Kate,
I put my backpack in the trunk of the large Jeep Commander, and I made sure the GPS on my cell phone was turned off as I climbed in the backseat of the car beside Charlie.
It wasn't even sunrise yet. The night was still out, though the sky was getting lighter as it prepared for the sun. No campers were up yet, or they weren't out at least. The air was chilly, and I had to put a hoodie on. Now wasn't exactly the time when three college-age kids and a thirteen year old driving away would be inconspicuous, but it was the best time to leave.
I hadn't slept a wink. Instead, I had packed and repacked. I sharpened my arrows and dagger. I sneaked off to the Hermes cabin where I bought a hider that the Hecate cabin produced that would be able to hide Charlie's blood a little bit. And, when I finally forced myself to get in bed, I just ended up staring at the ceiling.
But I knew I would have plenty of time for sleep in the trip, though I still didn't know exactly where we were going. We were tracking down Apollo, which was a pretty hard job for a god who went from place to place on a moment's notice.
"Where is Noah?" Sam tapped on the steering wheel, his jaw tightening.
He was always impatient, and he was more so in the morning. I hadn't had to go through driving with him since I was sixteen, when I got my license and my parents bought me my super-safe Jeep. Though I still had the memories of horrible mornings with him driving me to school, I had forgotten about this.
Charlie seemed to not notice it though.
She was too nervous, staring at the window at the forest that leads to Camp Half-Blood. I knew she wanted to go back, and I wished I could have let her and carried on the quest just the three of us.
"How'd you sleep?" I looked over to Charlie, trying to be sociable and pretend nothing is wrong.
Charlie looked back to me, showing just how tired she really was.
"Not so great. You?"
"Same," I admitted. It wasn't exactly for the same reasons as her though.
I felt guilty, but I couldn't stop thinking about going on a quest with Noah.
What was going to happen?
Our silence had been broken, and our space was beginning to get smaller and smaller. We couldn't go through a prophecy without getting at least a little closer. Would I be able to handle getting closer to him after pushing him away for so long?
I mean, he knew everything about me. He knew me, and he seemed to accept even the parts I hated about myself. Even if I hadn't been in love with him since I was seventeen, that was pretty hard to pass up.
If things could get any worse, I saw him.
My heart stopped, and I wondered how on earth he could look so freaking perfect all the time.
His black hair was hidden in a Braves baseball cap, and the sun was coming up behind him, making him look like Apollo. And then of course there was just his usual physical perfection that made me jealous and weak in the knees at the same time.
If I had taken up soccer, would I look that hot? I wondered.
I was deep in thought about it when the door suddenly opened, and Noah climbed in the passenger seat.
Bad, Kate! I reprimanded myself, We have more important things to think about than your crush on Noah.
But it was so hard not to think about him, especially when he was sitting so close to me.
"He's in Charleston for a week, staying by the Battery," Noah handed Sam something from Google Maps.
"Twelve hours," Sam let out a sigh, but he shrugged and started the engine to his car. Sam put the directions into the GPS on his cell phone, and he looked to the three passengers with him.
"Are we ready?"
Noah nodded, glancing back at me to see my reaction. I nodded as well, and our attention turned to Charlie.
She looked like any other kid ready for a long road trip. Her headphones were in one hand and her iPod in the other. Her backpack was at her feet, and she was wearing normal clothes for a teenager, too.
If I hadn't known who she really was, I would have thought she was just another teenager stuck on a road trip with her older brother and his friends down for a summer vacation in the south.
How on earth could this be happening to her?
It almost made me sick to think about it, to be honest.
I was turning into Noah.
For years, I had been the one happy that Charlie was growing up. I had reminded Noah to let her grow up and become her own person instead of just being the little baby he used to hold and adore. For crying out loud, I was the person, with the help of Aunt Annabeth, who talked Noah and Uncle Percy into letting Charlie have a date to her first dance!
But now I desperately wanted her to be five years old again.
"Yeah, let's go."
Sam looked back to the road, and he started on to the highway.
It hit me hard when I realized it.
This is really happening. We were really beginning her prophecy, really entering what could be our last day.
Please, dear gods, protect us.
Noah,
We were seven hours in when it came time for lunch. Sam didn't want us to stop completely, so he pulled into the parking lot of a random restaurant and gave us a list while he and Charlie remained in the car.
I slept for the first three hours before I had to drive, and Sam got in the backseat where he fell asleep with Charlie. I was supposed to switch with Kate about two hours ago, but I had never gotten around to it.
It was nice talking to Kate. I had forgotten how easy it really was to talk to her. I could tell that we kept certain things off limits, which felt weird compared to our usually completely open conversations, but I didn't mind.
It was a relief to be away from the bimbos that usually surrounded me thanks to my job.
I'm not exactly the richest guy on the team, though I make a pretty good salary. But I don't waste it all on expensive apartments or fancy cars. So the gold-diggers hear of a young, well-off soccer player and it doesn't take long until he is surrounded by them.
I used to buy into it.
Beautiful, easy women? It sounded great to me, but I quickly got tired of it.
The more and more I saw the vain, stupid bleach blondes, the more and more I missed Kate.
I wondered if she ever thought about me…
School was busy for her, and so was the new social life she had tried to set up in college. There were different people, different topics, different things than how we all were when we were kids. Did I ever pop in her mind?
"This is much easier than our first quest. Maybe you should have picked someone who could drive instead of me," Kate smirked as we continued to wait for our food to take back to the car.
Our first quest wasn't easy though it wasn't a big important prophecy like Charlie's. It all went down in Miami, and we spent a lot of it walking until I got ahold of three train passes down to Miami. For me and Kate, this was really when we got close. We had always been best friends, but, after our quest together, it was more than that…
"I probably would have left complaining Sam behind before you."
