sorry. I wasn't thinking.' He helped her to her feet, then held his hand out to me. I clung on to his hand even after he pulled me up, scared to let go lest he disappear again. 'Here,' he told Thalia, handing her what looked like a square of caramel. 'I scored some off my dad. I should have given it to you before we left.'

'You're an idiot,' Thalia said, but she ate it.

'Is it candy?' I asked.

'No, it's ambrosia,' Luke said. 'Food of the gods. Sorry, Annabeth, you can't have any unless you're injured. It might make you burn up otherwise.'

'S'okay. That was your dad? Hermes?'

Luke didn't answer. Thalia gave him a nervous glance before saying, 'Yeah. Don't ask, okay, Annabeth? Luke's … sad.'

I nodded. I understood not wanting to talk about dads. I squeezed Luke's hand.

I remember we'd walked on for a long while, heading for our nearest hideout, and Luke had piggybacked me when my legs gave out. My dream fast-forwarded to that point, and I was thrown out of my own perspective, now watching the three of us hiking through the darkness. My small-girl head lolled against Luke's shoulder, dozing. Thalia and Luke were talking softly as they walked.

'He knows something and he wouldn't tell me,' Luke said. His expression was hard and angry and completely unlike what I knew of him then. I hadn't seen that look until it was accompanied, three years later, by an angry claw scar across half his face. I never know he'd already had it in him when we first met.

'Maybe he really can't,' Thalia said. 'There are rules—'

'The gods make the rules,' Luke hissed. 'He just doesn't care.'

Thalia was silent for a while. Then she said, 'The place he talked about … that camp place.'

'I don't want to go.'

'It might be a safe place, though. Aren't you tired of running aimlessly around? There's more and more monsters every day. And with Annabeth, now …'

Luke's face softened. 'I just don't trust the guy. All the stuff about going to camp, being a hero. I should believe it, just because my dad, who never showed up a day in my life, suddenly thinks I ought to go and be a hero?'

I didn't hear Thalia's reply. The woods changed, becoming more familiar, the sky lighter …

I saw an older Luke—the current version, with his scarred but handsome face—staring pensively out over the canoe lake at camp. He was sitting with Silena Beauregard on the pier, their legs dangling off the edge.

'… stupid fighting,' Silena was saying. 'Even my cabin's getting into it.'

'Who are you guys supporting?' Luke asked.

'Well, Aphrodite rose from sea foam. So I guess we're on Poseidon's side.'

'And Hermes is Zeus's messenger, so that makes me on the other side,' Luke said glumly. 'The thing is … I think it's stupid, too. I mean, should we follow our parents blindly? Or make our own choices?'

'That's really deep, Luke,' Silena said. 'I like it, though. One day when I'm counsellor …'

She leaned over and kissed his cheek. Although Luke didn't respond to it, I felt my face grow hot, like I'd witnessed something that wasn't meant for me, like when I'd caught my dad and Janet making out by accident when I was six.

Maybe my dream sensed my embarrassment and got me out of there, because the next thing I knew, I was in Chiron's office. He had a prism set on his table, with a flashlight beam directed at it. In the rainbow filtering out from the prism was the multi-coloured face of a pretty girl with flowing hair. That is, her hair was literally flowing—it undulated along her back like the waves of the ocean. Her eyes had a familiar depth to them, although their exact colour was distorted by the shades of the rainbow and the rippling around her, which I realised wasn't just part of the Iris-message. She was actually calling from underwater.

'… sympathies from my Lord Poseidon,' the water spirit said. 'The divisions in the camp have caused you inconvenience.'

'To put it mildly,' Chiron said. 'But that is inconsequential. Regarding your message … I have heard no news since he and his companions set out. By the laws governing a quest, I am forbidden to initiae contact. Unless they call me, I have no way to relay the message.'

'We will try to intercept him. My sisters are scouting the rivers inland, though they cannot stay long in any one. They will report back to Santa Monica tomorrow. Perhaps one of us may be successful.'

'I wish I had known of this before they left. We could have given them more direction.'

The water spirit shrugged. 'It is the nature of a quest to be winding.'

'Yes, still …' Chiron massaged the back of his neck, inclining his head slightly as he did so. He seemed to notice my dream-self watching him from the corner. 'Annabeth?'

I opened my mouth to greet him and ask if he'd been talking about us, but at that moment, there was a jerk beneath me and I was jolted awake as the train hurtled around a sharp bend. I let out a soft curse at the bad timing, as well as my own stupidity. If I'd realised sooner that I could actually communicate in a dream, I might have been able to speak with Chiron earlier.

Too late now. But he had told the water spirit that he could talk to us if we Iris-messaged him. I decided that once we got to Denver, the first order of business would have to be finding a way to call Chiron. I wanted to find out what message he had for us, and if it had anything to do with the river spirit Percy had met.

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A/N: The reference to Poseidon and Athena collaborating on the chariot in the Iliad? Yeah, I don't actually know if that's true. I couldn't find any references to that story (the chariot thing) at all so I don't even know if RR made it up. So if I got it wrong, mea culpa!

Thank you strawberrygirl2000, Inevera010 and Mystery Master for the kind reviews-comments like yours definitely encourage me to keep sharing what I write with you guys!