Charlie,
There was a sense of liberation when I shared the secret weighing on me that was slowly worrying me to death. There was a moment where the burden seemed to lift off of my shoulders. I had a friend, my best friend, who I could trust with the secret.
And then that feeling disappeared.
It was there, and it slowly eroded as soon as the words left my mouth. It was slipping away from me just as the feeling of happiness for a decision being made for me had gone from me after the dream. The logic was behind it, I knew that I was somewhat free. It wasn't my secret and my secret alone.
But some things felt like they should stay to myself. Some things felt like they were supposed to be my casket and were supposed to swallow me whole. Because, at least when they were mine and mine alone, I could pretend I didn't feel it. I could lie to myself. The Jackson denial I had inherited could kick in.
Now I had a reminder.
I had Kate to look at and see the dream all over again. I had Kate to share the stolen glances with and know that she was thinking exactly what I was thinking. I had Kate to know the thing I kept so deeply hidden inside of me that I didn't even know it until now.
At least I had her though, I thought to myself, It is better than hiding away for the rest of my life.
By morning, I could no longer hide, and I was tired of it anyway. I pulled on a dress identical to the one I wore yesterday, and I was pulling my hair into a ponytail when I caught a glance of myself. I wasn't sure why, but I was shocked my reflection.
I knew what I looked like of course. But, sometimes, when Kate looked at me just as she had when I was a child, I kept expecting to see myself that way. I expected to wake up and be eight years old holding MeMo and screaming for my parents to come into my room and soothe me from a dream where I had been on a quest I probably wouldn't survive.
But it wasn't a dream. This was all real.
"Is that a good thing?" I wondered aloud.
I couldn't think about it too long before Kate was knocking on my door and asking if I was coming to breakfast. I followed after her downstairs, and I felt like a little kid hiding behind their mother on their first day of school as they looked around to the kids they would spend the next year with as I walked down with Kate.
And there they all were.
I could feel his eyes on me, silently pleading me to look at him.
I didn't.
I sat beside Kate, opposite of Noah, and I could tell he wanted to know what had been up with me yesterday. But I knew that he had his own dream, and I knew that he could tell that my dream was my problem, too. So, we stayed silent.
That was the thing about the two of us. We knew everything about each other, and we knew what battles to fight and what battles not to. We knew the other's ticks, addicted habits, and the history that had created who we were today. We knew each other enough to know that this was not the time to speak.
We would talk about the dreams one day.
That day was not today.
Everyone at the table seemed a bit distant. Aiden was holding a book from the library, and I knew that he would probably escape to it soon just as I had escaped to my room. Chester was holding an iPod, and I assumed that he would also go to it later. Sam and Swift had kicked their recent habit of bickering, but I knew it would be back soon. Noah was looking at me, and his eyes kept darting to Kate. And Kate was trying to be interested in her French Toast.
We were split. We weren't a group anymore. We were just people on a quest together.
I began to hope that we would get close again.
"Good morning," Hypnos was as energetic as I had ever seen him, though that wasn't saying much, "How did you all sleep?"
We all let out our answers, though they were just as energetic as his.
"I think we should set off today. Thank you so much for your hospitality, Hypnos, but we should probably continue with our quest," Noah announced, and I smiled at my brother.
I don't think I had ever been so happy at the prospect of leaving a warm and comfortable bed with safety.
"What a shame," Hypnos was actually frowning, "I rarely get visitors, and you were a wonderful bunch."
If he thought we were a wonderful bunch, he most certainly did not get many visitors.
I glanced back at Kate, and her smile told me that she was thinking the exact same thing that I was.
"Thank you, we truly enjoyed our time here," Kate told Hypnos, and we all agreed.
And I couldn't help it.
My eyes drifted to him, taking in every inch of his face as I compared it to the face in my dream. The face of the man I would love forever, the man I truly loved beneath all of this confusion. I even compared it to the face of the children we produced in this dream. It was a perfect match…
I wasn't sure how I felt about it as I looked at him.
But I didn't have time to really think about it before Sam broke me of my thoughts, breaking the silent agreement between us all not to talk about yesterday.
"So, Charlie, where the Hades did you go?" he asked as he took a bite of bacon.
At least he hasn't changed…
"Bed," I shrugged, biting into a piece of toast, "I was tired."
Kate,
Hypnos didn't see us off in the typical way, I suppose.
Usually, we got into the Jeep, and there was this moment where our host let out a goodbye wave and we just kept driving into our next moment of the quest. It was symbolic. It reminded us of what was really going on here, of the mystery that was before us.
I actually liked that. I thought it was a good metaphor.
