σɾɳιƚԋαʂ (ρʝσ x ɱαʅҽ σƈ)

I Blow Up the Gateway Arch

Where is it? Where?

Maybe Grover sensed my emotions. He snorted in his sleep, muttered something about vegetables, and turned his head. Annabeth readjusted his cap so that it covered his horns.

Annabeth: Percy, you can't barter with Hades. You know that, right? He's deceitful, heartless, and greedy. I don't care if his Kindly Ones weren't as aggressive this time—

Percy: This time? You mean you've run into them before?

Her hand crept up to her necklace. She fingered a glazed white bead painted with the image of a pine tree, one of her clay end-of-summer tokens.

Annabeth: Let's just say I've got no love for the Lord of the Dead. You can't be tempted to make a deal for your mom.

Percy: What would you do if it was your dad?

Annabeth: That's easy. I'd leave him to rot.

Theo: Whoa! You don't really mean that, do you?

Annabeth's gray eyes fixed on Theo's green ones. She wore the same expression she'd worn in the woods at camp, the moment she drew her sword against the hellhound.

Annabeth: My dad's resented me since the day I was born, Theo. He never wanted a baby. When he got me, he asked Athena to take me back and raise me on Olympus because he was too busy with his work. She wasn't happy about that. She told him heroes had to be raised by their mortal parent.

Theo: How? I guess you weren't born at a hospital...

Annabeth: I appeared on my father's doorstep, in a golden cradle, carried down from Olympus by Zephyr the West Wind. You'd think my dad would remember that as a miracle, right? Like, maybe he'd take some digital photos or something. But he always talked about my arrival as if it were the most inconvenient. thing that had ever happened to him. When I was five, he got married and totally forgot about Athena. He got a 'regular' mortal wife, and had two 'regular' mortal kids, and tried to pretend I didn't exist.

Theo gave her a look of sympathy, while I stared out the train window. The lights of a sleeping town were drifting by. I wanted to make Annabeth feel better, but I didn't know how.

Percy: My mom married a really awful guy. Grover said she did it to protect me, to hide me in the scent of a human family. Maybe that's what your dad was thinking.

Annabeth kept worrying at her necklace. She was pinching the gold college ring that hung with the beads. It occurred to me that the ring must be her father's. I wondered why she wore it if she hated him so much.

Annabeth: He doesn't care about me. His wife—my stepmom—treated me like a freak. She wouldn't let me play with her children. My dad went along with her. Whenever something dangerous happened—you know, something with monsters—they would both look at me resentfully, like, "How dare you put our family at risk." Finally, I took the hint. I wasn't wanted. I ran away.

Theo: How old were you when you ran?

Annabeth: The same age when I started camp. Seven.

Theo: You...You couldn't have made it all the way to Half-Blood Hill all by yourself.

Annabeth: Not alone, no. Athena watched over me, guided me toward help. I made a couple of unexpected friends who took care of me, for a short time, anyway.

I wanted to ask what happened, but Annabeth seemed lost in sad memories. So I listened to the sound of Grover snoring and gazed out the train windows as the dark fields of Ohio raced by.