Chapter 9
Cool. That was the only word you could use to describe him. That too, not the I'm so awesome type of cool. He was the cold type of cool. Ugh. Now he was messing with her vocabulary too.
But basically, he was all aloof and rude and whatnot. When she came into his room later in the afternoon successfully avoiding him in the morning by sending Piper, he seemed or rather behaved like a different person. Not that Annabeth was the one to judge considering the fact that she had met him only 18 hours ago.
There was a certain maliciousness in his behaviour which made her shiver though she wasn't sure that she had judged him right.
She had just entered the room to see him looking like he had just bathed with his dark hair drenched and falling in his eyes, his blue tee shirt wet and stuck to his body highlighting his athletic frame and a towel around his neck. He looked over at her standing in the doorway, his face void of any emotion and said in a stony voice: "Just make the bed for now. Also dust my bookshelf."
He didn't seem to be affected by what happened this morning. She was perfectly fine with this. She really was.
Until and unless, he stayed out of her way, she was happy. Though she was a bit confused as to where the bookshelf was, maybe because out of the many shelves present in the room none of them had any books in them. Well, one of them did but it was really small and the only books it had were a few high school course books she had completed about two three years ago. Nonetheless, she made his bed (at three in the afternoon?) and dusted that silly excuse for a bookshelf efficiently, she had been trained to do this since what seemed like forever, not that she liked it. While she was working, Percy sat and observed her almost surprised at her agility and the grace which was certainly something he didn't anticipate seeing her status but somehow expected knowing what he did about her.
After staring, or rather observing to put it in a subtle way, Percy returned to his algebra homework. He wanted to be something like a knight or an officer or something so the point of what was the value of x when y/x was the cube root of xy was something he couldn't understand.
He groaned, frustrated by the sheer sight of his notebook, gaining unnecessary attention from Annabeth who was about to leave the room. Without meaning to, he just looked at her and blurted out:
"Algebra's a bitch."
The blonde just shook her head in disapproval before raising an eyebrow. "You're just being lazy. It isn't that difficult. Let me help you." It was clear that she was trying to make up for what happened that morning.
"As if you would know. You probably haven't seen a book in your life, apart from those on cooking even though I doubt you could read." He told her, his tone purposefully malicious. However, he knew he had messed up again as soon as he saw her eyes harden.
He expected her to hit him or throw a vase at him or shout her head off, but instead she said "Really?" and took a spare pen and solved the whole friggin equation before him in half a minute before looking at him. "I've finished my high school courses."
To say he was shocked would be an understatement. With the number of times she had surprised him in the past 18 hours, even if she told him that she had kicked Saturn, the king in the groin, he wouldn't be surprised.
Being surprised as he was, he just raised a cocky eyebrow and said "How do I know it is correct?"
"Put the values and check it, Smartie." Her tone had become playful now, partly because she knew she was in her home turf though there still was an edge to it.
"Don't sass me, Lady. I'm much tougher than you." His tone was the same except for the fact that the edge was missing.
"Leave it. I don't want to speak with a guy whose most severe injury is a paper cut." She smirked.
"Hey"
"Oh sorry! I forgot you didn't read books." She said before she left taking the small duster with her. Even though his intellect was being insulted, he still was glad that the ice had broken not because he liked her or something, it was too early and he had a girlfriend but he couldn't deny that that particular girl was pretty beautiful.
Walking back in the garden to help Piper and Katie, another girl who worked there with the flowers, Annabeth saw a flash of blonde much like her own. The blond guy was in a seemingly deep conversation with Percy. Though curious, Annabeth decided to leave and started to water the plants listening to Katie blabber about the different type of flowers. Another girl was there too. She had chocolate brown hair and almond shaped eyes and was dressed in a cream coloured dress that Annabeth thought was too fancy for gardening. Her name was Calypso, she guessed partly because Katie addressed her around 3 times a sentence as she was the only one listening. Despite the slight air of conceit around her, she still seemed interested in gardening.
After about fifteen minutes of work, Annabeth and piper managed to leave the place and started heading back into the manor. They were halfway through the huge garden when they passed the guys who still were talking about talking something however both of them were much more relaxed than they had been before.
Suddenly the blond guy turned to go and faced Annabeth when his eyes widened in shock.
"Malcolm?" Percy asked slightly confused as to why had his body stiffened so much in the fraction of a second within seeing Annabeth.
"What are you doing here?" He asked Annabeth ignoring him completely taking her necklace into his hand and dropping it in shock just staring at Annabeth as if she was a ghost.