Kate let out a small laugh, and I could have sworn she blushed. But she put her head down, and her hair was in her face before I could tell.
"How much longer do we have?" Kate looked to me again, and the sudden eye contact made my heart skip a beat.
"Uh, five hours."
Kate let out a small moan, and she pouted as she pulled herself onto the railing of the waiting area.
"Do you need me to drive?" Kate pushed her hair behind her ear, twisting her favorite good luck charm the evil eye bracelet.
"Uh, yeah, I guess. You probably won't have long before Sam wants to drive though."
"Why is the worst driver is the one who loves to drive the most?" Kate let out a laugh, and I laughed back.
"And you're such a great driver," I leaned on the railing, and Kate jumped off to cross her arms at me.
"What is that supposed to mean?"
"Nothing, nothing. Just that I have no clue how you passed your driver's ED class to get your license. Nothing at all," I smirked.
"And look who taught me how to drive," she laughed, poking my shoulder blade accusingly.
"Technically, I took you to where you could learn to drive. I was not involved in that," I raised my hands in surrender.
"And maybe that was it then, hmm? Besides, you're not exactly a great driver."
"What are you talking about? I am a wonderful driver, I'll have you know."
Kate opened her mouth to reply when someone called our number.
"Seventeen," a teenager covered in piercings and with hot pink hair called out, and Kate backed away from me, which is when I realized just how close we were.
I carried the bag, and Kate carried the drink holder as we hurried out of the restaurant to the car where we had left each our blonde siblings.
When we got there, I saw Charlie was searching through the radio stations, and Sam was on his cell phone with some girl, though I couldn't remember who he was with this week.
While I had gotten tired of the bimbos, Sam was nowhere near there yet.
"Hey, who had the supreme personal pizza-?" Kate held out the box in the car, and Sam snatched it up before she could finish the sentence.
"Peperoni," Charlie smiled as she reached for hers, and I grabbed mine as I handed everyone else their drinks.
I was climbing into the front seat and revving up the engine when Kate looked over at me.
"I can drive. You must be tired," Kate offered, and Charlie peaked her head into the front seat.
"Noah, you've been driving for hours. Get some rest. You'll need it," Charlie reminded me, and I knew I was stuck.
"Uh, I guess."
As I got out of the driver's seat, I let Kate get in instead, and I settled into the passenger seat.
No one seemed to understand that I liked the distraction, that I needed the distraction. It was too much to think about, and it became even more and more with every mile.
Charlie,
My mom had told me how beautiful Charleston was, but I had never been. She had always said that she and Fort Sumter didn't have the greatest history, and we always ended up going somewhere like Bermuda or tropical like that on our vacations.
No stories or pictures could describe what it felt like to be in Charleston though.
I felt like I was back in time, and it was unbelievably amazing to see a place that was unchanged but also modern and livable. I even saw traces of what I saw in New Athens, and I knew my mother had used this as inspiration.
It was different from what I expected. It was the way the sun hit the buildings and came through the trees. It was the way the air smelled, a mix of restaurants and the ocean air. It was the well-manicured beauty. And it was the way you just wanted to sit on a bench and spend the rest of the day taking it all in.
Kate and I were enjoying the moment while Noah and Sam stayed on task.
I had worried that bringing Sam would be too much, but I quickly saw that he kept us all on track.
"Where is Apollo supposed to be again?" Sam asked, looking around the battery.
Noah leaned on the Jeep, putting on his sunglasses.
"He's staying right over there," Noah pointed down the street to a row of beautiful homes, "But I doubt he is home now."
"We should go and check anyway," Sam told him.
"We can split up then," Noah straightened his spine, "Kate and I will scope out everything, and you two can go to the house."
"Guys, we just got out of the car. Can't we take a minute and relax?" Kate asked hopefully, looking around to the beautiful park we sat in.
"We don't have time to relax. We may have a deadline and not know it."
"But what if we don't have a deadline and you're rushing things for no reason?"
Ever since this began, Sam had been working up the prophecy. Kate had been working it down. And Noah never spoke of it.
I wished he would. I wanted him to admit that it was going on, so at least I knew he wouldn't be completely shell-shocked if something bad did happen. I also wanted support from him. He was my older brother, I adored him, and I wanted him to show that he trusted in me, too.
But I wasn't sure what I would do if he did speak of it.
I kept talking it up that I would be so great, but I really doubted I would.
"Sam, do you have your cell phone?" Noah broke up Sam and Kate before it ended up in a fight.
"Yeah," he reached in his pocket for his smartphone.
"Good. I'll call you if we see anything, and call us if he is there," Noah put his cell phone in his pocket, and Kate hesitantly stood.
I wasn't exactly sure how, but Kate and Noah actually looked like natives, though Kate kept wanting to stop and look at stuff. Even though Sam and I were on a definite mission, we looked like tourist, and tourist happened to get more attention than I wanted.
"And, if neither of us calls in an hour, we meet back here."
"Deal," Noah nodded, and we all looked to each other.
I felt a little out in this group I'll admit. I love them all, but I was at least five years younger than all of them. They were already past teens and in their young adult stage, and I wasn't even really in my teens yet.
I suddenly missed Emily-Rose.
"Let's do this," Kate slung her backpack over her shoulder, and she was the on to finally break the square and start walking away with Noah.
I looked back to Sam.
Sam and I were never as close as I was to Kate, which I guess made sense. He was older than me by seven years, and he had never really been good with kids. He loved me, and I loved him. But it was a different kind of love, cousin love instead of sisterly love like what I had with Kate.
It doesn't look that far away," Sam shrugged, "Let's start walking.
