Noah,
After dinner, we declined the offer to go to the study and enjoy coffee and hot chocolate. Azul said he understood and that he was going to work on a new painting then. He gave us full access to the house, and he took Weslin up the stairs saying it was time to get ready for bed. Sam and Chester went to bed, and Aiden and Swift went off to talk to each other. The three of us left decided to wander around.
Charlie and Kate stayed downstairs, and I went upstairs.
Part of me did want to stay with Kate. She had always understood art more, I suppose, or maybe it was just that she loved it more. Kate could offer random facts over three things in life: Dr. Who, whoever had the number one novel in America at the time, and art. The first was alright if you watched along, but you found yourself lost after missing a season. The second I typically just smiled and rolled my eyes at. And the last had saved my butt a lot during Art History in high school.
Everywhere you looked there was art and different rooms dedicated to different styles, mediums, and even artists. There was a room full of graffiti that held two modern white couches facing each other and two white end tables only. Another was made completely out of stone and the walls were filled with etchings with the slow water running through them deepening them.
There were so many drawings, paintings, sculptures, collages, and pictures, and they were all so beautiful. But they ran together, giving me the familiar headache that I got when my school used to take us to art museums for the day which they packed full of tours.
I had already lost my way in the grand house, and I was trying to find my way back to The Cherry Tree room when I heard crying from one of the doors I was passing, and I couldn't stop myself from curiosity. Nervously, I pushed the door open, and I took a step in.
It was like I was back in time.
I was back in Ancient Greece on an island. The ocean crashed on the sandy beaches below. The air was humid and filled with the smell of wild flowers. I was standing on a grassy hill full of beauty, and there was a grand Greek home fit for a god to the right.
And then there was a little girl sitting in the middle of the hill that didn't fit the picture. She had her black hair in orange elastic, and she was wearing a pair of orange pajama pants and a tee shirt that was about two sizes too big. A necklace with diamond-covered heart locket hung around her neck. And her tears fell onto a sketchbook she was working hard on.
"Weslin?"
The little girl's face shot up from a drawing, and I could see how red her eyes were.
"What are you doing here?" she quickly hid her face and tried to wipe away her tears with her tee shirt.
"I'm sorry, I heard crying, and I just…" I trailed off, not sure what to say. I knew to leave, but I didn't. I just kept staring at the little girl and flashing back to the years before my father married Annabeth.
I lived with my mom until I was about two or three. My mom wasn't a great mother, but she wasn't too bad. She spent more time taking pictures of sweet moments to post on Facebook than enjoying those moments, but she was still present for them. She didn't have a lot of responsibility I will admit. Whenever I got sick, needed something she couldn't or just didn't really want to do and could get out of, or something like that, she called my dad, and he did it for me. Though she depended on him for things like this, she had always been very cruel about the custody agreement. Something happened, though I am not completely sure, and he took my mom to court. After that, he had full custody, but he let her have weekends once a month and to spend other time with me.
But, by that point, she seemed done with mothering for the most part.
She spent more time doing her job, and, when she was about twenty-seven, she desperately tried to "stay young". Ever since, that had been her focus. She kept up with all the trends. She wore clothes way too tight. Went on all the fad diets. Stayed in the hip areas of town, and she did everything that was deemed "cool" by most. And sometimes parenting didn't fit into that.
When I was eleven, she was tired of New York. She was jealous of Annabeth (she had always been jealous of Annabeth, even when they were back at college), she hated seeing my father with the perfect little life, and she didn't like watching as Annabeth began to be my mother figure. She said that she needed sun, a new change of pace, and that California was just more her place. She moved in the Spring, saying I should come and stay with her in the summer.
There, she jumped around from being hip place to hip place. First, she lived in a modern, and very in-style apartment in the center of LA. About a year later, she realized that she was thirty-five, and she seemed to take on a different role. She became a single mother who lived miles and miles away from her kid, was a workaholic, gardened, and kept up to date on the newest health fads. She stopped working at a blog aimed that twenty year olds, and she moved more towards working for a "Green" blog. Through this, she met Henry Alexander. Within a year of meeting, she became Henry's second wife and the one that stuck. They had no children together, though they had been toying of the idea of adopting recently. There was shared custody of Henry's daughter, Elaine, and I came to see them every summer.
