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I already know what you're going to say, and in my defense, none of this would have happened if Meg had just admitted that the Beatles made good music. I believe any reasonable person would agree with me on this. Which means they would also absolve me completely of responsibility for any extreme acrobatics that might or might not have been performed by the sun yesterday in the greater Ohio area. Also, the temporary sunset at noon. Equally not my fault, I assure you.
Perhaps I should back up a little. This all started yesterday morning. It was a normal day at first, by my standards. I dropped in on Camp Half-Blood in the morning to help Chiron with archery instruction. I chatted with my children for a bit, about Kayla's Olympic prospects (looking very good, by the way), Austin's new saxophone piece on YouTube (10 million views! He's quite the Internet celebrity these days), and Will's thoughts on New Rome University vs. Johns Hopkins for a pre-med track (he still has a fair amount of time before he needs to fill out those college applications, but it's always good to be prepared). I'm so proud of them, and I could keep gushing for several more paragraphs. But as much as I love my kids, they aren't part of this tale of sun chariot incompetence. No, that is all my friend Meg McCaffrey, daughter of Demeter and all around epitome of early teenagerhood.
I visited Meg in the morning that day, too. (As a god, I'm fully capable of being in more than one place at once, but Meg always whines about that causing me to be "distracted" and "more annoying than usual," even though the time that orchard burnt down was a misunderstanding and totally unrelated to half of my essence being elsewhere. So I popped over to Palm Springs right after Camp Half-Blood instead of splitting in two, but thanks to you mortals and your timezones, it was basically the same idea.) I should have known things were going to end badly as soon as I saw the gleam in Meg's eyes when she greeted me in Aeithales's garden. But alas, my powers of prophecy must have failed me, for I proceeded blindly forward into the jaws of the beast. The beast in this case being Meg's brilliant idea of the day.
After she and I exchanged pleasantries ("Hi, dummy" and "Hello to you, too, my poor, puberty-stricken friend," respectively), the gleam in Meg's eyes heightened to a sparkle. An obvious red flag, but I naively assumed she was simply happy to see me, her best and most handsome friend.
"I have a good idea," Meg announced, smiling at me.
Blissfully unaware of the events that would be set into motion by this "good idea," I smiled back. "And what's that?"
"You know your sun chariot thing?"
"The 'sun chariot thing' I drive across the sky every single day to bring light and, dare I say life, to this great nation?"
"Yeah, that one," Meg clarified.
"I'm familiar, yes," I said, wondering where exactly she was going with this.
"You should teach me how to drive it," Meg said casually.
I frowned. "I'm not sure that would be wise. The last time I let a teenager drive the sun chariot, we ended up evaporating a large portion of Camp Half-Blood's canoe lake. Although I suppose you are around driving age... They allow you to drive at age 14 in California, right?"
"Uh huh," Meg agreed, nodding sagely. (I now know this was a lie. Tragically, even after the Thalia sun bus incident, I had neglected to brush up on my knowledge of United States driving legislation. Though honestly, I don't think a fifteen-and-a-half-year-old Meg would be any better at operating a moving vehicle.)
"Hm," I said, considering. I'd realized some time after the sun bus crash that Thalia had only driven so chaotically because of her fear of heights and the pressure of not accidentally killing a bus full of people. If it were just me and Meg, who, as far as I was aware, wasn't terrified of being in the sky, and if I put the sun chariot in Smart car mode, perhaps…
"All right, Meg, are you sure you'll be able to handle this? It's quite a big responsibility, driving the sun. I want to make sure you know what you're signing up for."
"Yeah," Meg said, laconic as always.
"And you're sure you want to do this today? You don't want to practice driving something else first? A vehicle that wouldn't legally be considered a weapon of mass destruction, perhaps?" As you can see, dear reader, I gave Meg every opportunity to let this idea go gracefully. And yet.
"You worry too much," Meg told me, rolling her eyes in classic teenager fashion. "Since when are you a worrier?"
A worrier? Oh gods, this was horrible! I was supposed to be the life of the party, not the wet blanket! If I wasn't careful, I was going to turn into Athena, aka Olympus's resident party pooper. I was morally obligated to throw caution to the wind and regain my fun-loving reputation before I had another identity crisis. (Been there, done that, got the T-shirt. I've reached my crisis quota for the millennia, thank you very much.)
"I'm not a worrier!" I protested. "I can't believe you'd say that to me. Me!"
Meg raised an eyebrow. "Prove it."
"Fine! You win." I offered her my arm, as if to request a dance from a lady. (Not that I would ever describe Meg as a "lady," but you get the idea.) "Grab on, and let's get this show on the road. I mean, in the sky."
