Chapter Twenty-Five
Annabeth
When the lines on the road started to blur together, I handed off driving responsibilities to Percy, and reluctantly relegated the front seat to Grover. Percy grinned when he saw my hesitation. That boy gets under my skin more often than not. The mouth-watering smirk and the deep green eyes and the rumpled hair and... well you get the picture... aren't helping with my irritation. It's not like I think of Percy that way of course, but it would be much more convenient if the boy I was traveling miles and miles with wasn't attractive. I mean Grover's not heinous looking but he's… well… Grover.
Resting my head against the windowpane, I watch the signs flicker by, much too fast for me to attempt to decipher their jumbled mish-mash. Whenever I would go on long car rides with my step mother and Frederick, Bobby and Mathew would play this game where they would compete to find letters on signs and license plates, in alphabetical order. At six or seven, they didn't know better, and they'd ask why I wasn't playing. That witch of women would shush them, spare a glance at my father, and hiss to the boys, (as if I couldn't hear her!) that "she's special". Special seemed like the worst word imaginable growing up. I closed my eyes and tried to shield my mind from the memories, however ineffectively.
Yanked out of the past, I was fully aware of the truly horrific music, polluting the car. My eyelids flying open, and abruptly sitting up, the words fly out of my mouth.
"Grover, please change it from that racket." The please is a little ironic in that sentence, and considering the way Grover hurries to comply, he got my message loud and clear.
"Hey! I like that song!" Percy protests, flicking those infuriatingly perfect green eyes back to look at me.
"Keep your eyes on the road." I reprimand, and lean back against the window, smirking a little when I hear him grumbling under his breath.
Percy
Annabeth's been unconsciously flicking through channels on the radio since she got in the front seat, and Grover hasn't stopped drumming on the steering wheel in an hour and a half. Me, my foot has moved in almost constant and unpredictable, flicking since we hit Georgia. Glancing at Annabeth, I see the circles underneath her eyes that were, no doubt, three shades darker than they were in Virginia. I glance down at my t-shirt and am sad to say, I'm a little afraid of how I smell right about now. We're all a little weather-beaten at this point and normally, there wouldn't be much to find attractive about the situation, except I've found decent entertainment. Namely, star- ahem- observing Annabeth. Something about the way she bites her lip and constantly tucks curls behind her ears has me transfixed, almost enough to stave off the inevitable boredom that seeps into my thoughts every now and again.
Cruising down the road, we slide to a stop in the midst of traffic, a sign catches my eye, and I hurry to decipher it. "Happy Days Motel: hourly rates available."
"Hey Grover, how about we pull in there."
Annabeth
We pull into Happy Days Motel, which clearly has seen happier days. The paint on the shutters is slowly peeling off as we watch, and the yellow lawn deteriorates at the rate that serfs died of the bubonic plague. The "hourly rates" sign doesn't do much to settle my qualms about the- shall we say- sub par establishment. My eyes practically bug out of head when I see a women in zebra print spandex shorts leaning on the wall beside the entrance. When Grover parks he car, he casts a skeptical glance back at Percy, who's getting out of the car with such ease, you'd think he visits crummy motels in the middle of nowhere on a daily basis. The zebra print hussy eyes Percy like a store owner watches you while he decides whether you're a shoplifter. Finally, her eyes land on me, and she seems to shrug before stubbing out her lit cigarette and sauntering off towards a dingy purple hunk of scrap metal on four wheels. I glance at the boys, who seem just as oblivious as they usually look and roll my eyes.
…
As sleazy as renting a hotel room for two hours was, it had a definite upside in that the clerk didn't seem to care about our age, especially after Percy slipped her an extra twenty. My mortification when the check-in-lady winked at me as I walked away, and gestured for me to pull down the hem of my shirt, made the upside fade pretty quickly. That is, until we got to our room. A relieved grin slipped on my face as I saw the open side door off of the entrance that led to our small bathroom.
"If you don't mind," I ask, gesturing towards the shower.
"Not all" Percy grins and he seems to be considering something before he leans against the open door and gestures for me to go ahead, a smirk playing across his face. The heat climbs up my neck and across my cheeks as I realize what he's insinuating. Glancing at Grover, whose pink just because of his proximity to the creep in question, my eyes narrow, conveying the lack of amusement I'm feeling right about now.
"Out…Now." I nearly growl and Percy stumbles pack, his normally tan skin paling to the shade of your average albino. Clearly, he thought his little joke was hilarious, but I can't say that I agree. The door slams behind him and I look at it before angrily storming into the shower.
Percy
The bed is no doubt infested with enough roaches to be an exterminator's dream, but that doesn't stop me from flopping back on it. I try to ignore the groan the bed makes... and the smell.
"I'm an idiot." I groan. Pressing my fingers into my temples, I'm amazed by my idiocy. Really what did I think was going to happen, Annabeth would giggle and twirl her hair and say something about how I'm "so funny." Okay, probably not , but I was hoping for an amused eye-roll and a smile, and I hadn't really anticipated blind fury.
"Not getting involved."Grover protest, nerves in his tone, clearly just as afraid of an angry Annabeth as I am.
"Really it didn't sound that bad in my head." I swear, pleading for Grover to hear me out, so maybe he at least won't help Annabeth kill me. Bringing back Annabeth's repulsed face into my memory, I can't repress the desire to repeatedly bang my head against the nearest wall.
"I'm sure it didn't." Grover assures me, sounding sympathetic, if a little out of it.
"Do you think she would…" I don't get to finish before he shakes his head feverishly and cuts me off.
"Not getting involved." He repeats and repeats, almost like a chant. I roll my eye at his antics.
"You're a coward, you know that?" I tell him, resisting the urge to roll my eyes again.
"I'm cautious, and where Annabeth's considered, caution's a good idea." I groan in defeat, before rubbing the heels of my palms into my eyes. He couldn't have reminded me of that before I opened my big mouth.
Annabeth steps out of the bathroom in a baggy t-shirt and shorts, with her hair pulled to the side into a braid, and anger boiling in her storm cloud eyes. I get the sense that a definite hurricane's stirring and I had better get the hell out-of-the-way of Super Storm Annabeth. I eye her as she sways over to Grover, tells him the bathroom's free, and yanks a book the size of your average dictionary out of her bag. I look away for a moment, raising an eyebrow at Grover to ask if I need to be worried. He shrugs and something thumps against the back of my head. Turning around, I see the pillow where it had fallen on the floor and Annabeth engrossed in her book, if it weren't for the smirk on her lips I would've always wondered. Then she mutters, probably just to herself, but loud enough that I can hear.
"You are such a teenage boy." Then she grins and rolls her eyes, before throwing another pillow at me. I laugh, and smile back when she shakes her head and goes back to squinting at her book.
A/N: I wrote this on my i-pod while on vacation, then had to retype it, then my computer broke, then I had to borrow a computer to type it up. I've read a lot of stories where authors won't post unless their readers review a certain amount... you wouldn't want me to do that would you? ;)
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