My mom had somewhat always pushed me away, though she always tried to pull me back in afterwards. And I saw that in Weslin's eyes. And I just wanted to comfort the little girl…
"I was never close to my mom either," I found myself saying, sitting down on the grass across from her, "My parents were never really together, and I lived with my mom as a baby. But I moved in with my dad when I was about three. And my mom… she just kinda forgot about me."
Weslin looked up, and I could see she felt the same way. I kept going.
I didn't talk about this. I just didn't. I had once dated a girl for five months with the simple explanation that my mom lived in LA and that I had a step-mom I was close to before Annabeth began her requirement of meeting my girlfriend as it got serious and explaining my entire story to the girl.
"I mean, I saw her on weekends, but she canceled a lot. And she wasn't really a mom. She was always just someone who happened to have given birth to me. She loved me, I knew she did, but she just didn't know how to be a mom. I could never count on her. She was always trying to stay cool. She seemed to care more about staying with her boyfriends than me. I wanted to make her happy. To make her proud, to make her… care," I looked away, but Weslin silently urged me to continue.
"She was never there. And she didn't even realize it. She would always apologize, give me some story, kiss me on the nose, and give me a present to make up for it. It wasn't long before that made my dad hate her. I guess part of me hated her for it, too, but another part of me had this feeling of blame for him. That he must have been the one stopping her. That, if he was nicer, things would be different," I looked to Weslin's eyes, and I saw that she felt the same way.
She opened her mouth and faltered, and I waited until she felt like she could speak.
"Last week was my birthday. I age kind of weird, but Dad says I turned ten. She promised she would be here. I got all dressed up. I put on a dress. Painted my nails. Fixed my hair," I could tell that all of this would have mortified her on any other day. Weslin reminded me of a more tomboy young Charlie, "I was ready to see her. And she didn't come. She called. She said that she needed to be in Olympus…. She was with her boyfriend. I know she was. She always ditches me for her boyfriend…"
Weslin didn't meet my eyes.
"I went to New Rome with my friend, Darcy, an immortal son of Hermes. I heard my siblings talking. Two weeks ago, she surprised everyone by coming to my sister's wedding. Three days after that, she went to go see Piper's daughter on her birthday. Her granddaughter. Her granddaughter born of a daughter who she didn't even raise," Weslin pushed her hair out of her eyes, "And she missed my birthday."
"You know, my mom didn't make it to my twelfth birthday. She had just moved to LA, and she had been in town for work recently. But she couldn't stay a week or come back for my birthday. She called me at the end of the day. All day, I kept waiting for that call she promised. I get what you mean, Weslin," I smiled. I never thought I would have anything in common with an immortal demigod who was aging weirdly and living in a home with every kind of art known to man and god.
Weslin let out a smile, and it became harder and harder to look at this little girl and realize how many of these nights she had come here and cried and how I hadn't here to talk to her.
"So, what is this place?" I asked Weslin, looking around the scene.
Weslin stood up, letting her feet sink into the grass.
"This is where I was born," Weslin looked around and pointed at an island in the distance, "That is where my father was supposed to marry that woman. He met my mother there. You can't see it, but my father's home country was just north of there. My mother had been staying on this island when she met my father. She went into town to see the princess's new suitor. From what my father tells me, that was the ocean where he taught me how to swim," she pointed to the water, "Those were the easels where my father taught me how to paint," she pointed towards a small clearing further down the hill where easels sat overlooking the scene.
Weslin pointed out everything of the island you could see.
She pointed to the home. She said that was the porch where Weslin had said her first words as Aphrodite was brushing her hair. That window you could see on the edge of the grand Grecian home was the window of the first art room Azul had made. Weslin said that she started making it when Aphrodite was on a shopping trip when Weslin was two.
As I listened to her tale, I found my heart breaking and my lips smiling as I watched the love she had for that home. I knew it wasn't really that home. Yes, she loved certain things. But she really loved knowing that her mother had been around for all of those stories.
