Chapter Three No Inspiration

"So this dad business," Annabeth said as she picked at her lasagna half-heartedly.

"You're not eating," Thalia said, pointing to Annabeth's half eaten food. She was busy with her penne rosa.

"I'm still stuffed from my six packets of mini pretzels," Annabeth said sarcastically. "And stop trying to change the subject!"

"What subject?" Thalia said, nervously laughing. "Oh yeah… the dad subject." Now she too wasn't too interested in eating her pasta. "Well about three years ago Jason and I got called to a Lawyer's Firm, some Johnson and Johnson, honestly why would you work with someone who has the same last name as you? That's just…weird."

"Thalia," Annabeth warned. "Stay focused."

"Right… anyway, Jason and I got there and there's this handsome guy in a pin stripe suit lounging in the lawyer's office… it was one of the Johnsons, I don't know which one. Honestly why do it?" Thalia's eyes got a bit glazed over as she looked past Annabeth, her eyes not focusing on anything in particular.

"Thals, stay with me," Annabeth said, snapping her fingers. Memories can control us, they haunt us. But you have to learn to let go of the past. Let go of the Memories and just live. You can't fully live if you're living in the past. Man wasn't born to live in the past, but in the present. Hmm… nice one Annabeth. I like it. She reached for a napkin and grabbed her ever present pen from her pocket and jotted the phrase down and then wadded the napkin into her pocket.

"Just think of another quote for your book?" Thalia asked, her electric blue eyes sparkling with delight.

"Yeah, just something I thought sounded good. Now finish your story! I'm not letting you off of the hook!" Annabeth said, staring at her best friend with her death glare which she was known for in highschool… and middle school… heck she even had it in elementary school. Her stormy grey eyes really pulled it off.

"Well… so the man there was Zeus," Thalia said. "And turns out he's my dad."

Annabeth's eyes opened so wide she thought that they would pop out. "What!" Annabeth squealed. Everyone in the restaurant glared at her. Being on the receiving end of a glare was very intimidating. She ducked her head. "What?" She asked quieter. "How did that happen?"

"Well you see Annie when two people are in love… or trying to fulfill the urge of lust in this case… they get together and the man…"

"Oh shut up Thalia! I don't need to have that talk again! I already saw the damn movie! I mean how did your mom and Zeus, the Zeus, the owner of the biggest airports in the world and the biggest airplane company, get together?"

Thalia shifted in her seat nervously. "Well you know how my mom was into the whole TV show scene and everything? Apparently Zeus really likes the whole weepy, crying daft bimbos and fell head over heels for her. They got married, did it, had me, did it again, had Jason and then Zeus just left. I don't think he liked being tied down to one girl… especially a whiney annoying one."

It was no secret that Thalia resented her mother. In fact resent probably didn't cover it at all. It was something more than that. It was a burning anger at injustice. Everyone felt it at one time or another in their life.

"I guess I don't exactly blame him, I mean heck I would have gotten my ass out as fast as I could from that woman," Thalia muttered angrily as she stabbed at her pasta as if she wanted to kill it. Which from the looks of it, she did. "So Dad said he wanted to finally be a family… or what he defines as a 'family' which isn't the Webster Dictionary definition… more like maybe the Urban Dictionary. But he gave Jason and I a car, a boat load of money, a nice apartment and more money, so I guess it's nice."

"Wow Thals… I guess things have changed a lot," Annabeth commented as she took a bite of her lasagna. "Why didn't you write about this to me? Or email me?"

"I don't have your way with words Annie, can you imagine me writing a letter? I mean who does that anymore?" Thalia asked.

Annabeth shifted nervously in her seat. She did. Or at least she had written letters. Not exactly to anyone. She still thought about them almost every day. Did the person follow her instructions? Did they even remember those letters they found in their high school library? Maybe they threw them away once the last letter came, their source of laughter gone. Maybe the letters went around the school and everyone saw her heart bled on those sheets of paper with her pen.

Maybe.

Oh gods she was getting back to using that word again. She had to stop that. Maybe is just an excuse. You can't have a maybe, you either have a yes or a no. Make up your mind. Are you going to or are you not? You can't run from your choices. At one point or another you have to decide. Let your yes be yes and your no be no as the good book says.

"So how was California?" Thalia asked, leaning forward, eager to hear.

Annabeth shrugged. "Nothing special… just a bunch of sand and waves."

"But Annie… there's Disneyland!" Thalia said excitedly.

"Disneyland really isn't all that great after you've been going all the time. It's better every once and a while. Like the saying goes: Good things are good in moderation."

"Who says that? Whoever they are, they obviously had a terrible life," Thalia said, sticking her nose up in the air indignantly. "How's your book coming?"

Ah yes… the book. Her great work of literature, her heart and soul, her greatest accomplishment. Well it had yet to be those things. Heck it had yet to be written. "It's going fine…" She said.

"You haven't written anything yet have you?" Thalia said, seeing through her best friend.

"Not a word," Annabeth admitted.

"Annie, you can't let what that one guy said haunt you forever. You used to tell me not to dwell on the past, so don't dwell on it! Practice what you preach girl! I mean I thought that your last story was amazing. I loved it! And I was a teenager. That guy was fifty seven years old. Like he's going to have any judgment in the world of young adults."