Hypnos didn't work our goodbye around a metaphor. He gathered us all together, and he smiled a goodbye before he snapped just as he had to take us to our life-changing dreams. The world turned to black for a second, and then we were almost blinded by the light of the real world welcoming us back.
We were in Waffle House again.
The time had still passed, there was a newspaper on the table with the current date. But no one was really noticing us. It was all as it had been before Hypnos snapped his fingers and made everything change.
We were all sitting in the same spots. I was still somewhat leaning on Noah. Charlie was still sitting uncomfortably between the two boys, and Sam and Swift were trying not to bicker.
It could have been that day when we suddenly just stopped the car and walked in to Waffle House to see Hypnos waiting for us. It very easily could have, and it would have been easier that way. It would have been much easier to just forget yesterday and pretend that we only knew this. It would have been easier to just lose that day from our life.
But things were never easy, and I wasn't even sure I ever wanted them to be.
The best things in life are hard.
Noah was hard to life with. I could just forget him, I could forget our life together. I could blot him out and try to forget what I felt for him.
But what I felt for him was the strongest thing I had ever felt and ever hoped to feel. I couldn't forget him. I couldn't forget our past. I couldn't blot him out, and I couldn't just throw away everything I felt for him. And I didn't want to.
Maybe that was what Hypnos needed to show me. That I didn't need to run away this time. That, even if we ended this exactly how we started, as friends and always friends, it was better than not being in his life at all. It was better than running away and regretting the choice when, at three am, I had to sneak onto my laptop and stalk him on Facebook just to know how he was doing.
We were all silent as we looked around to each other, the question looming in the air as we all wondered if we really had imagined everything that happened. But we hadn't. And we couldn't let ourselves obsess over it, we had more places to go, more things to face, and more drama to live through.
"Next up, Aphrodite," Sam stood.
Aphrodite.
Yes, this most certainly would involve drama.
As we all followed out to the cars to begin our next adventure with Aphrodite, I began to question what I felt for the goddess. Most girls loved her or at least worshiped her a bit more diligently. They focused on the romantic stories and sweet and innocent side that came to love.
I focused on the cruel, bittersweet moments where love proved itself to be dirty and vengeful. She already hated me, and I saw no reason to worship her more than the others. And I was reminded by many that I should learn to respect her more.
My parents had it easy.
They were friends in high school. They fell in love with each other their freshman year of college, and they made a deal to wait to get married until they were on their feet. The day my father and his siblings opened their architectural company, he proposed to my mom. They got married, and then they had a son. Then they had had me. It was ripped out of a little girl's imagination for what it would be like for when they fell in love.
Then there was Percy and Annabeth. They fell in love and went through years of denials, trials, and near death experiences together. They started dating, and he was kidnapped a few months later. He was found, and they fell into Tarturus together. Then, they made their way out of that to be together, and they had a break-up for a month. And a one night mistake got JoJo pregnant with Noah. Percy left Annabeth, never telling the truth. Then, she came back, and they got together when Noah was older. As if this was all not enough, right before their wedding, her ex showed up and demanded to have her back.
That was a love horror story.
I wasn't far enough along in mine to see how the goddess would treat me later, but she had given me Hades up until now. What would make her stop?
I was trying not to think about my own woes with Aphrodite, and I turned on my side to look at Noah as we got into the car.
"Will you be alright seeing Aphrodite after the whole Weslin thing?" I asked.
I could tell that Noah was still heartbroken after meeting little Weslin, especially after he had been in the same situation before. Honestly, he still was. His mom wasn't there to help him move into his first apartment. His mom missed his last birthday party, though I did as well for the first time since I was about four years old. She spent this Thanksgiving in California with her organic feast while Noah ate blue pumpkin pie in New York. She was still out of his life.
"I can see her fine. It is trying to stay on her good side that I don't know if I can do," Noah told me, and I realized that he almost put his arm around me. He quickly stopped, and I wished he hadn't.
But I pretended not to notice.
I was doing that a lot, pretending. I was pretending I didn't love him. I was pretending we were just friends. I was pretending that I didn't know why I had left so long ago. I was pretending that everything would be okay with us. I was pretending that it didn't kill me whenever I saw him with another girl.
But I didn't have to pretend much on his ride. The only sound in the car from that moment on was a slight hum of the engine and a soft sound of the radio. We didn't speak. We just kept driving.
Noah,
During the car ride, no one spoke. We didn't try for small talk. We didn't occasionally say things or even try to break the silence. We just let ourselves get lost in the deafening quiet. We let our thoughts take over, and we could tell that everyone else was doing the same as we were.
I liked that about us as a group.
We didn't all stop and try to have a heart to heart to work through our problems. We didn't take this as a chance to get closer and really get our problems out. We weren't aiming to talk about our feelings and get everything worked out.