And now Aphrodite was off with Apollo…
Disgust for Aphrodite filled me, and it wasn't just for honestly. It was for all of the gods.
My parents had to suffer for it. Their friends, my friends, and even this little girl had to suffer.
She was so young…
I felt a sharp pain hit me as I watched her exuberance and big smile and remember it as that of Charlie's only three years ago. She was still running around the house barefoot, hiding Memo in her backpack every day and thinking we never noticed.
The last six years hadn't been great for Charlie. Her trust in water was broken as Olympia almost killed her in a pool. She wouldn't touch the water until Spring Break the next year and my dad picked her up and took her in the water, trying to seem strong but almost crying as he worried for his baby girl. After that, everyone treated her different. It was like she had an expiration date stamped on her forehead. She was the peace between Athena and Poseidon. They didn't know what this quest would do. They just knew that, even if she wasn't the daughter of Percy and Annabeth, she wouldn't make it.
Percy and Annabeth had truly been forged to be heroes. Charlie was a child, and we had always attempted to preserve her innocence as long as possible. And they knew what losing would cause. No one knew would losing would do. The worst being the world ending and the "best" being that one life was lost, even if it was a life everyone adored. By trying to enjoy the most of her life, we might of shortened it…
I felt a sick feeling take over as I thought of life without my baby sister.
Weslin and I kept talking. She told me about how she liked to draw, and she told me that she had been drawing her mother, or the form that she had been in when she was with her father.
And then I heard something that startled me.
"Weslinena?" Azul called out nervously, and suddenly the door that had been standing in what felt like the middle of the beautiful scene was opened.
Though I had just come through the very same door, it felt so foreign to see the hallway behind what had felt like just… well, a door. It was a white double door that looked like it was just an abstract art piece in the middle of an island. But I now remembered that it was actually a door, that this was fake, and that Weslin was still just a little girl who sneaked out of bed.
Azul's eyes were wide as they looked at me as if I was an alien that couldn't possibly exsist.
After a while, his eyes turned back to his daughter.
"Weslin, you need to go to bed. Come on, it's way past your bedtime, Weslin," Azul crossed his arms, and Weslin let out a moan, closing her sketchbook. She stood, and she brushed off her pajamas to get the grass off of her. Then she turned to me and let out a small smile, "Bye, Noah."
She hugged me, and I hugged her back.
"Goodnight, Weslin."
Weslin smiled at me again, and she frowned at her father as she started off to her bedroom.
Azul was now beaming at me, and he smiled down to his daughter.
"I'll be there in one minute, Weslin," Azul let her go through the door, and he waited until she was out of earshot.
His smile was so wide I was getting a little scared.
"You're the only person she has ever shown the sketchbook. I haven't even seen it," he shook his head, almost laughing, "I'll see you at breakfast tomorrow, Noah."
Charlie,
Kate was sitting on the edge of my bed, her feet dangling over and her toes playing in the grass. Her eyes were on the willow canopy, mesmerized by the stars peeking through. The sky showed every star in the sky tonight. I had never seen so many, especially not in my home of New York.
Everything about this home was beautiful. It was the perfect combination of the natural beauty surrounding it and the beauty of the rest of the world. There was nothing unseemly, ugly, or even uncreative about this home.
As child, I would have adored this. Armed with my best buddy Memo, I would set out to exploring everything. Step foot in every room, look at every piece, and know the structure of this home. It would have taken years, and I wasn't sure I ever would have stopped.
But my curiosity had lessened a little, and I wasn't in the mood for it either.
I was too tired, too distracted, and my thoughts were too wandering.
The beauty was everywhere, and I couldn't take it all in to recognize it. My brain couldn't take it all, and my Athena blood seemed to disappear with my distractions. It blended together until I wasn't even really looking anymore.
My father had told me that, when my mom had to find the Mark of Athena, she was so out of it that she didn't even hear him. He told her that he even told her that her that his hair was on fire and she distractedly said that's nice. I had never been able to see my mom like that. When I was a little kid, she could hear everything I said, notice everything I did, and always seemed to know what I was guilty of.
