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Annabeth was staring at Percy.
Not like that. No, this was purely for scientific purposes.
Ever since they’d returned from Mount Tam, where they'd both had the distinct pleasure of sampling Atlas's strength-training workout, Annabeth had begun to notice some strange new behaviors from her friend. All of a sudden, it seemed that he could influence her heart rate, her ability to breathe properly. She even sometimes had trouble sufficiently articulating her thoughts around him, which was particularly concerning.
When Annabeth first noticed these new physiological powers, she did what any normal fourteen-year-old girl would do: she began gathering data, determined to pinpoint the source of Percy’s new abilities. It had become a bit of an obsession. Her thoughts, usually fragmented and multitasking, had never been so singularly focused before. Even her architecture textbooks had started collecting dust. But the intense fixation was only because she was on a time crunch. In less than a week, she and Percy would both leave camp to finish out the school year, and she was determined to get to the bottom of this before they parted ways.
Percy seemed unaware of the effect he had on people, which only made Annabeth more concerned. She’d seen the damage he could do even when he didn’t have complete control over his powers—sometimes, that lack of control caused his powers to lash out and cause further destruction.
Annabeth turned the pages of the notebook that sat in front of her, reviewing the notes she’d taken so far. Every day, it seemed more likely that Percy would turn out to be the child of the Great Prophecy. Perhaps, as he neared age sixteen, his powers would exponentially grow. Or maybe, when he’d taken the sky from Artemis, she'd bestowed some of her godly power upon him. All Annabeth knew was that Percy’s psychosomatic powers gave him near-godlike abilities, which seemed dangerous, given the contents of the prophecy.
Across the rec room, Percy’s startlingly green eyes found Annabeth’s. His face lit up, and he patted the seat next to him. Come here, he mouthed. Her chest felt hollow. Annabeth shook her head and pointed at the notebook, trying to suggest that she was working on something important for school.
Section 2: Respiratory System, she thought to herself, trying to hold onto the funny feeling while she shuffled through the notebook. Subsection A: Lungs… She grabbed her pen and scribbled a few notes. Hollow feeling. Powers stronger with eye contact.
Satisfied with her report, she closed the notebook and stood up. This would be the perfect amount of information to make her case. She headed for the arts and crafts center, where she’d called for an emergency meeting with the year-rounders who knew Percy best.
When she reached her destination, Grover was already there, chowing down on a bag of Cool Ranch Doritos. Silena Beauregard sat at one of the paint-splattered tables, weaving what appeared to be an elaborate choker necklace and chatting with Clarisse LaRue. Clarisse nodded along, abnormally quiet. She seemed almost… fragile. Annabeth wondered what had happened on Clarisse’s most recent mission. She’d heard the rumors about Chris Rodriguez returning from the labyrinth, but Annabeth wouldn’t believe it until she saw it. Either way, Clarisse must have experienced something harrowing in that maze.
Charles Beckendorf entered behind Annabeth, and Silena immediately sat up straighter. “Oh!” She pushed a strand of hair behind her ear. “Hi, Charlie.”
“Silena!” Beckendorf smiled as if he’d just won the lottery. “Hey!” He sat beside Silena and asked about her necklace, blushing when she took his hand to demonstrate her weaving technique.
Finally, Travis and Connor from the Hermes cabin entered.
“Aren’t Hermes kids supposed to be fast?” Annabeth asked with mock derision.
“Not when Mr. D left his underwear out to dry in sub-zero temperatures,” Travis answered.
“Priorities,” Connor nodded.
Annabeth decided not to ask what they had done with the camp director’s frozen boxers. She had more important matters to attend to.
Annabeth called the meeting to order by slamming her notebook onto the table. She opened it to a page with what appeared to be the scribblings of a maniac-- bulleted lists, detailed charts, and meandering arrows centered around a single word: PERCY. It looked a bit like the diary of a teen girl with her first crush, but the hearts and XOXOs that one might expect were replaced with mathematical equations and chemical formulas. The other demigods eyed the page quizzically.
“I’ve called you all here today because I’m worried that Percy is becoming too powerful,” Annabeth announced.
“Percy?” Travis raised an eyebrow. “The same Percy who spent three hours in the mess hall yesterday trying to balance a spoon on his nose?”
