that summer |percabeth au| ✔︎

CHAPTER FIFTEEN - The Scar

In the stainless-steel kitchen of the main house of Chase Estates, Grams sat at the counter, a pot simmering on the stove behind her.

I closed my eyes, could just about smell the spicy soup across the miles.

"If you were home, Annabeth, you wouldn't have to imagine how it taste."

I smiled at the computer. After yesterday's tense breakfast with the Jackson family, I was just grateful Grams was home to accept my video call invite this morning, no matter that she was baiting me.

I'm eating okay here, Grams, I typed. Hot pepper sauce fixes a lot :)

"Too quiet there, though," she said, narrowing her eyes suspiciously. "I can hear your hair growing."

She was right; in the house it was quiet. Back home our windows were always open. The ocean was a lullaby, an undertone to the constant blare of music, the steel pans from neighboring bands, the chit-chatter of hundreds of birds. Someone was always talking, and when my sisters were visiting, there were never fewer than three simultaneous conversations, all of us dipping in and out of them effortlessly.

Here in Bluever, though, the ocean was all of it. The melody and the harmony. The bass and the beat. The simultaneous conversation, an endless symphony of hush and roar. I had to close the windows if I wanted to hear her across the miles.

I messaged: If I open the windows, all you hear is ocean. All day, all night.

She laughed. "Need to tell Candy to fix up her music collection."

I almost told her about Ariana Grande. The song that had infiltrated my nights alone on the beach again, got me back to dancing. Since that first time, I'd been out twice more. Never for as long as that first night, never as passionate. But I was moving again, mouthing along with the words. 

The dancing was a small thing though, just for me, and I knew she'd read too much into it.

Candy has wind chimes, I typed. And fairy music. Those fairies know how to party, Grams.

Grams swatted at me with a laugh. She got up to stir the soup, humming as she did. "So," she said, sighing when she settled back into her chair. "What about a regatta? You sailing again?"

I nodded quickly, as if it weren't half the big deal she was making it. I typed her a message about the race, how Percy and I had to patch up the boat first.

Candy had already told her about the bet, but I wondered if Grams would ask about Percy. Tell me about this boy, then, she'd say, and I'd smile and deny it, no matter that he was quickly becoming the last thing I thought about as I drifted off to sleep, the first when I woke. When it came to boys, my older sisters had always warned Rachel and I to never reveal too much to Grams.

Somehow she figured it out anyway.

But when her words came now, it was as if Percy was the least significant part of the story.

"Sailing again. This mean you coming home soon?" She fixed me with her patented no-bull Grams stare, and all I could do was squirm beneath it. "Not the same here without you."

I tried to smile, to throw her off the trail, but like all the boys that had crossed our paths, sadness was not something I could hide from Grams.

"You can't go on like this," she said, and the lightheartedness that opened our conversation was officially gone.

I sucked my teeth at her, the only sound I could still make. Especially thousands of miles away, where she couldn't smack me for it.

"Don't you give me that steups," she scolded. "It is a tragedy, yes. But it is what fate decide for you, Annabeth. Don't throw away your life and your family for this grief. Let it go."