But now I saw how it happened…
Too much was swirling around in my head.
Aiden or Chester? Complete the guest or not? To steal the painting or do what is right for Azul's family? To die at the hands of Olympia or go on to live a happy life? A happy and long love for Noah and Kate or sad and eternal pain for them?
As a child of Athena, I had always been able to predict things, but I was as lost as Blake Smith his second time around at Algebra. I couldn't see anything ahead of me. At first, it had been the paradox of life. I didn't know the big things, but I knew the basics. But, in the last few days, those predictions seemed to be slipping away from me. It started as I couldn't see a week ahead. Then a few days. Then a day. And now I couldn't predict the next ten minutes.
"They're beautiful," Kate smiled as she looked up at the stars like a little kid looking at the toy they want for Christmas in the store window.
"Yeah," I glanced at them, but they didn't really interest me as much as they should.
"Are you alright, Charlie?" Kate's eyes tore away from the sky to me, and her feet stopped swinging.
I shrugged.
"Yeah."
Kate raised her eyebrows, and she turned towards me.
"Boy trouble?" she smiled.
I moaned and rolled my eyes.
"See, this is why I didn't tell you!"
"It is, isn't it?"
"No, Kate. It is not."
Kate raised her eyebrows again, and this time her grey eyes gave me the same piercing imploring you to tell the truth that my mother had always given me. I wondered if my mom taught her or if it was just an Athenian thing.
Could I do that?
"I don't know what it is," I admitted, not saying she was right though.
"Oh I know," Kate's lips formed a big smile, "You are jealous that Weslin has a crush on Aiden?"
I laughed.
"You know, that is adorable," Kate stretched out on the bed, putting her head in her hands as her elbows held her upper body up, "He is a sweetheart, you know? Quiet, a bit serious, and very secretive. I mean, he had a sister he never thought to mention. But he is a sweetheart."
I laughed as I pulled on a sweatshirt over the pajamas I had already changed into.
"So, are you casting your vote on who I should pick, Kate?"
"I'm not voting for anybody, Charlie. You need to make your own choice. I am just saying that I picked the Bad Boy once, too. I picked the guy that people were shocked I chose. And I let someone even greater get away," Kate said it freely. I wasn't forcing her to do this. I didn't even ask her to.
But she brought up Austin so easily. It was almost as if it was all really okay. As if all of us had done everything not to speak of him since the incident.
Ever since they had broken up, the friends had to choose a side, and they choose Kate. Austin got new friends, joined the football team instead of soccer, and moved on with his life as well. I knew he didn't talk about us, and we didn't talk about him.
It was this understanding that we all had.
And it felt odd to hear him mentioned after so long.
"Austin was no bad boy, Kate," I laughed.
Austin had one tattoo on his shoulder blade that he had gotten during his first time ever drinking. He and Noah used to have a friend whose father owned a tattoo parlor, and Austin somehow ended up with a tattoo of something in Latin on his shoulder blade. The morning he woke up with it (I witnessed as he slept over at our house because my parents were out of town and Noah and Sam thought he was too drunk to go home), he freaked out. But, after that, he claimed it as a completely sober decision that he didn't regret.
After that, he seemed to think of himself as a bad boy.
But I could never see anyone as a bad boy after watching him as a twelve year old screaming with my brother after a horror movie marathon and the two of them staying up all night, scared out of their minds and prepared to scream for their mommies to come and save them.
Especially when compared to Chester.
"He was more of a bad boy than you thought, Charlie," Kate laughed.
"That one tattoo that he got when he was drunk out of his mind. After that, he thought he was completely amazing and a total bad boy."
"And the one on his back," Kate turned over to where she was staring at the canopy, "And the nape of his neck. And there was this one on his side that wasn't completely down on his hip but wasn't high up. That one was small though."
I tried not to smirk as I got on the bed beside her.
"And did you find all these may I ask?"
Kate elbowed me, but I noticed she didn't answer the question. She just kept looking up.
