Hello everyone! Thanks once again for taking the time to read my authors note. I finally got this chapter done my return trip fron Niagra Falls. It turns out that a 10 hour ride on a bus full of Girl Scouts hyped up on chocolate is an excellent place to write. Go fiqure!
It's summer! Now, while that does mean I will be writing more, it doesn't really mean I will be updating more. I'm going to be extremely busy this summer, and only about half of the places I'm going have WiFi. I'll try to update as often as I can, which should be more frequently then I have this school year. So I apologize for all the waiting you've had to do thus far, and I apologize in advance for all of the waiting you will have to do in the future- I'm sorry. I do try, I really do. It's just I suck at updating! Sigh. Well enjoy this chapter, and hope I won't take to long with the next one.
Annabeth's POV
The next morning Percy sent Bobby and Matthew in to wake up me and Thalia. My family had made plans to go to the aquarium today, and so everyone had to get up early.
Usually I'd be up before everyone, but Thalia and I had stayed up until 3:00 am catching up. Percy was smart; he had gotten the boys to do the dirty work for him. Within five seconds of turning on the light and shaking Thalia, Bobby was pinned against the wall with an arrow threatening to go up his nose.
Never mess with an eternal maiden's beauty sleep.
Especially if you're male.
The San Francisco Aquarium, also know as the Aquarium of the Bay, wasn't too far away, but my grandmother wanted to beat the crowd. After a rather hurried family breakfast we were on the road.
Percy, Thalia and I were squeezed into the back of my maiden Aunt Fran's car. I wasn't thrilled with the arrangement after how the conversation with her went last night, but I wasn't going to complain. She kept shooting Thalia looks in the rearview mirror, blinking, with her mouth set in a firm line. It took a lot of self-control not to tell her off for it, the way I would if she was a camper, or at least glare at her.
Instead I kept up a running commentary about the city, acting as a tour guide for my friends. Thalia wasn't paying any attention, as was to be expected, but I could tell Percy was at least trying to listen. Not exactly succeeding, but he was trying. Which was really sweet of him.
The thing everyone most wanted to see was a clear tunnel people could walk through that ran under the bay. I'd done some research on it for a school project a while back, so I knew how it was built and everything, but the second I walked in it all thoughts along those lines flew out of my head.
It was like walking through a bubble, and underwater bubbles made me think of the first kiss Percy and I shared as boyfriend and girlfriend. Sure, I'd been in underwater bubbles more times than that, but it was my favorite memory out of all of them.
Percy was walking a little ways behind Thalia and me, held up by a conversation with a barracuda. The trade off between the two of them reminded me a bit of chapter two in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. I tried not to think about that though, the last thing we needed was for the glass to vanish.
When he entered the tube, I stepped off of the moving sidewalk to talk to him and see if he was reminded of same experience I was.
"Oooh! Look at those fish," I heard a child exclaim, "they're sticking to the wall!"
Sure enough, a whole school of fish had pressed themselves to the sides of the tube. It was really cool at first, but then came the echinoderms (the brittle stars, and star fish, but not sea cucumbers - they don't move), the rays, and the few sand sharks, until the entire tube was covered. The only lighting was the blue rope lighting that lined the moving sidewalk.
"Percy?" I questioned. "What is..."
"Sorry, um, I'm a bit of a celebrity with the members of my dad's kingdom."
"Ha! Kelphead has fanfish!" shouted Thalia grinning cockily.
"Not now Thalia," I said. "Percy? Can you do anything?"
"I'm trying!"
He was trying, his face was screwed up in concentration, but whatever he was doing it wasn't working.
Finally, Percy managed to get all of the sea creatures off of the tube, but not before the aquarium workers had been summoned.
The workers figured that the neon orange and purple striped shirt Percy had been wearing (an absolutely hideous thing, even Clarisse agreed, which was the first of many experiments in trying to combine the Camp Half-Blood and Camp Jupiter shirts) had attracted them. But my family knew better. Needless to say, we hightailed it out of there.