SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES
Annabeth stared at the books splayed across the worn wooden table she occupied every Saturday afternoon. Her eyes stared at the same text she'd been reading for the past hour, refusing to take anything in.
Breathing a heavy sigh, she leaned closer to her book and tried to focus. The library's comforting silence and familiar shelves were supposed to calm her down, but she was just as cluttered and emotional as ever.
Damnit, this wasn't who she was.
She was Annabeth Chase, smart, independent, resourceful. She was not a hormonal sap whose mind turned into goo just because her boyfriend dumped her.
Realistically speaking, she'd known that this would happen eventually…
The thought did nothing to ease the situation.
"Hey," a familiar voice called out.
"Hi," Annabeth greeted, looking up from her pointless reading to see Thalia noisily drag a chair over from another table. The blonde hoped she didn't look too disheveled. The last thing she needed was a worried Thalia shirking her Hunter duties to give a pep talk.
"I'm going to cut to the chase," Thalia informed her as she sat down. "Annabeth, you look like crap."
Annabeth almost laughed. At least someone was staying in character. "Blunt as always, aren't we?"
"I figured you'd welcome an honest opinion," the Hunter shrugged. "Grover tells me you've been moping ever since the Ball. As much as it pains me to say, we need to have a heart to heart."
"I never thought I'd hear such a girly, colloquial term come from your mouth," Annabeth said, forcing a smile onto her face. "But really, I'm fine."
Annabeth hated to lie. Now that Luke was out of her life, Thalia was the closest friend she had. But she couldn't let the Hunter find out how devastated she was. How it felt like something dear and important had been taken from her. How, for some reason, her insides just felt empty.
Thalia scowled and leaned forward in her seat. "Fine my ass."
The blonde frowned. Why did her friend have to make this so hard? "You don't believe me?"
"Annabeth, the two of you were going out for almost a year," Thalia pointed out. "Not only that, you were practically family before all this. Don't sit there, reading an upside down physics text book, and tell me that, despite the luggage-grade eye bags you're sporting, you're fine."
"What do you want me to tell you?" Annabeth asked, emotional dams cracking. "That I'm dying on the inside and can't live life without him?"
"Well not in those words exactly," Thalia answered, staring at her best friend. "They're a bit too cliché to be coming from you. But yeah, something along those lines would fit the bill."
The two sat there for a few good minutes, staring each other down, until Annabeth finally cracked.
"Fine, I'm not fine," the blonde confessed, averting her eyes from Thalia's piercing blue gaze. "I feel like crap and I wish he hadn't left."
Thalia cracked a sad smile. "Now we're getting somewhere."
"I wish I knew why he's doing all this, why nothing important matters to him anymore," she began, a shudder in her voice. "He's not just dumping me, Thalia. The way he spoke, it was like he was leaving all of us behind. What's so important that he's willing to hurt others to get it?"
"We'll get through this," the Hunter assured her friend. "It's not the first time someone's transferred out of CHB."
"You don't understand," Annabeth whispered, tense her tone dropping. "He's physically hurting people…."
Thalia blinked slowly as that statement sunk in. "Come again?"
"He's involved with gangs now," the blonde stated, glad to be away from the post-break up talk. "I think it started when he got into that transfer program at Cronus."
"And he told you all this?"
Annabeth bit her lip, knowing that her friend didn't like being out of the loop. "I figured it out. He didn't want me to get involved with it."
"Obviously, that's an invitation to get involved," Thalia reasoned.
Annabeth frowned. "That's not the smartest thing to be doing."
"You're the smart one, Annabeth," the Hunter pointed out. "I'm the headstrong and brave one, remember?"
"Right," Annabeth agreed. She felt better talking about this. No hormones, no feelings, just facts. Now they were strategizing, formulating a plan. This, Annabeth reminded herself, was who she was.
"Don't think I'm forgetting about our heart to heart," Thalia reminded. "I came all the way here from Huntington. The Headmistress will throw a fit when she finds out. So before we go planning anything big, we have to straighten you out."
Annabeth's spirits sank. Not this again. "I don't want to talk about it."
"I know you don't," Thalia said. "But you'll have to eventually."
The blonde bit her lip. She really didn't deal well with emotions. Sighing once again, she dug around her jeans' pocket for her lucky charm: half of a worn down sand dollar.
"Do you know what this is, Thalia?" she asked, setting it down on the table. "It's the first thing Luke ever gave me. When I first saw him, I'd run away from home thinking no one cared. He walked into the half-flooded back alley I'd hidden in, emptied his pockets, gave me this and told me that everyone's worth something."
Thalia knew this story. She'd heard it before, but she'd never seen her friend so wracked by it.
"Now that I look back, I don't know who he was trying to convince, me or himself," Annabeth went on, grateful that her friend wasn't interrupting. If she stopped now, she didn't know if she could start again. "He's got the other half of this. I'm looking at it as an unspoken promise. I'm going to stop whatever he's up to and remind him what he's worth again. Whether or not we're still boyfriend and girlfriend, Luke's family, he always has been. I'm not going to talk about losing him while there's still something I can do to bring him back."
Thalia looked at her friend and recognized the same steely determination that had talked her through months of physical therapy and rehabilitation. Annabeth was back from whatever emotionally tumultuous place she'd come from and there was no stopping her now.
"I guess that's it for our heart to heart," Thalia sighed, leaning back into her chair. "So, what's our first move?"
"Luke said that things were happening," Annabeth said, the gears in her head starting to turn. "That something had been set into motion. So the first thing we do is brace ourselves for whatever's going to happen. I can feel it, Thalia. It's going to be something big."
"So we're waiting?" the Hunter groaned. "That's boring as hell!"
"I'm the smart one, remember?"
"Fine, fine," Thalia muttered good-naturedly, happy that some of her friend's sass was returning. Something buzzed in her pocket and the Hunter flipped out a sleek black cell phone. A frown graced her face as she read the text. "While we're waiting, you might want to text that idiot tutee of yours."
"Percy? Why?"
"Grover must have told him that I was coming to talk to you, he's sent me nine texts in the last hour."
Annabeth felt like slapping herself in the forehead. Right when she'd cleared up her feelings about Luke, Percy just had to pop back into the picture. Would there be no end to the confusion?
Sometimes Annabeth wished that high school would be as easy to understand as a good Shakespeare quote.
~O~o~O~
Luke Castellan walked purposely through the halls of Caduceus, intent on seeing his mom one last time before he finally completed the task Headmaster Titanus set out for him. After a few days, she'd be getting the surgery that would fix everything. Then they could leave, just the two of them. Maybe go for a vacation. She'd always wanted to go to Greece.
He turned the corner to the familiar room she'd been in for the past three or so years and heard an unfamiliar voice.
"To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow," the feminine voice quoted.
Luke peered into the room to see a candy striper volunteer reading out a copy of Macbeth. It looked like she was trying to memorize lines.
"Creeps in this petty pace from day to day," she continued.
Luke noticed his mother's head bobbing with the rhythm of the girl's voice, eyes closed and a content smile on her lips.
"To the last syllable of recorded time," the girl went on, her tone rising and dropping with the cadence of the line.
Luke turned around and headed back. One day wouldn't make a difference, and he'd hate to wreck one of the few peaceful moments his mom had. Soon she'd be healthy and lucid, so he supposed it didn't matter.
The candy striper's voice blended into the background as Luke made his way to the exit. She lowered her voice as she continued with the quote, tone matching the ominous lines:
"And all our yesterdays have lighted fools, the way to dusty death."
Note: My laptop's back with me so therefore, I'm back to this story :D Ooooh is this (bad) foreshadowing I see?