ATLOP: Trial by Fire

Grover Unexpectedly Loses His Pants

Hope you all enjoy the chapter!

4/2/2022

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OO OO OO OO

Naturally I ditched Grover as soon as we reached the bus terminal. He had to use the bathroom and I booked it.

Rudeness didn't matter in the face of... everything. I wasn't letting someone I still suspected was plotting my death near my mom.

He could have Gabe though.

I wished Triton was there, he would know what was going on. He said at the start Grover was probably not a threat, but he didn't have the most recent information.

I fingered my bracelet as a taxi stopped for me. Hopefully Triton would contact me soon. I didn't want to spend the whole summer not using my powers.

"East One-hundred-and-fourth and First," I told the driver.

OO OO OO OO

Everyone knew how amazing my mom was. Her name was Sally Jackson and she deserved the world.

I didn't really think a whole bunch on her history, on how she met my dad and came to have me, but she'd told me the story.

She didn't really know her parents since they died in a plane crash when she was five, though she still had some keepsakes of theirs. Her uncle, on her dad's side, raised her but they weren't very close. He didn't want a kid, and he also didn't know much about her mom's side of the family so she had to piece her family history together from what little she knew.

She wanted to be a novelist, and spent high school saving up enough money for a college with a good creative-writing program. But then her uncle got cancer so she quit school senior year to take care of him.

After he died she was left with no money, no family, and no diploma.

Her only good break was meeting my dad, Okeanus. She didn't speak much about him, and I didn't have any memories of him except for my tairo dreams. She always got a bit sad talking about him, I got the feeling she really missed him. She didn't have any pictures either.

Obviously they never got married. Okeanus-ari had Tethys-ran, though they weren't married either because of stuff . I could understand why he wouldn't want to remarry after her though.

Mom would only tell me he was rich and important (as a King would be), so their relationship was a secret. Then one day, he set sail across the Atlantic on some important journey and never came back.

When I was younger I'd wished he'd come back, that he'd sweep my mom away and take care of everything so she didn't have to worry anymore, and didn't have to stay with Gabe . But now that I knew who he was... well I understood why he couldn't.

Okeanus was a King. He was extremely busy and I was hardly his first kid, even if the rest were fully grown and immortal (as far as I knew). It made sense that he couldn't visit, though it still made me sad.

The myths spoke highly of him from what I'd found, and he was nice in our brief meetings.

I still wished I had a dad here though. I wished mom didn't have to marry Smelly Gabe and could just write her book and be happy.

She'd raised me all alone, Gabe didn't count, taking odd jobs and night classes to get her high school diploma. She'd never complained around me, nor gotten mad, not even once. I wasn't an easy kid, though I tried to stay out of trouble for her.