"Right, Annabeth? Annabeth."
"Huh? Oh, yes. Left flank."
"Right flank. Seriously Chase, where are you at right now?"
I'm here, with you Clarisse, I thought to myself. Unfortunately. Though Clarisse and I were on mostly good terms these days, especially after she pointed out that I should be the one to lead the quest for Dedalus last year, she was still plenty irritating. Of course, that quest had been seriously dangerous. Maybe she only volunteered me to get me in trouble. Knowing this was entirely unreasonable of me, I quickly pulled myself together.
"Sorry," I said. "Right here. Right flank."
"Take it easy on her, Clarisse," sniffled Silena from the corner. "She's had a tough week. We all have."
Okay, that snapped me right out of it. It had been a tough week; the Princess Andromeda had been blown up by Percy and Charles Beckendorf just days earlier, killing Charlie in the process. Silena and Charlie had been dating, and his heroic but terrible death had resulted in Silena's (understandably) constant crying and wandering the camp alone at night, taking up a sorrowful post at the war councils, and mourning Charlie to the best of her ability. "What?" I asked wearily, trying not to bite Silena's head off in her fragile state. "I have not, I'm fine. Well, of course I mean it's been hard," I added hastily, not wanting to seem insensitive to Charlie's passing, even though we had all mostly been shoving our feelings about it down. Who wanted to confront the reality of what we all were potentially facing right now? "But really," I asked, pulling the tactical map that Clarisse was poring over closer to me. "What are you talking about?"
"Oh… never mind," said Silena uneasily. She and Clarisse exchanged a look. Something about my devastated friend trying to keep information from me seemed backwards.
"But I do mind," I said jerkily, losing my patience a bit. "What's going on?" I truly couldn't take bad news.
"Well… sorry Annabeth. I just thought you knew," said Silena sadly.
"Whole camp is talking about it," said Clarisse gruffly. "Not that I give a shit," she added unconvincingly. "I don't care who Jackson kisses."
"Percy and I never kissed!" I said quickly, mentally excluding the one I planted on him when I thought we were all going to die in the Labyrinth last year. Another thing I can blame on Clarisse!
"Uh—yeah, we know? Never said you did…" said Clarisse suspiciously. "Not that I care," she reiterated again.
"Oh… well yeah, got that cleared up," I said uncomfortably. Seriously, was this the sacred and coveted girl talk treasured by so many teenage girls? I'd rather fight a hydra any day than do this. Well… maybe not a hydra. Those are pretty vicious.
"Well we better head out," said Clarisse abruptly. Silena, whose grief had put her at a glacial pace, jumped up faster than I'd ever seen her move.
"Wait a second!" I said, and they froze. "What was it that everyone in camp was talking about then? If it wasn't Percy and I kissing? Which we didn't!" I added, to reinforce the idea.
"Well, he was kissing somebody," said Clarisse tentatively, clearly interested but clearly wishing she wasn't the one to be breaking this particular piece of news to me.
"No, he wasn't," I said with a humorless laugh. He was my best friend; he would have told me if he was going around kissing someone. Right?
"Silena," said Clarisse, almost pleadingly. Silena looked about as uncomfortable as Clarisse did.
"Well, my mom came to visit me after—well, after it happened," said Silena, tears welling up. She wiped them quickly with the back of her hand and plowed on. "To comfort me you know? It was really nice… well… Aphrodite firmly believes that a bit of gossip is the best way to cheer a person up. And she said that she saw Percy kiss a red-haired girl on the beach in New York. And well… I tried to keep my siblings from spreading it, but… I guess some people heard."
A red-haired girl on the beach in New York. I felt my heart drop into my stomach. Percy was kissing Rachel Elizabeth Dare? On beaches, practically in his father's domain? Did Sally know? Where they dating?
"Oh," I said calmly, turning to look at a random point on the map. "Rachel. Yeah, that makes sense."
"So… you knew?" asked Silena, clearly surprised. Clarisse looked as though a bomb had just detonated itself before her very eyes.
"I… more or less, yeah. It's hardly a surprise," I said, as every neurotransmitter in my head silently screamed this is a surprise! This is a huge surprise! A kick-you-in-the-shins surprise!
"Well… good," said Silena.
"You shouldn't date your combat partner anyway, probably," said Clarisse, who was dating her combat partner.
"Well, we aren't and never were and never wanted to, so I don't see how that's relevant, Clarisse," I said coldly. At least I hoped that I sounded cold, because I was positively seeing red. R.E.D—Rachel Elizabeth Dare. My Athenian brain had noticed her initials upon first meeting Rachel, and had been mildly offended by the color ever since.