—
Fortunately, the sliver of me that had been driving the sun chariot previously had the foresight to switch it to Smart car mode before we appeared in it. Otherwise, Meg probably would have fallen out of the chariot while attempting to pet my sun horses (you may think that's an unkind exaggeration, but trust me, she's an incorrigible horse girl). As it was, I made Meg materialize in the passenger seat and took the wheel myself for the time being. (And yes, I put seatbelts on both of us. I know, I know, that isn't exactly "throwing caution to the wind," but car safety is no joke! So don't go around telling the officer that pulls you over something like I don't have to wear a seatbelt because Apollo, god of the sun, doesn't, and his car is way more dangerous than this one. You will get a ticket.)
Meg immediately pressed her face against the window like a kid at the zoo, probably getting an assortment of gross puberty face oils all over the glass.
"Woah," she said as she took in the bird's eye view of—wherever the Hades we were flying over right now. Pittsburgh, I think. "Cool!"
I'll admit, I preened a little at that. See, Meg, I am cool and fun and not Athena II. I didn't actually say that, but I think it was implied by my smirk. (Though I'm not sure Meg actually saw it, as she was too busy smearing forehead-prints all over my nice clean window.)
"Isn't it?" I agreed loftily.
"Can't believe you've never taken me with you before," Meg accused, finally peeling her face off the window to glare at me.
"Hey, you never asked!"
"Still," she said emphatically.
Teenagers. I resisted the urge to sigh obnoxiously. "Okay, do you want to learn to drive this or not?"
"Duh. But is your car always this lame? I thought it was supposed to be a Master Oggie or whatever."
I experienced a nearly full-body shudder at Meg's horrifying dearth of car knowledge. "A Maserati, yes, if I don't have it in classic chariot form. Which I'll have you know is the complete opposite of 'lame.' But a Smart car is far less, um, destructive, in case we crash."
"I'm not going to crash," Meg argued, crossing her arms petulantly. She seemed offended that I'd even mentioned the possibility, despite the fact that it was entirely plausible and the end result of the last time a teenager had driven my car. Sue me for being prepared. (Oh no, did this count as channeling Old Gray Eyes again?)
"Tell you what," I consoled her, "if you do not, in fact, crash the Smart sun car today, perhaps next time I'll let you drive it in Maserati Spyder mode."
"Hmph," said Meg. The bargain seemed to meet her exacting standards, though, because she uncrossed her arms and turned towards me attentively (well, as attentive as a Meg can be).
"All right, then. Let's begin," I said, flourishing with one of my hands and leaving the other on the steering wheel for safety reasons.
I won't bore you with the details of Meg's sun car driving lesson. Suffice it to say, I taught her the basics. Gas pedal on the right makes car go up and fast. Brake on the left makes it go slow and down. Wheel makes it turn. Don't worry about the gearshift; it's an automatic and I'll be taking over for parking. Button over there on the dashboard should not be touched under any circumstances except in a dire emergency.
"Why not?" Meg asked, reaching for it.
I slapped her hand down without taking my eyes off the sky. "Did you miss where I said not to touch, Meg?"
"How else am I supposed to know what it does if you won't tell me?"
I suppose she did have a point. I sighed. "Okay, fine. It's the emergency eject button. For if the car gets too badly damaged to fly or we go into an uncontrollable fall for whatever reason. And if that, gods forbid, happens to occur, I will be the one pressing the button. So you can keep your sticky little fingers far, far away."
I saw Meg stick her tongue out at me like a lizard from the corner of my eye and magnanimously ignored it.
"Ugh, fine," she said, once it was clear she wasn't going to get a fun reaction out of me.
"Good. I'm glad we got that settled. Now, are you ready to give it a try?"
"Yup." Meg sounded far less nervous than I'd been the first time I'd driven the sun chariot. Which, honestly, tracked. Meg was too fearless for her own good sometimes. Hopefully this would not be one of those times.
"All right. I'm going to switch our seats in 3, 2, 1—" I snapped my fingers.
For the first few minutes, everything was mostly fine. After a small dip as she found the gas pedal (on her second try), Meg was able to bring the car back up to an easy cruising altitude, heading due west over Ohio. My spine relaxed from ramrod straight to bicurious.
"You're doing great!" I told her. "Keep those hands at 9 and 3, but you can unclench them a bit or they're going to cramp."
Meg nodded and loosened her grip on the steering wheel a smidge. She had the same look of intense concentration on her face that she got while dual wielding the new sica blades I'd given her or coaxing an entire orchard of trees into bloom all at the same time. Perhaps she wasn't having quite as much fun driving as she thought she'd have. I wracked my brain for a way to lighten the mood.
