Heroes of Olympus Series. Annabeth Chase X Male Reader Story

Hitting The Place Over the Rainbow

She still spent most of her time wiping out. It took special talent to run over yourself with a surfboard. Her dad was the natural surfer—which made no sense since he'd been raised a poor kid in Oklahoma, hundreds of miles from the ocean—but he was amazing on the curls.

Piper would've given up surfing a long time ago except it let her spend time with him. There weren't many ways she could do that. "Sandwich?" Dad dug into the picnic basket his chef, Arno, had made.

"Let's see: turkey pesto, crabcake wasabi—ah, a Piper special. Peanut butter and jelly." She took the sandwich, though her stomach was too upset to eat. She always asked for PB&J. Piper was vegetarian, for one thing.

She had been ever since they'd driven past that slaughterhouse in Chino and the smell had made her insides want to come outside. But it was more than that. PB&J was simple food, like a regular kid would have for lunch.

Sometimes she pretended her dad had actually made it for her, not a personal chef from France who liked to wrap the sandwich in gold leaf paper with a light-up sparkler instead of a toothpick.

Couldn't anything be simple? That's why she turned down the fancy clothes Dad always offered, the designer shoes, the trips to the salon. She cut her own hair with a pair of plastic Garfield safety scissors, deliberately making it uneven.

She preferred to wear beat-up running shoes, jeans, a T-shirt, and her old Polartec jacket from the time they went snowboarding. And she hated the snobby private schools Dad thought were good for her. She kept getting herself kicked out. He kept finding more schools.

Yesterday, she'd pulled her biggest heist yet—driving that "borrowed" BMW out of the dealership. She had to pull a bigger stunt each time, because it took more and more to get Dad's attention.

Now she regretted it. Dad didn't know yet. She'd meant to tell him that morning. Then he'd surprised her with this trip, and she couldn't ruin it. It was the first time they'd had a day together in what—three months?

"What's wrong?" He passed her a soda. "Dad, there's something—" "Hold on, Pipes. That's a serious face. Ready for Any Three Questions?" They'd been playing that game for years—her dad's way of staying connected in the shortest possible amount of time.

They could ask each other any three questions. Nothing off-limits, and you had to answer honestly. The rest of the time, Dad promised to stay out of her business—which was easy, since he was never around.

Piper knew most kids would find a Q&A like this with their parents totally mortifying. But she looked forward to it. It was like surfing—not easy, but a way to feel like she actually had a father.

"First question," she said. "Mom." No surprise. That was always one of her topics. Her dad shrugged with resignation. "What do you want to know, Piper? I've already told you—she disappeared. I don't know why, or where she went."

"After you were born, she simply left. I never heard from her again." "Do you think she's still alive?" It wasn't a real question. Dad was allowed to say he didn't know. But she wanted to hear how he'd answer. He stared at the waves.

"Your Grandpa Tom," he said at last, "he used to tell me that if you walked far enough toward the sunset, you'd come to Ghost Country, where you could talk to the dead. He said a long time ago, you could bring the dead back; but then mankind messed up. Well, it's a long story."

"Like the Land of the Dead for the Greeks," Piper remembered. "It was in the west, too. And Orpheus—he tried to bring his wife back." Dad nodded. A year before, he'd had his biggest role as an Ancient Greek king.

Piper had helped him research the myths—all those old stories about people getting turned to stone and boiled in lakes of lava. They'd had a fun time reading together, and it made Piper's life seem not so bad.