You Stoll my heart - A Tratie Story

Chapter 9

Travis

"Can't we just kidnap him?" I suggested. Katie shot me an angry look. "No, Travis, we can hardly shove him in a van and drive to camp." "I never said anything about a van, but I like your idea." She rolled her eyes. Maybe I should count how many times I made her do that, but I'd probably get bored after 300 or so. I saw Jack approaching in the distance. "He's almost here. Should we just tell him?" I asked Katie. "Right now it's our only option. Let's hope he doesn't run from the crazy people." I frowned and looked around us. "What crazy people?" "I'm talking about us." "Oh yes, we can be a bit weird sometimes," I admitted. Katie scoffed. "A bit? You put a cow on my roof." "Oh come on. That was like a month ago." "Was it? Well in that case you're completely normal."

"Where is everyone?" Jack asked, looking suspicious. "We didn't find a lot of people who wanted to join. Or they didn't meet the right categories." Katie said. Technically she wasn't lying. We just didn't tell anyone else. "About that, how did you guys know I was dyslectic?" Katie and I looked at each other. I came up with an excuse. "Uhm...The teacher told us. It's not important. Let's get to know each other, okay? Jack how many parents do you have?" Katie facepalmed. "Real subtle Stoll." Jack started to back away. "I don't know who you are but get away from me." "No please wait. We're demigods." Katie said. "And you say I'm the one not being subtle enough." Katie ignored my comment. "You're what?" Jack asked. He stopped walking for a second. "We're demigods," I said. "and you are too. It means you're the child of a god."

He laughed. "Of course I am. Does that mean Jesus is my brother?" I rolled my eyes at his stupidity, even though his reaction was completely normal. "Obviously not. Wait. Unless Jesus was a demigod. Kates do you think Jesus was a demigod? I mean, that would explain why he came back to live." Katie hit me on the arm. "Ouch! Fine, I get it we have more important things to do like keeping this kid from getting killed blah blah blah. But don't think we're done talking about this. " She rolled her eyes at me for the millionth time. Then she turned back to the kid still looking at us like we were weirdos. "So you've heard of the Greek gods right?" Jack nodded. "One of them is your parent. Because of this, monsters can smell you so we want to get you to camp half-blood where you'll be safe." He raised his eyebrows. "Right. Why should I believe you two again?" I sighed. "Because you'll die if you don't. If you need proof, Katie-Kat here can make that flower grow." Jack didn't seem to believe a single thing I said. I nudged Katie with my arm. "Why do I have to show him? Can't you do it? I don't like using my powers in plain sight." "What do you want me to do steal his wallet? Where will that get us? Probably a few bus stops away but why would we take the bus?" "What are you talking about? We can just take my dads car." "Fine, but I'm driving." "Absolutely not. He is not getting killed in a car crash after all the trouble we're going trough to get him away from monsters."

"Guys, I'm still here remember? Well, maybe I shouldn't be since you're talking about killing me in a car crash." "See what you did?" Katie said. "What do you mean I did? You started it." "What? It's not my fault you can't drive." "GUYS." We turned our heads towards Jack at the same time. "If you're not going to show me proof then I'm out of here." He turned away from us. "No wait!" Katie yelled after him and he turned back towards us with a sigh. Katie sat on her knees next to the daisy in the grass. She made it grow and I saw Jack's eyes widen. "How are you doing that?" He was walking backwards, away from us. Katie stood up again. I was getting tired of this kid not believing us. "Look, just call your mom or dad and ask about it. They'll confirm our story and then we can get going." He thought about that. "What if they don't know about it?" Katie and I frowned. "What do you mean they don't know? You'd think sleeping with a god was pretty rememberable. Unless they were really bad." Katie shoved me in the ribs. "If you keep talking like that, whoever his parent is is going to kill us, so I suggest you shut up." I looked up at the sky. "At least we know it's not Zeus or we'd be fried already. That guy has an ego the size of a-Hey! That hurt!" I rubbed the foot Katie had stamped on. "I thought I told you to shut up." She turned back to Jack. "Why wouldn't they know?" I was fairly certain she'd broken at least two toes. "I'm adopted. I don't know anything about my biological parents." I cursed our luck. "If you make something up about going away for the weekend, will your parents let you go? That way we can go to camp, figure out who your godly parent is and be back by Monday. Sounds good?" Jack was shaking his head. "There's no way I'm getting in a car with two complete strangers to go to God knows where." I turned to Katie. "Should we call Chiron?" She scrunched her face up. It looked kinda cute. Shut up Travis. "No, everyone at camp will think we can't even bring a half-blood to camp without needing help. Let's see what his parents know first." I sighed. Why did I agree to this again? It was way harder than I'd expected. "Fine. But I hope you don't live to far," I said to Jack.

