I did my Oral Report on Miguel de Cervantes today. If you don't know who that is, I'll give you a hint…
Wikipedia…
By the way, links to all outfits in this chapter are on my profile.
Disclaimer: I don't own Percy Jackson and the Olympians.
And so there we were, three guys sitting in a clearing in the Appalachian Mountains, hoping for a few costumes to drop out of the sky. And unfortunately, it was not happening.
Grover broke the silence. "We need to find costumes of some sort soon! I don't know about you guys, but I don't like being cursed!" He wailed.
"We need to talk to the source," said Nico.
"Huh?" Yes, that was me. As usual, I asked a dumb question. I half expected Annabeth to roll her eyes and 'Seaweed Brain' me, but then I remembered she was off in the woods. "Hey, I wonder what Annabeth is doing," I thought aloud.
Nico smirked at me. "Somebody likes Annabeth," he singsonged. My face went red.
"Will you guys lay off? I don't like Annabeth. Like that, I mean. I mean, we're friends…" Grover chuckled and I shut up.
"Whatever. We need to talk to Demeter," declared Nico. "After all, she is the one whose party it is."
"How do we contact her?" Grover asked. "It's not like we can drive back to the Empire State Building."
"IM."
"You can IM a god?" I asked.
"Well, duh! Iris is the messenger of the gods."
"I thought that was Hermes," I said.
Nico and Grover both groaned. "Percy," Nico explained. He spoke really slowly, like I was a little kid. "Hermes does packages. Iris does direct messages. And Hermes is male, so he's a god. Iris is female; she's a goddess."
"Whatever," I shrugged it off. "But how do we get a rainbow?"
Nico ran to the car and pulled out a CD. Flashing in the sunlight, rainbows flew off the metal. I saw what he meant and pulled out a drachma. I threw it into the CD (it sounds weird, I know), while yelling, "Oh goddess, accept my offering!" A screen appeared in front of us and I asked, "The Goddess Demeter."
***
Persephone's face peered through the mist. She looked excited at first, but then bored. "Oh, it's you. I thought you might be my hairstylist. What do you want?" she asked.
"Persephone, we have a question. What kind of party do we have to go to?" Nico asked. Very, very rudely.
"I told you, it's a masquerade." Apparently she didn't really like Nico. I could see why; I guess she didn't like her husband having kids with someone else.
"Yes, but is there some, like, dress code or something?" questioned Grover.
She smiled. "I'm glad you asked, my dear. It's a famous couples party," she said.
"A WHAT?" I screamed.
"Toodles!" she slashed through the mist and we were left alone.
"What the heck?" I yelled. "We didn't have costumes, and now we don't even have dates for this stupid party!"
"Well, Grover and I don't. You do, if you know what I mean," Nico smirked. I must have looked blank, because Nico sighed. "Annabeth, smart one."
"Will you guys stop?" I said. My face felt warm and probably resembled a large tomato. "She doesn't like me like that."
"Aha! You said she! So you like her!" yelled Grover.
"No, I mean…" I tried again.
"Percy," Nico said. I shut up again. "We know you like her. Ask her out."
"Oh, yeah," I scoffed. "I'll go up and be, like, 'We're on a quest with limited time, we need to get to the West Coast fast, go out with me.' No. Way."
Nico sighed again. "We'll have to deal with your insecurities later. We need to get dates and costumes for this thing. So what do we do now?"
Before I could ask Nico about my 'insecurities', Grover spoke. "Um, maybe we could talk to the goddess of beauty and love, Aphrodite!" said Grover.
"I don't want to talk to her again!" I said. "Last time it was kind of embarrassing."
"Suck it up." Nico said. Then he started to intone "O goddess Aphrodite, we need your help."
She showed up in an instant, walking out of the woods like she'd gone for a walk in the forest or something. Aphrodite was gorgeous as usual, but she seemed annoyed this time. "What?"
"We need dates and costumes for this party…" Grover wasted no time telling Aphrodite what we needed. Well, after he ogled for a while, that is.
"So what do you want me to do?" She snapped.
"Um, if you could, that is, if you could send Juniper…"
"Fine. You and Juniper will go as…hmmm…Bert and Ernie."
