2

No Vandalism

Malcolm was half asleep when he opened the door.

"Travis, what the heck?" Malcolm asked.

"It's important," Travis said. "I have to borrow a dictionary."

"A dictionary?" Malcolm asked.

"Yes, it's really important!"

"Can it wait until morning?"

"No! It wasn't supposed to wait until now, but I forgot- please?" Travis said. Malcolm turned around.

"Annabeth?" He asked. "You're in charge, you deal with him."

Travis heard someone complaining in Ancient Greek and Annabeth appeared in the doorframe, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes.

"Travis, has anyone taught you to read a watch? The big hand is on the 12 and the small hand is on the 2. Normal people sleep at this time."

"I know but I need a dictionary!"

"A dictionary?"

"Yes! How is that so hard to understand? Aren't you guys supposed to be ridiculously smart?"

"Which is exactly why we don't understand why you need a dictionary." Annabeth said.

"Well, you know, demigods are often really smart people that do smart stuff for the world, so, you know, informing myself seems right due to my culture and heritage and whatcrap."

"Mm-hmm…" Annabeth said obviously not convinced. "If I give you 5 minutes and you promise to be very quiet, will you leave?"

"YES!" Travis yelled in victory. "I mean," he whispered, "yes."

Annabeth let him in.

The chaos in cabin 6 is comparable to cabin 11 except, well, better. And it's not exactly chaos, it's just a lot of stuff going on.

Piles of paper and graphs are stacked on the work tables and drawing tables, stuck on the wall and model planes and boats and tanks and others hang everywhere or are perfectly dusted on shelves. Right then, an enormous horse so tall it nearly touched the highest hanging plane was displayed on the center tables. It seemed to be made of tiny gold squares overlapping each other.

"Hey, what's that?"

"Fragile- don't touch it." Annabeth said. She led him to a shelf to the back of the room and handed him the heaviest book that Travis had ever seen. The sad part was that it wasn't the biggest in the cabin.

She stacked some pages printed out from the internet, piled them up with blueprints and a textbook with words so long they had to be Russian or something, and she put it down on the now free spot.

"Sit- you have five minutes." Annabeth said.

Travis opened the dictionary and started looking for 'g'.

Good

/gʊd/ Show Spelled [good] Show IPA adjective, bet·ter, best, noun, interjection, adverb

adjective

1. morally excellent; virtuous; righteous; pious: a good man.

2. satisfactory in quality, quantity, or degree: a good teacher; good health.

3. of high quality; excellent.

4. right; proper; fit: It is good that you are here. His credentials are good.

5. well-behaved: a good child

Well he was screwed.

Stupid dictionary- did it have to tell him that he was totally doomed at failing this bet? Travis was the king of bets (he'd recently kicked Chris off the throne when Justin Bieber had actually managed to get famous), and this was not one he wanted to lose. He kept reading.

noun

42. profit or advantage; worth; benefit: What good will that do? We shall work for the common good.

43. excellence or merit; kindness: to do good.

44. moral righteousness; virtue: to be a power for good.

45. (especially in the grading of U.S. beef) an official grade below that of "choice."

46. goods,

a. possessions, especially movable effects or personal property.

b. articles of trade; wares; merchandise: canned goods.

c. Informal . what has been promised or is expected: to deliver the goods.

d. Informal . the genuine article.

e. Informal . evidence of guilt, as stolen articles: to catch someone with the goods.

f. cloth or textile material: top-quality linen goods.

g. Chiefly British . merchandise sent by land, rather than by water or air.

Oh he liked goods…

His brain slapped itself.

Focus Stoll; never again will Katie Gardner even envision the possibility to kiss you ever so if you blow this you suck.

But how the heck could he not blow this?

Morally excellent and virtuous. He had virtues; he just chose to ignore them.

Satisfactory in quality, quantity or degree. Well, there could be two of him depending on how you saw Connor, and quality depended on what kind of a day Stoll-junior was having.

Of high quality; excellent. Let's face it, he was an excellent thief, an excellent prankster, and excellent at insults. Too bad that didn't count. Or maybe it did… He'd have to ask Katie. No- it probably fell under 'rude remarks' and if Travis actually asked she'd think he wasn't taking her seriously and etc, etc, etc, so forth. Maybe he should just move to Europe until summer ended, that sounded way simpler to Travis.

Right: proper: fit. His grandma used to yell at him that he was a delinquent and that he'd do nothing good in the world (all he'd done was take one caramels too many from the little dish thing! They didn't even taste good! He thought he was doing her a favour getting them out of her way!), so he probably wasn't 'proper'…

Well behaved; a good child… Well, Travis was definitely screwed.

Maybe if he blotted out that part of the dictionary Katie would have no proof… Hey, look, one of the kids had let his pencil case there and Travis barely had to move to get this big heavy-duty black permanent marker out…

He pushed the cap off the marker and he was about to touch the thick end to the ridiculously thin dictionary page, when-

No vandalism.

He heard Katie's voice in the back of his head. Even when it was telling him to be the anti-Travis he loved hearing it. Katie got cute when she was frustrated with him. She pursed her lips inwards and frowned, so her eyebrows scrunched up over her leaf green eyes. Even cuter than usual.

He wanted that kiss.

So he recapped the marker and put it back in the pencil case (which was decorated with math signs like +, -, x, π, etc. Geek, much? Sheesh, at least be subtle about it. Some people were just asking for cabin 11 to start a 'International Calculator Destroying Day' petition.

He closed the dictionary and gave it back to Annabeth who'd gone in the corner to study a map of some empire that Travis had never heard about, in a sudden strike of midnight inspiration.

"Here you go," he said. Annabeth turned and took the dictionary from him.

"Next time; come while it's still light out." She said, putting it back on a shelf. Looking at all the heavy books, Travis thought of how much pressure was probably on the shelf right now. It would be so easy to rig for…

Good. Be good. Calm. Zen. Breath. Good.

"Okay." He said. Before he could do something crazy like say 'thank you', he left the cabin.