Hello again! No more school in my district until September, so now I have too much time and not enough to do but write Fanfiction, play instruments and play Minecraft! Sad. I do nothing all day…very sad.
Mark's POV:
"Annabeth!" Amy called. "Wait! Annabeth!" a flash of blonde, glinting in the winter sun. Annabeth had been having a harder time keeping it together in school, there would always be the high school girls who thought Annabeth was only Percy's friend because he was 'cute' or something like that, or that she was a gold-digger (odd, because our friend group knew Percy was actually really poor), or a slut, and they'd pushed her over the edge as she ran alone for the last day of P.E., in front of everybody else, and in the locker room they'd gotten her to cry and she'd left school like that, and we weren't sure where she was going now- she'd run off before we'd gotten out of the school- it happened often, but today she wasn't here.
"I think-" Joey started. "I think she's already gone." That seemed to be the case. We walked home, silently. Winter Break was here, but none of us really had plans- we were all staying at home, I was pretty sure.
"There." Laura pointed, quietly. We turned. Annabeth was going the opposite way from home- running. How she had that much energy after the horrible P.E. classes, I didn't know- it exhausted the rest of the class, our P.E. coach was strict on us but I doubted it was going to get us into shape anytime soon.
"Annabeth!" I called out to her. She turned. Why? I knew that Annabeth, who had good hearing and tracking abilities, had heard Amy calling her, and the rest of us. Why only me? And why here? Her eyes were a little red around the edges, but she didn't seem perturbed. "Where are you going?"
She paused in her jog. Her gray eyes were stormy, and I guessed that Laura and Amy hadn't told us the whole truth about what the girls had said. "I'm going home." The rest of us probably had expressions on our faces like, 'you do know that your house is that way, right?' I knew she knew. Annabeth was the smartest person I'd ever met. She just probably wasn't in the mood to go right home to her family now.
"You do know that your house is that way, right?" Joey asked stupidly. Annabeth rolled her eyes, she seemed annoyed and short- not in the physical sense, mentally- like, irritated and annoyed short.
"Taking the long route, home, Joey. The really long route. I need to, uh, do some stuff." There was a guilty expression on her face. A little voice in my head spoke up, and I didn't like what it was saying.
'She's lying, Mark, can't you see? Annabeth is lying'. That's what the voice was saying. It did look like that was what Annabeth was doing, the guilt was etched clearly into the few lines on Annabeth's face.
"Okay, then." I said fake cheerfully. "Annabeth, we'll come by your house in what? Half an hour?" she nodded, the San Francisco wind blowing her long blond hair, but she still looked kind of guilty, but I couldn't tell why. School was out. Everything was perfect- except that Percy wasn't here, not for the year.
"Yeah. Maybe." She said the words so quietly, I had to strain my ears to hear them, and then she'd disappeared again, running down the sidewalks and past the cars and houses, onto the street with various shops and she kept moving, getting farther and farther away from the four of us, without a glance back.
Half an hour later, Joey, Amy, Laura and I stood outside the Chase home, nervous, for some reason. Annabeth's words, her obvious guilt and impatience, had been…fishy, the lies on her face very, very clear.
"Did anyone get the feeling Annabeth was lying, about…going home? The long way?" Laura and Amy nodded, but Joey just looked very, very confused. Not to be offensive to Joey, but, sometimes, he's kind of slow with things, and you could see the fireworks going off in his head, and Laura and I started to laugh.
"Ooh…that's what the expression was!" he cried triumphantly. Amy burst into giggles and gave him a kiss on the cheek. "Hey!" I raised a hand and knocked, not loudly but not soft. Helen- Mrs. Chase- answered the door, looking surprised to see us. Why hadn't Annabeth answered the door instead of her?
"Hello, Mrs. Chase. Is Annabeth here?" she stared at us, and I looked inside the house. No Annabeth.
"She didn't tell you?" we shook our heads, confused. Mrs. Chase looked off to the side, looking oddly pensive about what to tell us and what not to tell us, the same expression I'd seen on Annabeth's face a while ago.
"In about an hour, Annabeth's flight to New York City is departing. She's going to her Camp for the Winter Holidays. She didn't tell you?" She looked a little like she'd expected this, surprisingly enough.
In about an hour, Annabeth's flight to New York City is departing. She's going to her Camp for the Winter Holidays. I cleared my throat. "No. No, Annabeth didn't tell us."
"I can't believe Annabeth didn't tell us she was going to New York, and then said we could come by her house later. She must've been too chicken to tell us she was flying off to see Percy." Amy exploded. "She could've at least said she wouldn't be around for the holidays." Privately I agreed with her- Annabeth was supposed to be our friend, friends shouldn't keep big secrets like that.
