A/N- Hello! Ohmysweetgoodness, it's been ages! It's been, what, four months? And what months they've been.
If you want a reason for my absence, my bio page will tell all.
Otherwise, just go ahead and read. I hope you like it. Next chapter should be up in 2-3 weeks.
Thalia
It's late- nearly midnight- when I step out of the shower. My hair drips water onto the tiled floor. I wonder if Annabeth's made it home yet.
After putting on some pajamas and throwing my hair up into a towel turban, I tiptoe across the hall. Carol might sleep like a rock, but Bobby and Matthew don't. If I wake them up, hell will freeze over before they go back to sleep.
The hallway is empty. I knock lightly on Annabeth's door. There's no answer, so I twist the knob and push it open. Flicking on the light switch, I glance around. No sign of her. She hasn't answered her phone since I called her before dinner.
I sigh, and will my mind to not to think of the possibilities. She's probably fine, just in an area with no service. That's all it is. Annabeth isn't lying dead in a ditch somewhere, she isn't in a hospital.
I think back to when Mr. Chase got a call, saying that my mom was in an accident. I'd been staying with him and Annabeth at the time, and we'd been eavesdropping while we were supposed to be asleep.
I remember it like it was yesterday.
It's late- nearly 10- when the phone rings. A young Thalia and Annabeth sit in Annabeth's room, playing Truth or Dare by flashlight. A storm blows outside, flashes of lightning illuminating the darkness for fractions of seconds.
"Okay," Annabeth whispers. "Truth or Dare?"
Thalia doesn't take the time to blink before answering: "Dare."
Annabeth places a purple-painted fingernail on her chin and thinks for a moment. When an idea comes to mind, her mouth breaks into a grin. "Okay. I dare you to go in the kitchen and bring back cookies."
"Alright." It wasn't much of a challenge; the only risk was if Mr. Chase heard her, but he was taking a phone call. He'd been busy lately- some new Precious Artifact unearthed in someone's attic. There was all the paperwork to do to get it transferred to the museum, along with the media attention.
But, just in case he was listening, she'd be quiet.
Thalia tiptoed down the hallway outside of Annabeth's room, and then crept down the stairs. She avoided the tenth stair- it squeaked- and made her way stealthily to the kitchen, pausing just outside.
She listened. It sounded like Mr. Chase was in the office, so the coast was clear. She could just make out parts of his conversation. Something about the lighting crew, and the controlled temperature tank.
Thalia strutted into the kitchen, snatched two chocolate chip cookies from the jar on the counter, and walked back upstairs. Annabeth's dad was just hanging up ("Call me when you know, Lorraine. I'll be awake.") when she walked into the room.
"Here," she handed Annabeth her cookie. The blonde bit into it and swallowed, then took another bite. "Your dad's on the phone. He didn't notice me."
"'at's what I figured," she replied around a mouthful of cookie. "My turn."
Thalia was about to ask Annabeth 'truth or dare' when the phone rang again. A strange silence settled over the house. It felt unnatural, like a death omen. The wind howled; it made Thalia want to crawl under the bed and hide.
They heard footsteps coming up the stairs. "Hurry, act like you're sleeping!" whispered Annabeth. She then clicked off the flashlight and dove under the covers. Thalia crawled in beside her, and pulled the blanket over her face.
"Maybe he heard us," Thalia whispered.
"Nah," Annabeth replied. "He probably just wants to check on us, with the storm and all." But, she knew, he'd be upset if he were to discover them awake.
The room was silent, so silent Thalia could hear her rapidly beating heart. She could feel Annabeth's warm breaths against her face.
The door creaked as it opened, and a sliver of light ran along the wall and ceiling. Thalia held her breath, and willed Mr. Chase to think they were asleep. If Mr. Chase got angry enough, he might send her home to a cold, empty house.
He's not going to do that, Thalia told herself. He's not Mom.
There was an intake of breath followed by a sigh, and then a light, warm hand rested on her shoulder.
"Girls, I know you're awake. Don't think I didn't hear giggles."
After a beat, the girls slowly shook the covers off. The look on Mr. Chase's face was one that filled Thalia with fear. She had seen that look on other people, every time they saw her with her mother. It was pity.
But Fredrick Chase had never shown any sort of pity in his expressions. He was always welcoming, and understood Thalia's home situation. But he never pitied her, a fact that had earned him the utmost respect in Thalia's book.
"Hiya Dad," Annabeth giggled uneasily. A smile graced her features.