"He wasn't the right choice, Charlie," she said my name, but she seemed to be talking to herself, "I thought it was, I was young. He was hot, and it made sense to go for him. He liked me, I liked him. There were no problems…"
She was out of it, and I wasn't sure she even remembered I was there.
"We were great at first, but the bad choice was obvious early on. We didn't seem to click like we were supposed to. And then his best friend started isolating him, and we all knew why. It was just breaking so fast, and it was too late to go back to that night. To kiss him that night instead. To go back to any of the nights…"
I watched Kate, and I knew she was now talking about Noah.
And I knew she was thinking what I had been thinking for years.
Why the Hades didn't they just stop pretending and use that time to just kiss each other and get it over with instead?
Kate was still staring at the stars, her mind no longer on the beauty.
And, as I was lying beside her, I was lost in thought, too.
I wasn't exactly sure what I was thinking of to tell you the truth. It was Chester, it was Aiden, it was my quest, and it was even my last few conversations with Emily-Rose. The last few days were so jumbled up in my head that it might as well have been a lifetime.
"Hey, I'm gonna go to sleep, Shorty," Kate snapped out of it, and she kissed me on the top of my head I told her goodbye.
She left my room, and I kept staring at the stars through my willow canopy.
I wasn't sure how long passed, I just knew that I couldn't go to sleep but I couldn't be completely awake earlier.
I remembered what I would always do when it came to something like this. It happened a lot. It happens to all kids a lot.
I used to go to my mom (for logic and a cup of steaming hot chocolate with milk) or my dad (for just true comfort and perfect hot chocolate loaded down with marshmallows).
Right now, I wanted both. I wanted to be back in my light green room. I wanted to see the mural of a tree with an owl in it that my Aunt Rachel made for my nursery and that we had left up. I missed the pictures of me and my friends, my favorite bands and swimming stars, and the reading nook covered in pillows and blankets for comfort. I missed starting at my ceiling when I couldn't sleep. I missed getting up, putting on my favorite soft hoodie, and going to get one of my parents.
I just wanted one of them.
I sat up in bed and went to a river snaking through part of my room. I threw in the gold coin necessary, and I began to place my call.
"Percy Jackson, New York," I whispered to the mist, and I watched at the water morphed into one of the most familiar sights of my childhood.
My dad's Camp Half-Blood tee shirt.
My father was a handsome man, and a bunch of his students and my classmates were in love with him.
Mr. Jackson was a school-wide favorite teacher. He taught Marine Biology, 7th-8th grade History, and ran a few clubs. In his History, he focused a lot over Greece and mythology. In Marine Biology, he was the most knowledgeable and the best and most frequent field trip planner. And my father was just a likeable guy.
He had been teaching at my school since Noah was three, and I started there when I was in sixth grade. He was a favorite since his first day, and his girl students adored him more after he became the husband of their favorite business-celebrity, Annabeth Chase. Just about all of the girls had a crush on him, and, even if they didn't, everybody liked him.
Because of that, students always begged for him to run summer school, summer camps, and other non-school-year activities.
He usually didn't. He ran a few camps, but he usually was home with me during the summer.
Now that Noah and I both were supposed to be gone, he started extra summer tutoring and ran a camp for his students, particularly for Half-Bloods. He also was supposed to teach at Camp Half-Blood later this summer.
That was in a month, and it was the night before he had tutoring for Marine Biology. He was grading and working on a few things on his favorite laptop. He was sitting on the couch, his cup of steaming hot chocolate sitting on the coffee table by a book or two. His hair was a complete mess, and he was wearing the same pajama bottoms he had owned for as long as I could remember. Clash of the Titans was playing softly in the background, mainly on so he "didn't feel so lonely" when he graded papers.
It was late tonight, and I knew my dad had put off this job. My mom was an architect and owned basically the biggest firm in the world. She would probably have a meeting or just need to be there early, and she would already be changed into an owl tee shirt and a pair of comfortable yoga pants by now, falling or fast asleep.
My dad was reaching for his cup of hot chocolate when his beautiful sea green eyes noticed the Iris Message above the coffee table.