Thing was, I already knew Annabeth had already kept a lot of big secrets from us, her and Percy. They'd always kept too many things from us like we weren't good enough and it would always infuriate me.
Bypassing security and telling them we were just here to see our friend off was hard, but we eventually managed to convince the guards to let us through after showing our school IDs to them. Annabeth's New York flight was leaving in ten minutes, and the gate was at the other end of the airport.
"There! 16." I have no idea how many gates there are in the SF airport, don't judge me, I've only been there once, and I was half-asleep from a nine hour flight.
There she was- sitting down and reading a book, going over it and mouthing the words with a slight smile on her face, and looking without a care in the world. Where had the guilt for leaving us behind gone? She didn't even see us and she was smiling at the book and closed her eyes as if relieving old memories. We were silent, we just stood there as she read and got up to start to board. And then she saw us.
Her mouth opened and closed and she stood there, stunned, holding a backpack and a small bag that we'd thought were gym clothes and I noticed a slight shimmer in the air and she stared at it helplessly. The shimmer disappeared. She turned back to us.
Laura exploded. "You didn't think it necessary to tell us that you were flying off to see Percy? You didn't think you should tell your long-time friends that you weren't going to be around for the Winter Holidays? Why, Annabeth? If you can go right through Tiffany's and Alexis's stupid criticisms why not this, which actually is justified?" Tiffany and Alexis were the 'popular' girls who liked to tease Annabeth and insult her. "We're the people you've known the longest. Did you really have to lie to us about taking the long route home? About going home? Meeting us?" Annabeth looked perturbed at that and spoke, softly.
"You aren't."
"What?"
"You aren't the people I've known the longest. And I didn't lie to you. I told you guys I might meet you and look- I did. I told you that I was going home, taking a long route, and I am. Camp is my home. It was my home since I was seven and ran away and faced monsters, Laura, Amy, Joey, Mark. It still is my home, I've known people like Silena Beauregard, Connor and Travis Stoll, Beckendorf, my brother Malcolm, for years. Since I was seven. I returned here when I turned twelve, for seventh grade, but I knew them since I was seven. It was Percy who convinced me to come back, and sometimes, when I'm alone, in the dark, I wonder if it was a mistake to listen. Especially when there's a real family, maybe a dysfunctional and weird family, but a real family, there in New York. And there's a woman named Sally Jackson who treats me like she would a daughter. A real daughter, when my only relation to her is Percy."
"What I'm saying is, if I had told you, we'd have had the same conversation just a little earlier in the day. You would've argued and tried to convince me and I have to board a plane to see the people who really, really, care for me. The people who let me go to SF even when I've been by them, the people who I need to see before I don't have any time left."
And after that, Annabeth was gone. She melded into a line and all you could see was her blond hair glittering from the bright airport light and I saw her give a boarding pass and walk into the plane, and we watched as it took off, all silently. We all knew Annabeth was justified in this but it still hurt that she chose not to tell us she was leaving over being honest with what we used to think were her 'best' friends. Just friends.
I have to board a plane to see the people who really, really care for me. The people who let me go to SF even when I've been by them, the people who I need to see before I don't have any time left.
Before I don't have any time left.
Was she telling us that she was going to die?
Annabeth's POV:
The takeoff was bumpy but amusing. I remembered Percy, on the flight we took back home, had freaked out. We'd had to go up to the Empire State Building to get clearance so he could fly back without being blasted out of the sky.
Luckily for me, that was my grandfather and he didn't want to kill me. I brushed my hair out of my face and stared at the airport. I didn't regret what I said to Laura- not really. She should've just left it alone, and my real family would always be at Camp Half-Blood, in Long Island Sound, and they weren't my best friends no matter what I was to them.
I'd expected them to come find me. I'd expected them to be angry, like I had been at Percy. If I came back after Winter Break, I would most likely drop out of freshman year after Spring Break, because of the War, anyway. It wasn't like it would get easier for them, but for me, I was coming home. They were my friends, but…they were mortal. They belonged in this world in a way I could never fully be- a part of my blood was supposed to be in Olympus. And a terrifying part of this, of leaving them behind and going to my half-blood family, was knowing that if I stayed past Winter Break, I may never see them again.
I might not come home from the War. We might win, but I might not live. Percy might not live.
And that was the worst thing about all of it, was knowing that Percy might never see Sally Jackson again, maybe he wouldn't get to read the novel his mom was working on. Maybe he wouldn't ever set things right with Nico and he might never get to fight again with Thalia.
He deserved to be on this world, with a fatal flaw of loyalty. I was too arrogant and prideful.
I was going to die saving him if I had to.