"Who never wanted to what?" asked a familiar voice brightly. The three of us whirled around to see Percy Jackson standing in the doorway, his orange Camp Half-Blood shirt sporting a knife slash shoulder to opposite hip, exposing an annoyingly muscular chest. For someone who had just had his death prophesized, he looked really, really good. Clearly, Rachel thought so too.
"We never wanted to… eat dinner together," said Clarisse awkwardly. Gods, dammit.
Percy frowned at this incoherent response. "You guys all eat together all the time. We all do."
"Yeah," said Clarisse, casting glances at Silena and I for help. "But think about it. Do you ever see all three of us eating together? Like just the three of us?"
"Um," Percy said, looking more confused by the minute. For once I couldn't blame his seaweed-for-brains, this was the worst cover-up work I'd ever seen, and I was no help; all that was processing through my exceptional brain was images of Rachel and Percy rolling around and making out on the beach. "I suppose that's true," said Percy slowly. "I guess I've never seen just you three eat together alone," with a look to me that plainly said Are you a part of this nutty conversation too?
"Well that's because we never wanted to," said Clarisse. "So fuck off Jackson, yeah?"
"Fine, fine," Percy said, holding his hands up in surrender, somehow exposing even more of his stomach to us. His shorts were riding entirely too low on his hips, his lower abs forming a ridiculously chiseled V-shape that disappeared under his shorts. Don't think about under his shorts, what's the matter with you? Eyes up, Annabeth! And then, did Rachel Elizabeth Dare know where those muscles go? In what world did she get to have that knowledge, and I just had to live without it?
"Zeus almighty, find a shirt, Jackson," said Clarisse as she and Silena got up to leave. "See you at dinner, she said to me as they walked out the door."
"But not all together!" said Percy brightly.
"What?" asked Clarisse.
"Because, you guys never eat all together… remember?" Percy said helpfully.
"Oh… yes. Right. Bye." The two ducked out as fast as possible.
"That was really weird," Percy said, hopping onto the table and sitting on top of my tactical map, looking at me closely. "Do you guys really have some weird dining arrangement?"
"No," I said, faking a smile so he wouldn't see anything out of the ordinary. "Clarisse was just messing with you."
"I knew it," he said triumphantly. "So," he said, twisting to look at the map. "What's the plan here?"
"You're sitting on it," I said, swatting his thigh without thinking about it. I instantly regretted it, it seemed way too intimate, but Percy didn't seem to notice as he hopped off the table to look. I walked him through the strategy, pushing the little wooden pieces representing our army and Kronos's throughout the various places near camp that we anticipated a stand-off. "Of course," I said, "there is a very real chance this fight happens in Manhattan."
"Really?"
"I mean, the Empire State building seems like a natural epicenter for all of this."
"Maybe it won't come to that," Percy said hopefully. "Maybe if I—"
"Don't do anything stupid, Percy," I said forcefully, knowing that the topic of self-sacrifice was bound to come up sooner rather than later. "We'll figure something out," I said, sounding calmer than I felt. "We always do." I looked up to see Percy's sea-green eyes blazing into mine— Gods, can he tell that I can't breathe? Normally his eyes looked cool and refreshing, but right now they were electric and hot and mind-melting. I met his gaze and thought, Rachel better look into those beautiful eyes and know she's lucky.
"Thanks," he whispered, grabbing my hand. We didn't say anything, but we didn't have to. I felt it in the way he gripped my hand—Annabeth, I'm terrified.
I squeezed his hand back. Overnight it seemed that his hands had practically doubled in size, one of his completely covering mine, like our hands were part of a very weird Russian nesting doll set. Stop thinking of Russian nesting dolls, you freak! "It's all going to be fine," I said, finally having to look away from him.
"It might not be though, and…" Percy trailed off. Gods, was he leaning in? What was happening? His gaze flicked down to my lips and—
"Well, it will! Because I say so," I said brusquely, yanking my hand back and taking several steps back. I rolled up several maps strewn about, avoiding looking at him, anything to break the spell of the afternoon.
"Well, I won't argue with that," he said, smiling thinly. "I know better than to argue with you. For the most part."
"For the most part," I agreed. "Well, better be off, going to grab a bite and maybe get some sleep tonight, I haven't slept well these past few nights."
"Me neither," Percy said, scratching the back of his neck. Even more stomach visible. "Yeah, I better go find a whole shirt, this one got sliced in practice. Meet you at the dining pavilion?"
"Maybe, yeah," I said, knowing full well that I was going to take my food to go and eat alone in my cabin.
"Sounds good. Back in a flash," he said, and, picking up his sword and leaving in a ruffle of ripped orange t-shirt and glint of gold. And there he goes, so perfectly. The only person who has enough of me to break my heart.