No, we were going to sulk. We were going to think. And we were going to be perfectly happy doing it.
Maybe it wasn't the healthiest thing in the world, but it was better. It worked for us. It didn't stir up things that needed to be at rest. It didn't make us mad at each other or make us sob for the rest of the drive. It just let us sit there in silence.
We were getting close to the romantic getaway home of Aphrodite in St. Barbara. Our time was running short in the car, and I wasn't sure which was better. The awkward and silent time in this car sucked, but I didn't want to see Aphrodite either. After meeting little Weslin, I knew it would kill me to sit there between her and the guy she ditched her daughter for.
I knew how it felt to have your mom promise to come but ditch you for something else.
When I was younger, I blamed her boyfriends. Of course, she changed them so much that I just called them the same thing, "Mom's boyfriend" instead of taking the time to remember their name. Sometimes, they were nice. Sometimes, they weren't. They looked different, acted different, and even spoke differently. But they were all the "in-style" guy at that time. They were what was popular. My mom was obsessed with trends even to her boyfriends. It wasn't until my dad started dating Annabeth that I realized that you didn't have to forget your kid for a boyfriend and what a mom could really be like.
Afterwards, JoJo couldn't keep up compared to Annabeth. Annabeth was married to my dad, living in the same house, and giving me a sibling. She let me help pick out the wedding dress. She helped me with homework and made sure that I got a bath at night, no matter how much I begged not to. Annabeth became my real mom. And my biological mother didn't or maybe couldn't do all those things. She just didn't have the mom intuition. She cared too much about herself and holding on to her early twenties. Because it was clear that Annabeth was beating her in the mother-department, JoJo spent less time with me because she knew she couldn't be like that.
After that, she moved to LA. She got remarried to a man that was perfect for her. I didn't personally like him, but I didn't hate him. When I was younger though, I would have hated him more than anything for stealing my mom, marrying her, and keeping her LA when she should have been with me. Now though, I realize that she had a choice to leave and she chose to.
Aphrodite chose to leave Weslin.
And one day Weslin would realize it, and it would break her heart…
My dislike for the goddess was growing as we began to reach the private residence of Aphrodite.
There was a large gate made of platinum with an A written in big pink cursive in the middle. There was an intercom by the gate, and it was the same shade of pink. Perfect roses lined the driveway where large oak trees maintained privacy.
As Sam pulled the car to a stop by the intercom, he looked to us all.
"What do I say?" he asked, and I shrugged.
He looked back to the machine nervously, pressing the button.
"Hello?"
It was not Aphrodite's voice.
"Who are you?" the woman's voice asked though the call.
"I am Sam Moore. We were sent here by-" Sam tried, but he was cut off.
"No, I am sorry. No one is allowed here. We are on hiatus. No visitors," she stopped him, and she was about to start on about how he needed to get in, how we had been sent by Hermes and Azul, and how we had the painting.
But then we saw a pink figure was walking towards the gate.
She was morphing. She was changing. She was becoming what I thought was the perfect example of beauty.
Her hair was long and a highlighted brown. It was curled naturally and went down her back, gently flowing behind her in the wind. Her eyes were a stormy and intelligent grey. Her face was warm and happy, but it was still mysterious and seductive. She was long and lean, and she was wearing a flowy pink Grecian gown.
I stared as I realized that my version of Aphrodite was becoming more and more like Kate.
Her smile widened, and she motioned for the gate to be opened, which it did quickly. She stood in the middle of the driveway, and it twisted and winded with perfect scenery behind her. It was a perfect sight. The perfect woman with the perfect backdrop.
Her pearly white teeth were shown as she let out a very big smile.
"I am here with my love," she smiled, beaming. She began to walk to us, and I noticed that she was wearing four inch heels that she walked with ease in. As she passed everything, that little place seemed to get more beautiful, "I would love to see you all, but I am rather tied up…" she looked back to the winding driveway with a smile.
"Azul sent your painting."
Aphrodite's eyes moved back to us, and she seemed to consider it for a moment.
Then her smile widened, her tone softened, and she turned her body completely towards us.
"Welcome to my home," she smiled, and a snap of her fingers brought up a light blue convertible that she hopped into. Her outfit changed as soon as she got into the car to match the blue surroundings, and she waved at us, "Follow me, Loves!"
And then she fired up the convertible and was speeding through the dangerously twisty driveway.
"Are we supposed to go that fast, too?" I looked to Kate, and I was shocked again to remember how Aphrodite had looked so much like Kate to me. I guess I knew it, but it was still a bit scary. Kate was my definition of beauty. Could I ever get over her?
Kate shrugged, and Sam smiled as she turned up the speed and went full blast after her.
