Just read the chapter, please.
VIII
Jasmine Snyder
The trio walked into the Coostco, the squeaky automatic doors closing behind them.
"That sounded like an eagle screeching," Allison commented.
"It's Coostco, what do you expect?" Saya said.
"Allison, can you go get some Sharpoes?" Jasmine requested.
"What do you need Sharpoes for?" Allison inquired.
"Just get them please." Jasmine hurried.
"Fine," Allison sighed.
"Saya, just find whatever you think we need," Jasmine asked.
"You're planning to steal this stuff aren't you." She guessed.
"I can use the Mist, might as well just do it." Jasmine shrugged.
"Fine." She turned around and walked towards the book section. Typical.
As Allison looked for permanent markers, and Saya searched for essential items, Jasmine jogged off in the opposite direction. First, she got a supercolossal jar of black olives, because why not? Then, some most likely illegal fireworks left over from the Fourth of July caught her eye and she picked them up too. Seriously why do they still have those? Fourth of July was last year, she thought. This Coostco needs some better marketing. Balancing the items precariously like a badly played game of Tetros in her arms, she wandered around until she found some Takos (they were out of Fonzoes), two bowls of sliced fruit, pre-packaged apple strudel, an air horn, and Sprote.
She met back up with her demigodly friends while they were awkwardly hovering near the checkout line. Allison was holding an entire giant pack of Sharpo markers. Saya was pushing a cart holding three identical black camping backpacks and a giant encyclopedia of Greek Mythology (all of them had multiple books on the topic, but they hadn't brought them on the quest.)
"Our old backpacks are kinda messed up, so I figured we should replace them. It would look weird holding invisible things in our arms so we can put them in the backpacks. I also got sleeping bags, in case we need to stay the night somewhere." Saya informed.
"I got olives, fireworks, Takos, and Sprote." Jasmine included.
"Ooh, olives," Saya said excitedly.
"Ooh, unhealthy food," Allison mocked, eyeing the Takos.
Jasmine rubbed her hands together wickedly. "Ooh, explosives."
"Ok, let's find somewhere secluded and pack the backpacks," Saya whispered.
They found a tiny kids playhouse and dumped all their stuff inside. They crawled inside and closed the flimsy plastic door.
"It's cramped in here," Allison said. Her head was hitting the roof.
"Well, I hate to break it to you, but this isn't really made for middle schoolers, especially fat ones like me." Jasmine pointed out.
They took everything out of their old backpack and stuffed as much as they could into the new ones.
Saya had thought of everything. She had gotten water bottles, matches, every necessity. She had also taken a pansexual wristband, and put it on immediately. The gays are taking over. They buckled their sleeping bags to their bag and climbed out of the minuscule plastic house. Jasmine's face turned red as she saw all the weird looks people were giving her. Right. You're weird. What are you gonna do about it? She asked herself, trying to imagine that she was the queen of a fandom and all the strangers looking at her were fans.
She used the Mist to make them and all their groceries invisible (a trick she learned from Stranger Things) and they sauntered out of the Coostco without paying.
There was a homeless guy begging near one of the entrances of the store, so Jasmine set down her stolen goods except for one of the bowls of sliced fruit. She went up to him carefully, one of her hands close to her magical necklace charm in case he was a monster. She smiled. "This is for you, sir." She handed him the bowl of fruit.
He looked up at her, surprised. "Thanks."
"Have a great day." Jasmine felt better about knocking the other crazy mortal unconscious now that she had done something good. She walked back to Allison and Saya.
"Which car are we going to steal?" Allison sounded way too happy at the prospect of grand theft auto.
Jasmine pointed across the parking lot to the nondescript beige car under the shadow of an uninteresting tree. "That one."
Saya shook her head. "The black one? It's so old, it has got to be a stick shift."
"No, the one next to it."
"Oh." Saya nodded. "I could drive that, no problem. I can drive a stick shift, but for our health, we probably shouldn't."
"Where in Tartarus did you learn to drive?" Jasmine questioned, jogging across the parking lot, ignoring a Prius pulling out of a space and nearly hitting her. The car honked, so Jasmine honked back with her stolen air horn.
"My dad used to let me drive the car around the school parking lot after hours," Saya answered, following the daughter of Hecate.
When they reached the car, Saya used Jasmine's switchblade to jimmy open the window and unlock the car from the inside. The daughter of Athena then crouched in the driver's seat and effortlessly hotwired the engine. Jasmine took one of the Sharpos from Allison and changed a 6 on the license plate to an 8 and a 7 to a 9. "Sorry," she muttered. "Not sorry. Have fun, police." Then, she yelled "I call shotgun," Allison sighed and got in the back seat.
"Seatbelt," Saya reminded Jasmine. She groaned and buckled her seatbelt. "I'm not a very experienced driver," Saya pointed out. "Even a demigod can die in car crash." She put the car in reverse and backed very carefully out of the parking space and drove at a crawl onto the road, accelerating slowly.
Jasmine rolled her eyes and took out her phone. "Song requests?" she asked as she pulled up Hamilton.
"Dear Evan Hansen," Allison suggested.
"No phones, remember?" Saya muttered as she stared intently at the road.
Jasmine briefly considered playing Girls/Girls/Boys to be mean to Saya but pressed play on Alexander Hamilton instead because she didn't want to remind Saya of that idiot homophobic bully David. "And a Scotsman, dropped in the middle of a forgotten spot in the Caribbean…" She rapped along with the song from memory.
The car stopped for a second, but Jasmine didn't think Saya had stepped on the brake. "Jasmine, please turn the music off," Saya requested, a worried look on her face.
"ALEXANDER HAMILTON," she screeched.
"Jasmine!" Saya slapped the phone out of her hand.
"Fine." Once Jasmine retrieved her phone and turned it off, they heard a strange coughing noise coming from the engine.
"Schist!" Saya pulled the car over to the side of the road just as the engine broke down.
Allison looked back to see if any cars were coming from behind them, but instead saw something no demigod ever wanted to see. (It wasn't Octavian's clone, you horrible-minded mortals)
"Um, guys?" Allison said nervously. "So, there's like... a monster coming towards us."
HI CLIFFHANGER BYE MY LITTLE SUSHI ROLLS DON'T KILL ME