My dad's face lit up, and he closed his laptop and moved closer to the image.
He looked like he wanted to hug me, rub my cheek, and all the other "parent-things" that kids complain about. He was almost crying.
And that made my eyes water, too.
"Hey, Dad," I smiled, doing everything not to sob like a little girl.
"Hey, Baby," I could hear in my father's voice his worry, "Where are you?"
I looked around to my surroundings and remembered that it looked like we were outside.
We didn't have to rough it by any means on this quest. We and our parents had made enough friends to not need to. Our tortures were confined to our emotions and our thoughts, not our living arrangements. We had friendly gods, old family friends, and even Azul to take us in for the night. Otherwise, Noah and Sam were armed with their credit cards, and we were pretty well taken care of for the quest.
If anything, I felt a little guilty for it.
Everyone else had to scrounge around during a quest. But we had credit cards, Sam's favorite car in the entire world, and people giving us shelter pretty much everywhere we went. Olympia had the monsters scared out of their minds to truly hurt me, and it was matter of keeping from being kidnapped. It wasn't as bad as it could be. It was just constant terror and the fear of the future, the fear of what came after our "comfortable" quest.
My father hadn't had such comfort. Neither had my mother. No one I knew really had.
But I did.
We did.
Everyone said it was because they adored me, and I knew they did. It was because they wanted to keep me safe. I was a baby that, given any change at all in the past, probably would not have been born. But everything came together just right. And I was born.
"Oh, um, this artist," I smiled at my father, "He's immortal. He is Aphrodite's ex. Azul. Um, we have to get a painting for him for Aphrodite. She is too busy with her boyfriend. Azul won't give it to us because he was Aphrodite to come see their daughter. It's kinda a long story."
"Sounds like it, Charlie."
"So, how's everything?" I asked, "At home? Is everything okay?"
"Yeah, I guess. Um, your mom has a big job. A new monument in DC. Your mom is working so hard to make sure everything is perfect for it," my dad smiled, "And I am just on the verge of killing some of my tutoring students. I am working like crazy… And we miss you like crazy, too, Shorty."
I didn't see my father cry very much. When I was ten, he cried that his baby girl was already a decade old. He cried when my brother graduated, and he cried when Noah moved out and was out on his own. My dad cried for me when I broke my ankle. And, while I knew he had cried much more than that, those were the only times I could really recall it.
And, right now, I knew he was about to cry.
And so was I.
"I miss you, too, Dad."
Now I was completely crying.
"I-I don't know what to do. Everyone thinks I am going to die. I even think I'm going to die,"' I wiped my eyes with my sleeve, "But it also feels so easy. Just too easy! We get in a car, and we drive. We drive to our death. No monsters bother us because they know I'll die by someone's hand even if it isn't their own!"
I was crying so hard I was shaking.
"Nothing makes sense anymore! I can't see what is going to happen. I don't know what is going to happen, only that-that it'll be Olympia! That the woman who has been torturing me for years will finally win! And-And then that'll probably start a freaking godly war with Athena and Posiedon! Ever-Everyone thinks that's what O-Olympia wants!"
I was crying so much that my words were barely understandable, but my father seemed to understand them as easily as if my words were perfectly normal.
"You are not going to die, Charlotte," my father's voice managed to be sweet sympathy and love he always had and a surprising bit of sternness, "It is not easy, and you know it. I know how it feels to drive to what you think will be your death. I could put it off, and I could focus on how unhappy I was. You, my baby, will be alright. Your grandparents will always love you, and they have an understanding because of you, Charlie. And you're not supposed to be able to predict life, Charlotte."
I found that I was no longer crying and that I was staring at my father.
"My prediction wasn't this life, Charlie. I didn't think I would marry Annabeth Chase when I was your age. Then, when I was sixteen, it was all I could see. Then something happened. And I could see only raising Noah and no Annabeth. Then a few years later, I was with your mother again, and we were having a daughter. Life never follows rules. You can't just predict things. You were going to learn that soon," my dad's face was still wet from tears, but he wasn't crying. He was just smiling.
"I love you, Dad."
"I love you, too, Shorty."
