that summer |percabeth au| ✔︎

1.

chapter | 01
❝ The baggage in my heart is still so dark. ❞

▼▼▼

some weeks ago...

AFTER SPENDING THE DAY in Aunt Candy's gift shop with a sticky note in the shape of a crab stuck to my butt—and no one told me until after  I'd escorted a pair of smoking hot surfers to our collection of mermaid dashboard ornaments, and then my cousin Katie sent me the picture, like, you got crabs!—I decided a little alone time was in order.

If not for the crab incident, I probably would've just gone to Candy's Summer Solstice party tonight like I'd promised. Instead, I was slithering around the docks, hoping to reach the boat before Katie ensnared me in her net.

"Annabeth!" Katie shouted. "The party's starting!" In a gauzy white dress and fitted denim jacket, she stood like a beacon in the sand, hands cupped around her mouth. Her voice skipped across the waves. "Where are you? Annabeth!"

She wasn't my blood cousin. Her mother, Candy, was Fred's best friend, all the way back to their graduate-school days—and before this summer I'd only seen Katie twice: the first time five years ago when we went on a week-long cruise together to the Bahamas, and then again a year later when our two families met up at Disneyland.

But I'd been in Bluever for a month already now, living in her house, our toothbrushes cohabiting in the zebra-striped cup in the bathroom. When I didn't respond, she shouted again.

"But it's the start of summer! And there's...cake?" she tried. Her voice lacked conviction. She'd been searching the edges of the dock for nearly twenty minutes, and I felt a little thrill that she hadn't found me. 

Unseen in the shadows, I crept to the slip that held the old Albin Vega–the last place on earth she'd check, since from a strictly ownership perspective the boat wasn't mine. I waited until Katie finally retreated, white dress vanishing like a sail in the mist, and then I climbed onto the deck and ducked through the companionway into the saloon.

Freedom.

For a holiday that was supposed to, according to Aunt Candy, honor the full strength of the sun god, the Bluever night was a bruise. I took in the blackness that seeped into the boat, the salty air, the mustiness that clung to torn seat cushions.

But for the damp suck and slosh of the sea, all was silent. The Vega rocked gently in the tumult, steadying herself, and the view of the sky–pink-purple-black through the starboard window—straightened.

Tipped.

Straightened again.

The ship was a castaway among the polished vessels surrounding us, a forgotten relic here in Amatheia Cove. I didn't even know her proper name. Queen of  was all it said on the hull, once-gold letters peeling from the aqua-blue fiberglass. Could've been Queen of Hearts or the Queen of the Damned  for all I knew. But there was something special about

the emptiness

the unknown

the unsaid.

Potential undefined.

She was abandoned, a fate we shared, which made her the perfect hideaway.

The boat jostled as a wave hit, and I took a deep breath, fought a shiver. The sea can't hurt me here....I repeated the mantra in my head until fear left my limbs. Until I could breathe again.