"WHAT?!"
"I'm kidding! You can go as modern Adam and Eve."
Grover nodded, but muttered something about 'overdone'. She ignored it.
"Now Nico, my dear, you can go as…ohh…hmm…as Romeo and Juliet."
"I'm going as both?"
"No, no," Aphrodite said, not seeming to notice that Nico was mocking her. "You go with a daughter of Hermes, Megan. Your costumes are in the car, and your dates will be arriving at three. Is that all? Good. Now if you'll excuse me…" She turned to leave.
"Wait!" I yelped. "You forgot me!"
"Oh, yes, Percy," she said. "You'll go with Rachel Dare."
My face felt, well, like a tomato again. "I have to?" I asked, before I thought better of it. Nico and Grover would never let me live this down.
"Ha! You should've seen the expression on your face, dear. No, you are not going to go with that redhead. You go with Annabeth. And you two can be the famous dancing couple, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers."
"We can't dance!"
She frowned like she was really annoyed. "Well, too bad! Deal with it!" With a snap of her fingers, she disappeared.
Nico, Grover and I stared at the car. We didn't really want to see the clothes, but, well, no time like the present, right? So we started walking towards the car.
When we opened the door, we saw three costumes—or rather, three white garment bags. Each was labeled in huge, pink, scrawly script that took me a minute to figure out. One said 'Percy', one said 'Grover', and the last said 'Nico'.
"I'm scared," said Grover.
And then we each opened our bags. My costume was a black coat, a black bow tie, a black hat like they wore in the 30's, and black pants with black shoes. So colorful, but hey, I wasn't complaining. To my left, Grover sighed in relief. To my right, Nico was turning a little…green.
Grover's was an olive kind of green shirt and brown dress pants. He had brown flip-flops and a belt, too. It was okay—not too over the top.
That was the exact opposite of Nico's costume. The picture of that costume should have been in the dictionary next to "overdone". He had a white shirt and a red vest on top of it. Under that, he had breeches and boots, with a long, silver-coloured, plastic sword. He started hyperventilating.
"Nico, buddy, calm down. It's just one party," I said nervously.
"Yeah. Yeah, calm," he started breathing hard, trying to calm down and not cut the costume into pieces using his real stygian iron sword.
"We need to live on this quest, Nico. And we need to get to the west coast kind of quickly."
"Yeah, yeah, I know. That's why I haven't killed the thing yet."
Something occurred to me. "Hey, guys, there aren't any costumes here for the girls." Nico and Grover looked at each other and shrugged.
"It's 2:50. They should be here soon," said Nico.
And as promised they were there in ten minutes, walking out of the forest like Aphrodite had.
Juniper stepped out first. She was wearing a short green dress with brown tights and copper high heels underneath. She had on a green ring with a brown snake on it. She was wearing a silver necklace that had a snake twisted into the shape of a heart, and she was wearing her light brown hair clipped up.
Next came a girl I'd seen around camp, but I didn't know. Probably Megan, I guessed. She was wearing a dark red dress, the exact shade of Nico's vest, and black high heels. Her dark brown hair was twisted up onto her head. I heard him whistle quietly and elbowed him in the ribs.
Annabeth still hadn't showed…but I heard a rustling in the bushes behind the two girls. And then Annabeth stepped out of the foliage.
I could feel my jaw drop. I closed my mouth and stared. She was wearing a blue sleeveless dress that looked like it was silk or satin or something. She had on these low heels that attached with a blue strap thing. Instead of her camp bead necklace, she was wearing a necklace that had an 'A' dangling off of it. Her hair was teased into tight curls around her face. She had on blue-and-silver earrings, too.
All three girls walked over to us. Juniper strangled—oh, was she hugging him?—Grover, Megan smiled shyly at Nico, and Annabeth looked at me.
"Grover!" screeched Juniper.
"Hi, I'm Megan. You must be Nico, right?" asked Megan.
"You need to change into your costume," said Annabeth flatly. She seemed to notice me staring at her and frowned a little bit. "Didn't you think I could look like a girl?" she asked, like I was, I don't know…amazed by her. Well, I was, but not in a bad way. In a good way.