Mr. Chase did not smile back. "Annabeth, go into the hall for a minute. I need to talk to Thalia, okay?"
Thalia was scared. Years later, the memory of this moment would continue to haunt her. Continue to remind her of the moment she felt afraid of something.
"But Dad-" Annabeth whined. She wasn't used to her father keeping secrets from her. They told each other everything Important, and this seemed to top that list.
"Not now, Annabeth." Mr. Chase said, not unkindly. This sentence was followed by a sigh. "Please, Annabeth, just go into the hall."
His daughter huffed, crossed her arms, and dramatically stomped through the doorway.
Mr. Chase turned to Thalia. "I'm sorry about the cookies," she stammered. "I can bake you new ones." And she could; with her mother hardly home, Thalia had had to learn to feed herself. Cookies were easy.
Mr. Chase have a sad smile. "It's okay, Thalia. The cookies aren't a problem."
"Oh." After a moment, "Am I in trouble?"
"No." That was when she saw it. The look that she hated so, so much. Marked by the softening around the eyes, the awkward movements, the niceness. Thalia scowled.
Mr. Chase, the only grown-up that had ever treated her normally, was pitying her.
"Something's wrong, isn't it?" She stared at her pajama pants, and the turquoise floral pattern on Annabeth's comforter.
"It is, kiddo. With the storm and everything... Your mom was in a car accident, Thalia."
She didn't cry. She didn't feel. She did not- would not- show any emotion. "Oh." she finally said, after a long pause. That 'oh' carried the weight of every thought spinning in her mind. That 'oh' was heavy with a single fact- Thalia Grace was finally alone.
No, I remind myself. Not alone. You have Annabeth. You had Annabeth then, and you have Annabeth now. And I suppose, in a strange way, I have Luke. We're a funny group, I think.
The teenage bride, the trickster king, and me.
I glance at the clock again- 12:03 - and wonder where Annabeth could be.
Call me a mother hen, but I worried about her. Something in her had changed, like something in me had changed. The tables had turned- instead of a reckless Thalia and a careful Annabeth, there was carefree Annabeth and cautious Thalia.
Karma really must be a bitch.
Come on, Annabeth. Please be okay. I'm going to kill her when she gets back, if she isn't already dead.
Annabeth
Percy parks the truck in the driveway and turns off the ignition. We sit in still quiet for a long time; long enough for the automatic lights to turn off.
"I had fun today," I smile. He smiles back, a brilliant, shining grin in the darkness.
"I'm glad."
We're at a standstill, like we have been many times this summer. And yet, this on is different. There's silence, yes, but it's an easy silence. We don't need to fill the void with words, because we're past that.
Crickets chirp, playing their soft songs to whoever will listen. I forgot how much I liked the sound of crickets.
When Percy speaks, it's sudden. "Do you want to do this again tomorrow?"
Record an album, take a road trip, explore a historic sight, and spend hours in the car with an arguing Leo and Jason?
I must be making a face (why haven't I worked on my poker face? I've been letting myself relax too much without Carol around) because Percy backtracks. "Not, like, the same thing. Gods know people can only put up with so much Leo, and the studio today was really crazy..."
He's babbling, which is the most adorable thing I've ever seen. I lean over and kiss him on the cheek, and he suddenly stops talking.
"I had fun today. And I haven't looked at my insanely busy social calendar, but I've got a slight feeling that I'm free tomorrow."
Percy's lips quirk into a smile. The world turns; butterflies flutter in all of my organs. "Tomorrow it is, then."
"Can we avoid the car ride from hell, though?"
He laughs; it is bubbles and warmth and what I imagine champagne tastes like.
"Sure."
"And I'll try not to fall asleep in you again. That was unintentional."
He laughs again. The warm, fuzzy feeling grows. We're leaning towards each other, my elbows resting on the storage console between our seats. "It's fine. There wasn't that much drool-"
"Hey!" I sit up defensively. "I do not drool. You're the one with a drooling problem."
His tone is light and teasing. "Whatever, Wise Girl."
Thalia
I'm half-asleep on my bed when she comes home. An ache pounds in the back of my head, and my vision is blurry. My insomnia game has weakened in the past few weeks.
I hear giggling and heavy footsteps in the hall. Glancing at the clock- past midnight- I sigh. Annabeth must be back. Sliding out of bed, I pad across the floor of my bedroom- no, I chastise myself, not your bedroom- and pause at the door. I listen, waiting for the click of Annabeth's doorknob. Percy walks down the hall, and I hear his door close.
