Annabeth Chase and the Titan's Curse

Chapter 2 - I think a lot

"How's your dad?" Thalia asked, by way of conversation.

Instantly, my walls came up, as they always did when I heard that question. It took an effort to take them down, seeing that I was with Thalia, who knew all my troubles back when I first ran away from home. But that didn't mean I liked talking about them any more.

"He's alright," I said slowly. "I still don't see why he had to move to San Francisco, though."

"I thought it was because he had a job there?" Thalia asked.

I sighed. Sometimes she could be so dense. Like Percy.

"Yes, but why San Francisco of all places? He knows that it's a bad spot for demigods. We can't go there with Mount Othyrs being nearby and the fact that it is practically monster central. It's like he's trying to keep me away."

Thalia looked at me sympathetically, but I knew she wouldn't understand. How could she, when she'd never wanted to have anything to do with her mother after she'd run away? Besides, she told me that her mother was dead now, killed in a car crash while driving drunk. And Zeus wasn't exactly the greatest dad.

"You'll work it out," she told me, as of that was meant to make me feel better. "You always do."

I sighed. I was sick of having to work everything out. I half expected Athena to strike me down, but it was true. I was always the one to come up with all the plans, to make sure that they didn't backfire and get us all killed. It would be nice for once to not have all that pressure on me.

We fell into an awkward silence then, neither of us really knowing what else to say. Thalia wasn't great at conversation and I found it hard to find anything that I could talk about with her. Hey, did you watch that awesome movie last year? Oh wait, you were doing time as a tree, never mind.

She seemed distracted any way, seeing as we were standing on Half-Blood Hill, just inside the boundaries. No point in standing outside them, which would be practically begging monsters to come and attack us. If we looked back, we had a perfect view of camp, the lake on the distance with the cabins in their U formation and the Big House close by. If we looked forward, we had a view of the road, stretching away into the distance. But neither of these held Thalia's attention.

She was staring at her tree, the Golden Fleece still nestled in its branches despite the fact that it's healing was done. Too well, most people said, seeing as it was only meant to heal the tree when it got poisoned, not bring Thalia back to life. But I was glad it did. With Luke gone to the dark side, it was good to have Thalia back. It gave me hope that not all of my friends were destined to die.

I wondered what she could be thinking about. Maybe she was wishing she was a tree again. Life would have been much simpler when the most you have to worry about is rabid squirrels.

I looked back at camp again, remembering the first time I saw it. I was in a bad way then, running for my life and crying over Thalia's sacrifice. Only Luke and Grover had managed to get me to safety and for a few days, I hadn't really appreciated what camp would mean to me while I was still grieving for Thalia. Now, camp was the only place that I felt comfortable at.

I shivered, digging my hands deeper into the pockets of my snow jacket. My earrings bumped up against my shoulders as I tried to sink my neck into my torso. They were owls, the symbol of my mother. I'd found them at a local jewelry store and had taken to wearing them. I don't know exactly why, maybe because it reminded me that I had a mother at all, even though I'd only met her a few times.

Also, they sort of branded me as her child, not any one else's. I knew it was silly, but I took pride in being a child of Athena. My mother was one of the best gods going around, although I suppose I'm meant to say that, being bias and all.

The earrings were cold against my skin, being silver and all, but I didn't take them off. It was freezing, making me wish for a truck load of blankets and a giant mug full of hot chocolate. Even my ears were cold, tucked up with my hair under my ski cap. I just hoped Percy would hurry up so I could get out of the cold.

To keep my mind off my freezing body, I went over the mission in my mind, remembering what Chiron had said when he'd Iris-messaged us. Argus had come and picked us up from school, taking us back to camp so Chiron could debrief us properly. Seeing him face-to-face had only reinforced my thoughts that this was important. He'd been moving all over the place, looking like an ADHD demigod himself. His beard was scraggly and there were dark circles under his eyes. I had a feeling that he knew more than he was telling us, but over the last few years, I'd gotten used to him hiding stuff from me.

Grover had been performing his usual satyr duties, going to schools and sniffing out half-bloods. This was meant to be his break after starting his search for Pan last year, and being the first satyr to return from the search alive ever. I thought that he'd be able to relax, have homework to stress about only, but that didn't seem to be the case. Chiron didn't know much, having not been able to actually talk to Grover yet. All he knew was that Grover had sent out a distress call, which he wouldn't do unless he was in serious danger. The best Chiron could guess was that Grover had found a half-blood, a particularly powerful one, and there was something stopping him from escorting the half-blood back to camp safely.

I knew that it had to be bad if the two most powerful demigods in this century were being called in. Thalia, daughter of Zeus and Percy, son of Poseidon. And me, just an average daughter of Athena.

I didn't have any misguided sense about my own importance. I didn't have any powers, my only inheritance from my mother being my intelligence and my eyes. Sure, being smart was good, but it was nothing like being able to call down lightning bolts or control the sea. Compared to Thalia or Percy, I was no one important.

That got me thinking about the Great Prophecy. When I first heard it, I immediately thought that it had been about Thalia, but she was a tree at the moment, so I didn't know if the prophecy had been cancelled or what. Then Percy came and I was convinced that it was him. There were no other kids of the Big Three that we knew of. And usually they were easy to find, their aura being so strong.

But just to make things more confusing, Thalia came back to life, so now we have two kids of the Big Three. And we don't even know how old Thalia actually is. She spent 7 years as a tree. She doesn't look like she's 12 any more. But she doesn't look 19 either. The best Chiron can decide is that she aged slower as a tree, so she had to be somewhere in between.

But we couldn't have two kids of the prophecy. It only stated one.

Were one of them going to die? I found myself torn between who I wanted most to live. They both meant so much to me that my whole world would be shattered if either died. Thalia was my oldest friend, other than Luke. She was one of the first demigods I'd ever met and protected me while we were running. I'd looked up to her, nor because her father was the King of the Gods and that she had mad powers, but because she was everything that a demigod should be: brave and dangerous.

And then there was Percy. I hadn't liked him when we first met, but he'd grown on me. We'd been through so much already, being hunted all over the country to find Zeus's master bolt, then traveling through the Sea of Monsters, one of the most dangerous places for a demigod to go. He'd saved my life dozens of times and I knew I could trust him to do so time after time. He was one of my best friends, but, if I was completely honest with myself, I was starting to see him as more than a friend.

"He's here," Thalia suddenly said, shocking me out of my thoughts. "And about time too. I'm freezing my butt off here."

I felt my face redden as I saw the car pulled to the side of the road at the bottom of the hill, Percy's silhouette in the passenger side. Thalia stormed off immediately, stomping her way down the hill, huddled in her jumper, but I took a minute to compose myself before following her.