Alacrity

VII

vii. Annabeth Wants To Be An Architect - Or Possibly a Contortionist

Lyra was getting sick of trains by the time the second day on the Amtrak rolled around. There was only so many time she could pick her stand-alone lock before she became incredibly bored. She found herself incredibly thankful that she brought a deck of cards, and played many, many rounds of gin rummy. They also used individual chips from a few bags that Annabeth had brought to play Michigan rummy, which Percy was extremely terrible at and lost horribly.

"Ten of hearts," Percy said, placing down his lowest card in any suit down on his pile.

"Jack," Grover said, placing down his card.

"Queen of Hearts, I'm out!" Lyra exclaimed, slamming the card down on the floor and taking the chips that were laying on the Queen of Hearts card and dragging them over to her pile. Annabeth groaned, angrily slamming her remaining cards, all six of them, on the table and giving the victorious girl six of her chips. "That's it, I quit."

"Don't be mad at me 'cause you suck at this," Lyra shrugged, taking a chip from her pile and chewing victorious. "Oh, dam, this chip is so good!"

Percy scowled at her, pointing an accusatory finger and whisper-yelled, "You cheated!"

Lyra chuckled. "If you can prove that I cheated, you three can split my winnings."

Her three companions remained silent, deep in thought on how they could prove that she cheated. After several minutes of stumped silence, Lyra laughed and said, "That's what I thought."

On the second day, Grover and Annabeth were knocked out; Annabeth was using Lyra's shoulder as a pillow and Grover was sprawled out across almost the whole seat, leaving Percy hanging off the edge like he had at the Hermes table. Lyra could tell that Percy wanted to say something, but he didn't seem the have the courage. Eventually, she got tired of seeing Percy's eyes flick over to her, his mouth open and then close and look away almost instantly. "Alright, Percy, what's up."

The boy in question jumped slightly, obviously not expecting Lyra to speak. He recovered quickly and twiddled his fingers nervously, not finding the courage to look her in the eye as he asked, "Who was that statue in Medusa's lair?"

Lyra froze slightly, but then said, "You'll want to call her Aunty Em. Names have power, and I think mortals might get confused as to why we're talking about our snake-loving friend."

"Right," Percy nodded. "who was that statue in Aunty Em's place?"

Lyra began to fiddle once more with her stand-alone lock, wiggling around the tools to unlock it. "His name was Nick. He was, uh, my half-brother. He was one of Luke's companion on his quest to the Garden of Hesperides, you know, the one that went sour. When Luke came back, he told me that Nick sacrificed himself to our snake-loving friend so he could get out."

Percy nodded uncomfortably and said, "I'm sorry." Lyra nodded and shrugged, equally as uncomfortable. "Yeah."

Towards the end of their second day on the Amtrak, the 13th of June, group passed over the Mississippi River into St. Louis. Lyra watched as Annabeth craned her neck in contortionist positions in order to see the Gateway Arch. She sighed heavily and said, "I want to do that."

"Do what?" Percy questioned, frowning at the girl. For a minute, Lyra was confused and thought the girl wanted to become a contortionist, but quickly realized that Annabeth was referring to building something adjacent to the Gateway Arch.

"Build something like that," Annabeth said dreamily. "You ever see the Parthenon?"

"Only in pictures," Percy replied.