“Yes, that Percy, and this is serious,” she scolded. Her thoughts kept returning to that big prophecy—the one that said Percy would make a decision that would either save or destroy Olympus. “He has these… new powers. Haven’t you noticed?”
“New powers?” At least Grover sounded concerned. He furrowed his brow in concentration and inhaled a handful of Doritos. “Like what?”
“Like… you know how, if you hang around him for too long, you start to get dizzy? I’ve been thinking about it, and dizziness is linked to the inner ear. The inner ear relies on fluid to maintain your sense of balance. I think that, as a son of Poseidon, Percy might… what?”
Her ramblings had been met with six blank stares. Beckendorf shrugged. “I just haven’t noticed anything like that around Percy.”
“Me neither,” Connor agreed.
Grover shook his head.
Annabeth couldn’t see how that was possible. It had happened just the other day, when Percy had fallen victim to a prank by some of the younger campers. Okay. Very funny, guys, he'd said, chuckling as he entered and exited his cabin to empty his boots of pegasus feed. His laugh was a lilting thing, captivating and resonant. It picked her up off the ground and sent her heart into a series of backflips. She’d never noticed that before. But this time, as she watched Percy cackle and bombard the younger campers with bits of corn and dried fruit, the lightheadedness was severe enough that she'd had to sit down.
“Okay, okay,” she said, regathering her forces. “What about temperature? Percy walks into a room, and it immediately gets, like, super hot.”
Silena was smiling so big that her perfect, white teeth were almost blinding. “No, I can’t say I've experienced that,” she giggled. Annabeth tried not to let that bother her. Silena always got weirdly giddy when Annabeth brought up Percy.
Annabeth turned to the next page in her notebook, revealing a detailed account of the previous week’s weather. “Well, typically, the manipulation of temperature would seem like a power reserved for a child of Apollo, but Poseidon is the god of storms, so it stands to reason that Percy might have control over atmospheric pressure and humidity.”
Again, a specific incident sprang to mind. Yesterday, a group of campers had gone for a hike on the hillier end of camp. She and Percy lagged behind the group, recounting the events of that brutal encounter on Mount Tam. He walked so near to her that their arms sometimes brushed up against one another. Even in the chill of early January, it seemed that heat radiated off his body and into hers. I’m just happy you’re back, he’d said. I can’t imagine what I’d do without you. And the heat inside her flared hotter than Hephaestus’s forge.
The crunch of Cool Ranch Doritos pulled Annabeth back to the present. “Sorry, Annabeth,” Grover said. “I just… don’t think any of us have noticed those things.”
“Alright,” Annabeth sighed, but she wasn’t ready to admit defeat. “Let’s talk blood pressure, then. Sometimes, I swear he can control your heart rate.”
Silena squealed, then covered her mouth.
Annabeth ignored her. “Of course, I don’t have to explain to you guys how blood flow relates to water…”
“So, what?” Connor asked. “He’s like Katara now? Blood-bending? I’m not buying it.”
“You know Avatar’s just a TV show, right, Annabeth?” Travis said.
“Of course I know it’s a TV show. But this is real life, and humans are sixty percent water,” Annabeth insisted. “If Percy can control the fluid in people’s inner ears, their blood… that’s a terrifying amount of power. An Olympus-destroying amount of power,” she added pointedly.
As Annabeth theorized, Travis and Connor exchanged a mischievous look. “You’re right…” Travis said slowly, as if realization were finally dawning on him. Annabeth thanked the gods—someone was starting to understand. “And… and whenever he’s around, your knees get all wobbly?”
“Yes!” Annabeth cried. “I actually have a theory about cartilage…” She scrambled to find the right page in her notebook.
“Gods,” Clarisse spoke up for the first time. “For a child of Athena, you can be really dense.”
“Oh, oh!” Connor interjected before Annabeth could respond. “And when he smiles, the only thing you can think about is how much you want to hold his hand?” He swooned exaggeratedly.
“And give him a little kiss?” Travis added, complete with pursed lips.
Yes, she thought. “No!” she said. Her cheeks were burning. “No, that’s not what… This isn’t… This is serious, guys! I’m genuinely worried about Percy.”
“You’re right. We’re sorry,” Grover said, though he also wore a smile so saccharine that Annabeth had to look away.