"Thals... first of all it was a woman. Second of all she was forty seven not fifty seven. And third of all, they call her the muse of literature! I think she knows what she's talking about!" Annabeth argued.

"So what, one lady doesn't like it. I thought that Dmitri was absolutely dreamy," Thalia said. And then she gave Annabeth a sly look. "But Orion was delicious."

"Oh shut up Thalia," Annabeth laughed.

"What I have a thing for handsome villains, and gods Annie, he was amazing. I had a hard time deciding if I was rooting for Dmitri or Orion. I mean talk about a good love triangle," Thalia said. "I almost was tempted to make you kill Sera so that it was more likely that I got one of them."

"Thalia!" Annabeth laughed. "I loved Sera!" She argued.

"See there's the spirit!" Thalia said. "So how far are you along in your new book? I know there's something working in that brain of yours that never seems to sleep." She leaned over and tapped on Annabeth's skull.

"See that's the problem… I just can't think of anything. It's like all of my brilliance has disappeared."

"Come on Annie, I don't think genius just 'disappears' as you say unless you suffer from a really, really hard blow to the head which if you have, you haven't told me about." She looked suspiciously at Annabeth. "Did you suffer from a really, really hard blow to the head?"

"No Thalia, I just… I can't think," Annabeth said.

"Start with something small, something you know, something you really liked about your life. Go from there," Thalia suggested.

Maybe she was on to something. Something small… like a letter?

"Percy, honestly you have to get ready," Nico said as Percy sat on the floor of his massive bedroom, pieces of paper scattered around him. He had a glass of blue coke on the wooden floor next to him.

"Listen to this: I want to be a legend. I want to do something that inspires someone, somewhere, that makes them think about something and that causes them to change the world. I want to be a legend. Even if it's only in the minds of one person. If I do, then I'll have fulfilled one of my dreams," Percy said as he read from one of the letters.

He laid down on the cold wooden floor and stared at the letter. She had been talking about how she was worried that she would fail her Physics test. But then she went on to say that it sounded stupid, why care about something so little?

"She's a genius, you know that right?" Percy said thoughtfully. "I wish that I could have met her. Maybe if I had worked up the nerves I could have left her a letter. I could have met her, but I guess this is the next best thing. She's a legend to me." He smiled as he thought about her.

Was it normal to fall in love with a girl that he only knew from letters written six years ago? Was it possible to fall in love with words? Obviously it was. Because Percy was six feet deep in love.

"That's nice Perce, but honestly you have to get ready for the opening of Charlie's club, remember? You said that you'd go and sing a song," Nico said, reminding his best friend who seemed to still be living in the world of those letters.

Sometimes when it got bad like this Nico became tempted to burn the letters. But then he remembered that every song Percy had ever written was inspired by some line in those letters. So he guessed that he had to thank this mystery girl for something.

"Oh yeah… I nearly forgot," Percy said. He folded the letter and placed it back into the envelope. With the way that he handled those letters Nico sometimes wondered why he didn't wear gloves so that he didn't get fingerprints on them.

Percy cleaned all the letters up and then closed the box and stretched. "What would I do without you Nico?" He asked as he stood up.

"Die… or at least go insane," Nico grinned. Percy agreed, Nico had gone from his best friend to best friend and manager.

"So Charlie's new club right?" He asked, disappearing into his large closet which would make any girl in her right mind severely jealous.

"Yeah, it's at nine, there's going to be a lot of people there," Nico called. Percy let out a groan.

"Cameras?" He asked.

"Yep." Another groan.

"Press?"

"Yes Percy." An even louder groan.

"Why do I do these sort of things?" Percy asked.

"Because you need to keep your image up," Nico reminded him as a shirt went flying out of the closet and onto the bed.

"Yeah… my 'image,'" Percy snorted. "It's only my image, not who I really am. Everyone probably thinks that I'm a player and a massive jerk."

"But you are Percy," Nico reminded him.

Percy came out of the closet dressed in black pants, a leather jacket and a sea green shirt which went well with his eyes as his designer told him. "But I don't want to be," Percy whispered.

"What do you want to be then Percy?" Nico asked.

Percy pulled his shoes on and thought hard. "I want to be a legend, just like she said."

"Percy you are a legend. You have millions of girls at their feet, you even have parents on your side which no one and I mean NO ONE has done before. You are a legend."

"I'm only famous because of her words. That's not a legend. A legend changes people for the better, they inspire. I don't do any of those things."

"Oh come on Percy, think of all the girls that come up to you after shows and say how much you've changed their lives, how you've made them be a better person," Nico persisted. Percy knew that Nico hated it when he got into this funk. It made him scared.

That Percy would quit.

But Percy knew that he couldn't quit. Nope, he was in far too deep to quit. "They only say that to get close to me," Percy said. "I haven't done anything yet."

"Well you can think about something to do to change the world later, we have to go. Maybe you could plant a thousand trees in the Rainforest or something," Nico said disappearing out of the room. Percy snorted.

See people thought that that was what it meant to be a legend. Planting trees. How dumb. He bet that she would have a good idea. But she had to leave him with that last letter.

Percy never would have thought he'd be changed so much… by one letter.