Later Life - 1 : A New Camper (Heroes of Olympus)

2 | Best Friends

[MICHAEL]

Everything was fine and perfect, until she showed up, and made it even more perfect.

Annabeth was mysterious, yes, but she was still nice and pretty. I could see it by how she became friends with some outsiders quickly. By outsiders, I obviously mean Jack, Billy, Becky, and Kristy. They weren't that popular in the school, so they had just become friends. Happy ending. Though I wasn't considered an outsider like them (I didn't consider them as an outsider, either, actually, it's just how other insiders think), Jack was an old friend that I had known for ages, so I decided to join their friend group.

And then Annabeth came along, improving the group.

Monday came, and I got to meet my crush, Annabeth, again. She had first class with me on Monday, no one else, so I loved Monday mornings.

I sat next to Annabeth like usual as I opened my textbook. Somehow, Annabeth looked extremely happy. Maybe it was the fact that I was sitting next to her. I smiled at the thought.

It was Math, one of my favorite subjects, so I didn't have a hard time, fortunately. Unfortunately, Annabeth didn't have a hard time either, which meant I couldn't be heroic and help her out.

As I said - I loved Monday mornings. I loved this Monday morning, too, but not the afternoon, no. Here's the explanation -

At lunch, I sat with my normal group.

"Any exciting things over the weekend?" Kristy asked.

"Not really," Billy sighed. "I begged Mom for chocolate chips, but she wouldn't buy me any unless I did some chores and ate vegetables. So I just borrowed money from Kevin (his brother) and I'm going to pay him back when I feel like doing those chores."

There wasn't any exciting response.

"Surprising," Kristy said quickly, not to upset Billy.

"I've got something exciting." Becky grinned at us all.

"Okay?"

"Mom decided I'd done a pretty good job with my past tests, so she bought me both belts - the beige one and the white one."

I didn't get what she was talking about.

"She wanted to buy two belts that were exactly the same-" Kristy started explaining.

"They aren't exactly the same!" Becky complained. "The white one, as I call it, is white, and it's from-"

"They're similar," Kristy cut her off. "So she asked me and Annabeth to choose one, so we just said she should buy whatever she wanted, and that's that."

"Oh, okay," I said.

"Jack, could you get out of that book for just one second?" Billy asked Jack, who was into his Greek and Roman mythology book again.

"Huh? Oh sorry."

I thought that he might have finished that book over the weekends, so when I asked, he replied,

"I went to the library to grab some new books, and they seemed so interesting, I read them over the weekend, so I'm back to this book again."

I glanced at his plate.

"Hey, man, you didn't even eat a bite of that steak. Get eating, you're getting thinner."

Annabeth hadn't talked a bit in the whole conversation. Usually, she was all about architecture, but today she hadn't said a word about that. I thought something was wrong. I was wrong. Something was great.