"No! That's not what…I mean, you look really good," I stammered. She blushed and said, "Thanks." (A/N Ooooh! Bad grammar skills on my part [there should be a new paragraph], but I'm too lazy to fix it.)
"Now come on, seaweed brain, we need to get you guys into your costumes." I looked around. Nico was leaning against the car, chatting up Megan. She was smiling like he was the best thing since Sesame Street. And I love Sesame Street. (Have you ever heard 'Rubber Duckie'? I love that song.)
Grover and Juniper were off under some tree, talking quietly. Juniper was smiling a mile a minute, and so was Grover, for that matter.
I realized Annabeth was right and yelled, "Hey, guys, we need to get changed into our costumes!"
Everybody came right over. "Okay. Where do we change?" I asked. Juniper shrugged.
"You could change in the car," she pointed out.
"Yeah, that's fine. Nico, you change first, and then Grover, then I'll change last."
So we got changed, and in ten minutes, we piled into the car; Annabeth and I in the front (I drove again) and Nico, Megan, Juniper, and Grover piled in the back. For the first time, I looked down at her wrist and saw that her Etgroftnig bracelet was silver set with aqua beads. There was some charm on it, too, but before I could see what it was, she lifted her hand to pull some wayward blond curls behind her ear.
"Where is this party, anyways?" I asked. Just then, a few sheets of paper appeared with a pop onto the dashboard. They were robin's egg blue. Once I unfolded them, I saw that they were directions—directions to The Palazzo, a huge casino-hotel. This party was a really big deal.
I told the other where we were going. Grover and Juniper shrugged at the same time, Annabeth was all whatever, Megan cheered, and Nico smiled, looking at her. I smiled to myself, too.
"Well, let's be on our way then," I said, and we roared out of the Appalachian Mountains at something close to 100 miles per hour. It felt good to be on the road again.
***
We got there in half an hour, thanks to my insane driving skills. Whenever I screeched to a stop, we'd all jerk forward, and Annabeth would say something about inertia and Newton or something. And I would roll my eyes.
"Here we are," I said. The hotel was like 50 stories tall, and there were fountains and all there. They were all turned off. I decided to play with them…later.
"Come on, let's go!" I opened my door and stepped out of the car. The backseaters came out too, and Annabeth circled around the car so we were all on the left side.
As a group we began to walk towards the doors. "Wait," said Annabeth. She had cream, thick pieces of paper in her hands. "Our invitations."
Annabeth handed one to each of us, keeping one for herself. "Mr. Percy Jackson," mine said.
"Where did you get those?" I asked curiously. She just shared a smile with Juniper and Megan.
"None of your business," she stuck her tongue out at me. And on that note, we walked into The Palazzo.
***
As soon as we walked inside, there was a huge staircase. After showing the guard-dude our invitations, Juniper took Grover's arm and Megan took Nico's, who looked like he was going to pass out. I held out my arm and Annabeth wrapped hers around it. It felt like electricity was arcing through my body. (TLO, word for word ;D)
Juniper and Grover walked down the steps. About a quarter of the way down, some guy announced, "Now entering are Mr. Grover Underwood and Ms. Juniper Heartwood." The fancy people downstairs started golf clapping.
Once Grover and Juniper reached the bottom, Nico and Megan started walking. "Mr. Nico DiAngelo and Ms. Megan Valencia," came the voice again.
As soon as the two of them reached the floor, Annabeth and I started down the stairs. Actually, it was more like glided. I have no idea how, but for those few minutes, I felt like we actually were Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire.
"Mr. Percy Jackson and Ms. Annabeth Chase."
It sounded…I don't know, odd…when that guy said that. I wondered if there ever would be a 'Percy and Annabeth' before I caught myself.
The golf clapping startled me out of my thoughts and I realized that we'd reached the dance floor. Nobody was dancing yet, but some band was playing old songs with a choir singing lyrics.
"You know, you don't look half bad like that," said Annabeth. She'd put on a blue and silver mask, and I slid my black (ooh, more black) one out of my jacket pocket. "You should dress up more often."
I snorted. "Yeah, right."
"I'm not kidding, Percy. You really look good." She didn't seem to realize what she was saying, but my face turned red.
