Annabeth's Perspective of the Percy Jackson Books (Annabeth's POV)

Paris

**This is from the Demigod Diaries where Percy and Annabeth recover Hermes' staff and then he sends them to Paris as a reward. **

It was our one-month anniversary, and we were having a picnic in Central Park. Don't get me wrong, I loved the picnic, but it wasn't anything we hadn't done before. I was trying to not be upset. I know how hard it is to remember things when you have ADHD but he promised me a couple days ago that he had something special planned. I had tried not to get my hopes up but clearly that hadn't worked.

When he showed up this morning with a picnic basket, I told myself it was fine and that I didn't need anything special. I would have been good with just a picnic and a quick happy one-month anniversary, but he hadn't even mentioned it yet. I always had such a hard time with things like this. I planned and prepared and I knew Percy wasn't the planning type so I shouldn't have been upset. But no matter how much my logical brain reminded me that it didn't matter, I had been looking forward to something special.

If he hadn't told me he had something special planned, I wouldn't be feeling upset at all, in fact I might not have even thought about celebrating one-month together. But unfortunately, he had brought it up and promised something so now I was feeling let down and I couldn't seem to convince myself otherwise.

"You forgot, didn't you?" I asked, trying not to put too much hurt or anger in my words but either way Percy seemed to panic. Or at least he panicked for a minute and then looked at me like he had no idea what I was talking about. If his clueless face hadn't been so cute, I might have been upset, but he was adorable when he didn't know what was going on.

"Percy today is September eighteenth. What happened exactly one month ago?" I tried to point him in the right direction.

"It was my birthday," he said almost like a question. But instead of figuring out the point I was getting at he just kept looking at me like he had no idea what I was talking about.

"Our first kiss, Seaweed Brain. It's our one-month anniversary," I reminded him, but he still seemed confused. As he sat there trying to work through what I was getting at I wondered if somehow, he hadn't promised to do something special and my brain or some supernatural force was playing tricks on us.

"That's why we're having this great picnic, right?" he said but clearly, he wasn't convinced. I sat up trying to decide how to deal with the situation. The picnic was great, but we'd done picnics before. It couldn't have been what he promised a few days ago.

"Percy ... I love the picnic, really. But you promised to take me out for a special dinner tonight. Remember? It's not that I expected it, but you said you had something planned. So ...?" I paused trying not to get my hopes up. By now it was obvious he had forgotten but maybe he would remember and do something anyway.

He looked a little confused and worried as he said, "Well–" but a streak of light flashed overhead. Percy paused and then said, "Oh, good. We've got mail."

"What?" I was thoroughly confused by the sudden change until he pointed to a brown delivery truck and the driver coming out of the truck was clearly Hermes. Then Hermes spotted Percy and I and motioned for us to come over.

"Bummer," Percy said, but he didn't really sound all that upset. "We'd better see what he wants." He jumped up and I rolled my eyes as I stood up to follow.

Hermes was looking around like he was scared of something. When he saw me he didn't look exactly thrilled. He said, "I didn't know the girl would be here. She'll have to swear to keep her mouth shut."

"The girl can hear you," I told him, crossing my arms. He'd never been my favorite Olympian but after the way everything went down with Luke, he seemed to really dislike me as though it was my fault Luke decided to try and kill me multiple times, come begging for my help and then get himself turned into Kronos and die. "And before I swear to anything, maybe you'd better tell us what's wrong."