"Music?" was of course my first suggestion. When I drove, I usually had either the radio or one of my playlists on Spotify blasting (and yes, of course I spring for Premium—maybe it's a little expensive but the ads on the free version are sooo obnoxious they make me want to smite one of the cities I'm flying over). I'd refrained from that today so there wouldn't be any distractions while I was trying to teach Meg, but maybe some music would give us more of a fun and funky fresh atmosphere?
"What?" Meg asked, now looking bemused instead of intense.
"Do you want to listen to music?" I repeated in a slightly less cryptic fashion.
"Oh. Yeah, I guess."
Well, that wasn't a very encouraging answer. In my completely unbiased opinion, though, music enhances pretty much any experience (no matter what certain sullen teenagers who shall not be named might feel about it). Plus, this was my car.
I summoned my phone and flicked through Spotify for a few moments before a song caught my eye. Perfect.
The opening guitar refrain of the Beatles' "Here Comes The Sun" washed pleasantly over us from the car's speakers.
Meg had the gall to groan. "This song sucks. It's all old and stuff."
My jaw dropped. "It's a classic!"
"Old and not catchy!" Meg proclaimed, far too gleefully. She turned to smirk at me in triumph as if she'd already won the debate.
"How are we even friends?" I wailed.
"I dunno, not my fault you have bad taste in music."
"How dare you! I'm the god of music—my taste is good by definition!"
"Maybe it was good like, a hundred years ago. Not anymore."
"'Here Comes The Sun' was released in 1969, you heathen! And everybody likes the Beatles!"
"Nah. Just you."
I squeezed my eyes shut briefly in an attempt to reign in my Beatles slander-induced rage enough to not explode a teenager. When I opened them, I was ready to explain to Meg in calm, rational terms why she was so utterly wrong about this. But instead, my words dried on my tongue and my stomach dropped several thousand feet in terror at the view out the front windshield.
"BRAKE!" I screamed as the nose of the incoming airplane loomed 200, 100, 50 feet from our bumper.
Meg, for once, obeyed without question. She stomped the brakes, and we careened downwards, missing the plane by inches. We slammed forward in our seats, then backwards (I'm pretty sure I heard my divine ribs crack). As we fell, faster and faster, the car rattled ominously under the strain like a maraca in a hurricane.
"Pull up!" I yelled at Meg over the groaning of metal and rushing of wind and George Harrison crooning cheerfully about the sun.
"I—can't!" she shouted back, her face already red from the pressure. "Can't—reach—pedal!"
The ground yawned before us, a patchwork quilt of green and brown. At least we probably won't destroy a bunch of mortals, I thought distantly.
The forces of freefall must have been scrambling my brain, because it took me almost a second before the look of abject fear in Meg's eyes snapped me back to reality.
"Brace yourself!" I warned Meg. And then I hit the emergency eject button.
Meg will probably exaggerate and say I let her fall for, like, ten seconds before I caught her in the claws of my giant crow form. The truth is that I swooped down and grabbed her almost immediately. She's just being dramatic (I have no idea where she could have learned that from).
We hovered over the fields of Ohio and watched from several hundred feet up as the sun Smart car died a fiery, golden death in the middle of some unfortunate farmer's corn crops.
I let out probably the most mournful caw ever heard. Thankfully crows aren't really physically capable of crying, or I probably would have been sobbing super embarrassingly.
I spent another few seconds watching the horrible smoke cloud drift upwards, hiding the remains of my poor crumpled chariot from view. Then, I teleported us both down to Earth.
Meg stood next to me (I had put myself back in human form, in case you were wondering), staring at the ground somewhat contritely. She seemed to have mostly bounced back from the terror she'd experienced a few minutes ago, but she wouldn't look me in the eyes.
"Oops," she muttered to a nearby cornstalk. The cornstalk did not reply, though it did smolder merrily.
I put my face in my hands so I didn’t have to see the fiery remains of my chariot. "Oh gods, my insurance premiums are going to go through the roof," I moaned. "This is coming out of your allowance, Meg."
"Next time I'll play my music and this won't happen."
I yanked my hands away from my face at the speed of sound. "Meg, there is no next time. Meg, are you listening? You are not driving my car again. Meg!"
Meg smiled serenely. "Can't wait. Anyway, see ya." And with that, she set off through the cornfield, in the opposite direction of the wreck.
"Meg, we're in the middle of Ohio somewhere!" I called after her uselessly. "Where in Olympus's name are you going?"
Naturally, she ignored me.
I let out a string of curses that would have made my mother blush, jogged after her, and wondered miserably how in Tartarus I was going to explain this one to Hephaestus.