"Just write a book" they said. "It'll be easy," they said, "Everyone gets published these days." Yeah, well, it's a little harder when your editors are gods that will turn you into a gecko and use you as a ping pong ball if you don't write them exac...
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WE SPENT ONE MORE DAY ON THE AMTRAK. Personally, I thought that was one day too many. I was feeling miserable, and gross (we hadn't showed since Half-Blood Hill, after all), and like everyone was watching us. To say I was relieved to get off the train was an understatement. Sure, none of these things disappeared, but at least I wasn't trapped on a train with people who might call me a fugitive.
"Let's try to contact Chiron," Annabeth said as we left the station. "I want to tell him about your talk with the river spirit."
"We can't use phones, right?" Percy said.
"I'm not talking about phones."
Oh, right. I'm an idiot, we're thirteen chapters in and I haven't even mentioned the phone rule. I don't know exactly how it works. Apparently, phones turn demigods into a sort of monster-beacon. They're already drawn to our scent whenever we're around. But using a phone, it's like taking that tasty demigod scene and blasting it for a mile around you. A big, flashing red, EAT ME! sign.
We wandered through down town for about half an hour. The air was dry and hot. I kept stopping to down the canteen of water because I felt like I was about to shrivel up into a prune. The Rocky Mountains loomed over us from every direction.
Finally, Annabeth found what she wanted. An empty do-it-yourself car wash.
She lead us to the stall farthest from the street, where we'd be hidden from patrol cars. It wasn't even about our wanted status. Most kids don't hang out in a car wash without a car; most cops would decide we were up to no good (at which point they would definitely realize our wanted status.)
"What exactly are we doing?" Percy asked.
"More importantly, does it involve using that thing for a shower?" I added as Grover took out the spray gun.
He ignored me. "It's seventy-five cents. I've only got two quarts left. Annabeth?"
"Don't look at me," she said. "The dining car wiped me out."
I was pretty much the same, since much of the money we had used was what I had saved in our bag. I had a few dollars, but we wanted to save those for something like food that would be weird to pay for in coins. Percy had some change, though, and he was able to hand Grover the last quarter he needed.
"Excellent," Grover said. "We could do it with a spray bottle, of course, but the connection isn't as good, and my arm gets tired of pumping."
"What are you talking about?" Percy asked. I was guessing it wasn't to dose ourselves.
He fed the quarters and set the knob to FINE MIST. "I-M'ing."