"Thanks, I guess. So, what do we do now?"
"Hang out. Talk to socialites. You know, dahling, the usuaahhl," she said with a bad accent. We both broke out laughing.
We did just what she said, talking to the other people there. Whenever anybody asked, I said that I owned a ship company, and Annabeth said that she was the CEO of a company that published books. I figured Nico would say that he had a mining company or something, and Megan would probably own a make-up corporation. Grover and Juniper probably produce solar energy things, or something. It was kind of true. Even though our parents were the ones with all the power, we had some skills, right?
An hour or two later, it was six and dark outside. People had begun to dance, but the band was still playing old songs. Looking around, I saw that Romeo and Juliet and Adam and Eve were already on the dance floor. Annabeth and I looked at each other and shrugged. "What the heck," I decided, and then we joined the dancers.
Casey would waltz with a strawberry blond,
And the band played on,
He'd glide cross the floor with the girl he adored and the band played on,
But his brain was so loaded it nearly exploded,
The poor girl would shake with alarm,
He'd ne'er leave the girl with the strawberry curls, and the band played on!
That song made me a little uncomfortable. The only strawberry blond I knew was Rachel. Luckily the song ended and a new song began.
In the good old summertime,
In the good old summertime,
Strolling through the shady lanes,
With your baby mine,
She holds your hand and you hold hers,
And that's a very good sign,
That she's your tootsie-wootsie in
The good old summertime!
I looked down at Annabeth; I was a head taller than her now. She was smiling. For the first time I noticed that we were swirling around effortlessly, instead of kicking each other in the shins. Weird; I kind of liked it when we couldn't dance. And now a new song began, one way slower and sadder than the last one.
Nights are long since you went away,
I think of you all through the day,
My buddy,
My buddy,
Annabeth's eyes widened as soon as the music began, and as the band got to the third line, she gasped. She ripped her hand out of mine and said in a choked voice, "I need to go." She grabbed the skirt of her dress with one hand and started to run out of the doors. I decided to follow her.
Like I said before, it was dark, but it wasn't cold. The moon was out—a crescent moon—and there were a few clouds, but not the kind that were rainy. A forest edged the hotel, and on one of the trees, there was an old wooden swing. Annabeth headed straight there.
I ran after her. Normally, I would be way slower than her, but she was in high heels, so I came pretty close. Still, she got to the swing 15 seconds before I did.
Annabeth just sat on it; she didn't swing. She fixed her eyes on the few stars that were already out.
I came up behind her, but she didn't notice me. I saw that the swing was smooth from age and pretty wide.
"Annabeth," I said.
She turned around pretty quickly. "Why are you here?" she asked.
"Why did you leave?" I countered.
"Because…" she started to say something, but then stopped. "Why do you care?"
I wondered what was wrong, why she was being so…mean. "Seriously Annabeth, 'why do you care?' I cared because I thought we were friends. But if you want me to leave, I'll go." I turned around and started to head back to the building.
"Wait!" she called out. "I'm sorry. I know we're friends. I'm sorry I was mean."
"It's fine." Usually I wouldn't let go of something so easily, but usually she wouldn't apologize that quickly either. Annabeth was really upset about something.
"That song that they're playing…" she paused. I could still hear the song.
No buddy quite so true…
Miss your voice, the touch of your hand,
Just long to know that you understand,
My buddy,
My buddy,
Your buddy misses you.
"I listened to that song all the time when—" She stopped for a second like she was deciding whether or not to say something. Then she nodded a tiny bit. "When you were on…Ogygia."
She'd guessed. I knew that she thought that I'd been on Ogygia, but I didn't know she knew. Either way, whether she had guessed or whether somebody told her, it made no difference; she knew that I was on Ogygia for those two weeks.
"You know?" I breathed.
"How dumb do you think I am, Percy? I have the intellect to figure out where you were—especially after I saw the moonlace you had."
"When?"
"I don't want to talk about this."
"I do."
"Fine then! What do you want to know, Percy?"
"I want to know why you were so 'devastated' at camp."
"I thought we were friends." Her voice was steel and ice as she shot my own words in my face. I blinked. I had no idea when we'd gone from dancing to this.