I throw my door open and stomp across the hall.
Annabeth's kicking off her shoes when I enter, twenty different thoughts flitting through my mind. Okay, she's not dead. Where the hell has she been? Gods, I am so tired. I need coffee. So many hours of no sleep. Coffee coffee coffee coffee. Maybe I should go get the coffee, drink it, and then bury Annabeth alive. But I'd have to go downstairs...
"Hey," she waves. Her face glows, and it's annoying in my state of sleep deprivation. "Where's Carol?" she asks, breathing heavily.
"Where have you been?" I demand, throwing my hands in the air. "It's past midnight!" I hiss. I'm being harsh, I know, but I'm too fucking tired to care. Yes, I believe a coffee is in order. Coffee with a side of murder.
Annabeth's laughter trails off, and she looks at me blank-faced.
"So? You've come home later than that, and you're not my mom."
Well, somebody needs to be. "Grow up, Annabeth." Thalia did not mean to kill Annabeth. Just maim, or seriously injure.
She glares at me, gray eyes cold and sharp like daggers. But she does not reply, instead brushing past me to go into the closet.
"What? No snarky reply?"
She sighs, and comes out of the closet with a wadded-up t-shirt. "Go to sleep, Thalia. Maybe then you'll stop being such a grump." Her voice is gentle, lacking any of the sting I had expected it to have. If anything, I'd say there was a hint of regret or reluctance in her voice. I must be imagining things. The lack of sleep's getting to me.
"Right," I mutter, turning the sarcasm level as high as it will go in my state of sleep deprivation. Which, if I were to study this situation with an alert mind, is somewhere between the levels of 'nonexistent' and 'pathetic'. Before making my exit, though, I tack on a final remark. "You did remember to get the dye while you were galavanting around, right? Or, along your fourteen-hour road trip adventure, you didn't run across a single Target?"
Annabeth ducks behind the opposite side of her bed, and snatches up a gray plastic bag. "Here. I hope blue works for you," she says, passing me the bag. "Now will you please go get some sleep? You're starting to resemble a corpse." She starts to undress, her clothes falling to the floor in a heap.
"Right," I mumble, and begin to shuffle back to my own room. No, not- my tired brain tried to reason. Forget it.
Everything is fuzzy and only partially resonates with my consciousness- I think I nearly run into a door frame, and I know I trip over a shoe on the floor. "You son of a bitch shoe," I curse. The black sneaker does not reply, which is really annoying. My irritation is quickly replaced with glee, as I recognize that shoe. "Oh! You're a pretty shoe."
The gray Wal-Mart bag gets tossed somewhere, but that somewhere holds no importance at the moment. All that matters is that Annabeth made it home safely, and I can sleep now.
It comes quickly, a dark silk veil over my tired eyes. Before I'm out completely, though, I hear a voice. But the words are a jumbled mess of fuzzy sound to my tired brain, so I sleep.
Annabeth
I'm not sure what stick planted itself up Thalia's butt, but she's particularly grumpy when Percy and I finally creep upstairs, albeit rather loudly. He'd been impersonating Leo ("What did the Greek scholar win? The myth America pageant!") when I heard a light 'thud', like feet against a wooden floor.
Now she's in my room, looking half-dead and mumbling about coffee and spouting off Harry Potter quotes. If I didn't know better, I'd say she was drunk. But this is Thalia, and she'd never drink, not with her mom's accident. I slide my sleep shirt over my head; the cotton feels cool and soft over my skin.
I can hear her mutterings from across the hall, and I bite my lip to keep from laughing out loud. "You son of a bitch shoe" is one of the stranger things said by sleep-deprived Thalia. It's up in the ranks with New Year's Eve of 2012, when, at three a.m., she decided that we needed to bake cookies. Eggshell ended up in the dough, and while the conversation that followed was hilarious, I am forbidden of speaking of it ever again. (I still occasionally reference apologies to eggshells. She said I was forbidden from retelling the conversation, not referencing it.)
I tiptoe towards the door, and listen to her complementing the shoe. "Maybe she is drunk..." I muse. There's a thud, like something hit a wall, and then I hear Thalia fall into bed. She's still muttering, about finally getting to go to sleep.
"Goodnight, Thals," I whisper, then close the door. It latches with a click, and then I flick off the light switch and clamber into my own bed.
I dream, but I don't remember. I wake feeling refreshed and calm, ready to face the day.