He didn't, thankfully. We got there on our bikes in a few minutes. Jack let us in and took us to the kitchen, where his parents we're talking about the groceries. They looked up when we entered the room. His mom smiled at him. "Jack, it's good you're home. We couldn't decide what to have for dinner. Who are your friends?" "Uhm...This is-" I realized we hadn't actually told him our names yet. I jumped in. "I'm Travis." I pointed to Katie. "And this is Katie." She smiled and whispered. "Since when do you know my actual name?" I stuck my tongue out at her and turned back to Jack's parents. "It's nice to meet you." I shot a look at Jack, silently telling him to ask them about the adoption papers. "Mom, I was wondering if you got any information about my birth parents when you adopted me." She frowned and looked at me and Katie. "Is this really the time to discuss that?" Jack looked at us for an excuse. "It's for a school project," I told her. "Yes, about how genetics influence our personalities," Katie added. Again I was impressed. Maybe she wasn't such a bad liar after all. Jack's parents still didn't seem to buy it though. "And we're supposed to believe you two are in the same grade as Jack?" his dad asked with raised eyebrows. "Well, you see, we're not really smart." Katie scoffed. "Speak for yourself Stoll." I shot her a look that said 'shut up' and for once she actually did. "So we got held back." They still didn't seem to believe us, but couldn't come up with a good enough reason to say no. Jack had the right to know anyway.

His dad left and came back with a small file. "You can look at it here, but you can't take it to your room, understood?" Jack nodded and Katie and I joined. His mom was still looking in our direction. "You sure you're okay with them seeing it? How well do you even know them?" Jack thought about that for a while and seemed to consider kicking us out and forgetting about everything, but I saw he wanted answers. "They can look. It's not like there's going to be something weird in there, right?" He looked like he was actually asking his parents. They looked at each other. "It's not weird exactly," his mom began, "but we can't make sense of it," his dad finished. He opened the file. There wasn't much in there aside from some documents and a letter. I picked it up, ignoring the angry looks I got from Jack's parents. "What's this?" I asked them. "We don't know. At first we thought it was some sort of goodbye letter, but the orphanage told us Jack's mother was killed in a car crash, so why would she have written a goodbye letter if she didn't know she was going to die? We asked around if anyone knew what it meant, but no one understood it." I cursed the Mist for making the note seem like scribbles. "It's not a goodbye letter. You can't read it because it's in Ancient Greek." I looked at Katie. "It's a really bad haiku in Ancient Greek." The sun coming through the window shone in my eyes for a moment. Katie gave me a 'you deserved that' look. I blinked to get the spots out of my vision. Jack and his parents were looking at me like they still didn't understand, which I guess was kinda normal. "What are you saying? That al my mother left me was a bad haiku?" Jack asked me. "No, this is from your father. It basically says to keep you safe or he'll 'unleash his wrath'. So, what do you think of a trip to Long-Island. It's really nice there this time of year." Katie disagreed. "No it's not. It's cold and probably raining." I shrugged. "So what if it is? Why does that matter anyway?" "How am I supposed to know? You brought it up," Katie said. "That was before I knew you were going to be a know-it-all about it." She rolled her eyes.

"What's in Long-island exactly?" Jack's mom wanted to know. I considered telling them thee truth, but that was something for another time. "Jack's father wants us to take him there. It's in the letter." I showed it to them, knowing they couldn't read it anyway. "You can't just take our son away!" Jack's mom said. Katie calmed her down. "Don't worry we'll have him back by Monday." "Why are we supposed to trust two teenagers we've never met to take our son to some mysterious place his biological father wanted him to go?" I snapped my fingers to manipulate the Mist. "Because of everything," I told him. He had a thoughtful expression. "Of course, that makes sense." Jack's mom was nodding along with him. "No it doesn't. What did you do to them?" Jack didn't seem to happy about me manipulating his parents. "Relax, they're fine." His parents were already back to discussing the groceries. "Shouldn't you go pack honey?" Jack looked at her like she was crazy. "Uhm sure mom." He beckoned us to follow him. "Since when can you control the Mist?" Katie asked me. "Since I've discovered it can get me out of a lot of trouble. How else do you think I'm still at large?" She grinned. "I just thought you never got caught. Guess your skills aren't as great as you say they are." She started to run up the stairs and I went after her. "Take that back! You know I'm amazing! Or have you forgotten the cow I put on your roof?" She was already going into Jack's room with him. "No I think I'm scarred for life." I followed them in. "You better be, because she was not very cooperative." She laughed. "What did she do? Bite you?" Definitely. It hurt like Hades. "Maybe," I said. "See, you're so annoying even a herbivore wants to bite you." I smirked. "Or maybe I'm just that delicious." That made Katie blush.