"We are, Annabeth. I'm sorry; this really isn't the time, is it." It was more of a statement than a question.
I pushed the swing. Annabeth turned around, surprised. "What are you doing?" she objected.
I grinned. "Swings are more fun when you're swinging."
She laughed. "You know, I never got to swing when I was a kid."
"There's a first time for everything."
"I guess there is." I pushed the swing for a while, but then Annabeth stopped it with her feet.
"What are you doing?"
"Come up here." She slid to one side of the swing. I decided 'why not' and sat on the other side.
"Push on the count of three. One…two…three!" We pushed off in perfect synchronization and flew up into the air. The band was playing another song now, a soft number. We kept swinging.
I had the most fun I'd had for the past three years in the next fifteen minutes. We laughed for no reason so many times, and when one laughed, the other would start.
Some guy yelled, "Last song!" This song had two parts. It started off with a guy singing.
When my heart is torn apart by love I wish I had,
Well, I spend my nights in the city's lights,
And things don't seem so bad.
Ya know the movement seems to soothe me,
And the tempo takes control,
And I lose my blues,
When the New York City rhythm fill my souls
It's got to be the New York City rhythm,
Runnin' thru' my life,
The pounding beat of the city streets,
That keeps my dreams alive,
This song was so much like my own voice it was freaky. New York was really sometimes the only reason I even got out of bed in the mornings.
I'm lost, I'm found, I'm up, I'm down,
But somehow I survive.
Even though everybody was dancing inside, I would much rather be here. Annabeth and I both sang the final verse with the song.
It's got to be the New York City
Rhythm in my life,
It's got to be the New York City
rhythm in my life, in my life!
"You know, sometimes New York is really the only reason I keep going—the city, the people, the lights, the sights—I love it all," said Annabeth.
"I know what you mean, Annabeth, I really do. But Ginger, we need to get inside!"
She grinned, and I knew that all the arguing tonight had been forgiven. She got up from the swing…
…and immediately tripped over a small rock. I reached out and grabbed her, but she stiffened, which mad me feel kind of bad. I started to take my arm from around her waist, but she relaxed, grabbed my hand, and said, "Its okay."
And so that's how Nico, Megan, Grover and Juniper found us. Awkward!
***
We all headed towards the parking lot. On our way, I saw the fountains and decided the time had come. I reached to the ocean. Fountains on both sides of us started to spray ocean water, and created a delicate arch over our heads, not a drop spilling out. They noticed in an instant (they being N, M, G, J & A) and smiled to themselves. They all knew exactly what was happening. Unlike the rest of the partygoers who started gawking at us. As soon as we had passed under the arch, I cut it off. Luckily, nobody was behind us, so nobody got drenched.
When we got to the car, we were the ones that gawked. There, attached to the back of our poor little Honda Accord was a Travel Trailer—an RV, with four beds, a bathroom, a kitchen, fridge, a computer, and a really small TV. Seriously, the whole thing looked like a house. A small house, but a house.
"We go to one party with freakishly old music and they give us an RV?!" Nico yelled in delight. "We'll actually have someplace to stay now!"
This RV was so going to help us on this quest…unless we blew it up, of course. As we set out to someplace we could stay tonight, I could swear I heard a song on the breeze:
I'm lost, I'm found, I'm up, I'm down,
But somehow I survive.
It's got to be the New York City,
Rhythm in my life,
It's got to be the New York City
rhythm in my life, in my life!
So there you have it. Lots of Percabeth—10 WHOLE pages of Percabeth—are you guys happy now? I know everybody was OOC, and I'm sorry. Also, this is as Percabeth-y as I can get till the end of the story for highly classified reasons. Meaning SPOILER!!!! So I'm sorry if this isn't enough for you.
Anyway, all outfits can be found on my profile if you are interested.
REVIEW PLEASE! I spent my entire vendredi et samedi (French) writing this, and a few reviews will really make me keep going!
OH! Please, please, please, please, please tell me whether or not to keep Juniper and Megan on the quest. I want to even out the girl/guy thing, but I don't want the story to have too many people. Please either drop me a review telling me yes or no, or vote on my profile (or both ;D) .