“Are there any other… new abilities?” Beckendorf asked. Even he seemed skeptical.
“As a matter of fact, there are,” Annabeth confirmed with renewed confidence. She turned a few pages to present her pivotal point. If anything would convince them of the gravity of the situation, it was this. “I think he can control people’s breathing. Not in any major way… yet. But surely you’ve noticed that he can make your lungs sort of… constrict. Like you’re a hundred feet underwater. And it’s only in specific situations, usually when he’s really in the zone.”
Like a week ago, she remembered. The camp had woken up to a fresh blanket of snow and spent the entire morning scheming for an all-out snowball war. Teams were assigned, rules were put in place, boundaries were declared. After nearly an hour of clattering swords and hurling snowballs, she and Percy found themselves huddled in Annabeth’s immaculately constructed snow fort, being pursued by the Hermes and Ares cabins. You idiot, she’d said. Why did you egg them on like that? Now we’re cornered.
I wouldn’t be so sure about that, Wise Girl. He sat up on his knees and peered over the wall of the fort. The Hermes and Ares cabins raced toward them through a pristine field of snow. Wait for it… he’d whispered. As the other team drew closer, Annabeth cursed the snow. Invisibility was useless in an environment where footprints could be so easily spotted. When their opponents were about twenty yards away, the ground beneath them began to quake. Snow shifted under their feet, and the groan of cracking ice echoed throughout the surrounding woods. Of course. The creek.
Clarisse swore as the creek exploded beneath her. A wave of chilly water sent chunks of ice, clouds of snow, and six irate demigods into the air. The opposing team landed face-first in the snow, grumbling and staggering back to their feet. Percy stood up before Annabeth could, strikingly confident. As he drew Riptide and readied himself to go hand-to-hand with the other team, he pushed back his jet black hair, putting those vibrant green eyes on full display. Yes, her lungs had felt quite tight in that moment.
“Annabeth.” Silena stepped closer to her. Her eyes twinkled, and she wore a sympathetic smile as she lowered her voice to a whisper. “It’s okay if you have a crush on Percy.”
Travis and Connor burst out laughing. Grover avoided eye contact by upending the Doritos bag and pouring the crumbs into his mouth. Suddenly, it felt like Percy was in the room with her. Her face and neck were on fire, she felt lightheaded, her heart was pounding, and she could barely breathe.
“Oh my gods, Silena!” Annabeth cried, mortified. “No! I don’t have…” She couldn’t even say it. “No.”
“Whatever you say,” Connor sang. He and his brother were still cackling.
“What’s so funny?” Annabeth tried for a menacing scowl. It was hard to sound intimidating when she felt so flustered, so weak, so… weird.
“Nothing,” Travis said. “It’s just kiiiind of strange how Percy’s new powers only seem to affect you.”
“And how they started appearing right after he went off and became your knight in shining armor,” Connor added.
Annabeth clenched her fists. “He is not my—”
Travis wouldn’t let her finish. “And how they just so happen to be the same sort of things that happen when—” His mouth suddenly became a straight line, his eyes wide. Beside him, Connor suppressed laughter, snorting into his hand.
“What now?” Annabeth demanded. She was tired of her friends turning everything into a joke. She should never have even reached out to them. She should have just gone straight to—
“Hey, guys.” The familiar voice behind her made her racing heart stop entirely. Percy leaned around Annabeth’s shoulder and peered at the table. “What are we talking about?”
Annabeth slammed the notebook shut and shoved Percy away from her. “Mind your own business, Seaweed Brain.”
Percy looked hurt, and Annabeth took note of a new power he’d gained over her: the ability to make her stomach sink with guilt. A section of his hair stood on end, probably messed up by the hood of his jacket. It was kind of adorable, which ticked her off.
“Okay, geez.” Percy held his hands up defensively. “I just thought I’d see if you guys wanted to play Spoons. They’re starting a tournament in the Big House.”
“Well, I don’t,” Annabeth snapped. “I’m going back to my cabin.”
She left the arts and crafts center with her notebook tucked under her arm. Week-old snow crunched beneath her feet as she walked away, but the biting wind carried the group’s conversation to her ears. “What’s her deal?” she heard Percy mutter.
“Don’t worry about it,” Grover said, and Annabeth could hear that he was smiling. “You’ll find out eventually.”