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If Piper were to make a list of all the things she wanted to do, a spa day with her siblings would not have made the cut. It wasn’t the worst thing she could imagine, obviously, but since the day Drew had scribbled the date onto the cabin calendar with that wide, knowing smirk, she’d kind of been dreading it. But she’d made a promise and she was determined to get Jason and Leo together, and that meant getting Drew’s help, and that meant hanging out with her siblings while they all slathered gunk on each other’s faces and gossiped over things she didn’t care about.
That did not mean she wouldn’t try to get out of it.
“Do I have to do this?” Piper whined, flopping herself over the end of Drew’s bed like a fish. “Because I really don’t want to. I can write you a song to serenade Nyssa with instead of this. That could be fun, right?”
Drew dug her foot under Piper’s ribs so she could kick her to the floor. “I don’t care if you go or not,” she said flatly. “If you’d rather sit in the Bunker making weird frog faces at your short friend, or whatever the hell it is you two do, be my guest.”
Piper sat up eagerly. “Really?”
“Sure. But if you want my help – and we both know you need my help – you’ll suck it up and behave normally for once in your life,” Drew finished. “Also, if you do bale, telling everyone is going to be your responsibility. You get to look Lacy in the eye and tell her you’d rather have your teeth pulled than hang out with her.”
Piper paused. “You told them I was coming?”
“No, Lacy told them you were coming,” Drew corrected. “Like I said, I couldn’t care less if you show up, but she’s been asking me if you were going to come every time we do this, and I’ve had to keep telling her no. She was over the moon when I told her you’d finally agreed to this one.”
“Oh.” Piper stared down at her hands. She thought about Lacy, who was one of the more reserved of her siblings giving Drew that big gap-toothed smile just because she thought she was going to get to hang out with Piper. Then she thought about that same gap-toothed grin falling in a look of disappointment when she realized that Piper wasn’t going to show up for her. Piper thought about all those times where she’d clutched a phone to her ear and stubbornly blinked back tears while she told her dad’s assistant that she understood that her dad was busy but that maybe he’d find time for her next weekend. She swallowed thickly. “Okay, I’ll come.”
“Good answer,” Drew drawled like she genuinely couldn’t care less if Piper showed up or not. “In that case, go to the Hermes cabin, and ask to talk to Goose. He’s got the snacks and supplies for tonight. If he asks you for money or any kind of payment, tell him to eat dirt and just leave without it. He knows the deal we have, but he will absolutely try to cheat you out of anything you have. Don’t let him.”
Piper nodded and got to her feet so that she could head over to the Hermes cabin. As promised, she was pointed immediately to someone who introduced himself as Goose, who had a magenta duffle bag that had DT embroidered on it in bright electric blue stuffed under his bed. As promised, he did try to insist that payment was due upon receipt of the bag, but he’d almost immediately backed down after hearing Drew’s second hand command to eat dirt. Piper almost wondered what had happened between the two of them to get that response, but she figured she’d be better off not asking, lest she wind up the one eating dirt.
Back in the Aphrodite cabin, she found Drew kicking a dozen bean bag chairs into a more aesthetic arrangement around the low tables and projector screen, and Piper cocked her head to the side. “Do you show, like, YouTube tutorials for make-up looks or something?”
Drew looked at her like she’d grown a second head. “What? No, dumbass. This is for watching movies.”
“I’m guessing we’re watching a rom-com?” Piper asked, trying to avoid wrinkling her nose.
“No idea,” Drew shrugged. “It’s Mitchell’s turn to pick.”
“Speaking of, where is everyone?”
“Valentina is doing clarinet lessons with the Apollo cabin, Aiden, Avery, and Amy are in the stables, and Mitchell and Lacy are down at the lake practicing for the canoe race this weekend,” Drew recited before she gave Piper a sour look. “Which you should know, seeing as you’re co-counselor.”
Piper ducked her head and refused to meet Drew’s eye. “Uh, yeah. You’re probably right.”
Surprisingly, Drew didn’t make a snide comment, she just ordered Piper around to get everything set up for the night. By the time she was satisfied, everyone but Mitchell and Lacy had shown up, and Piper was about ready to rip out her hair.
“Can we
please
be done now?” she demanded. Around her the other Aphrodite kids were nodding in agreement, which she smirked victoriously at. “We’ve got all the snacks and the chairs and the face gunk; what else could you want?”
“It’s not face gunk,” Avery protested with clear offense.
Before Piper or Drew could respond, the door was flung open and Lacy came bounding in, Mitchell hot on her heels. When her eyes fell on Piper, her face broke out in a wide, beaming smile. “Piper! You’re actually here!”
Within a second, Piper was half tackled in a hug and Lacy started talking a mile a minute, eagerly showing Piper everything she needed to know about Cabin 10 spa days. Piper looked up to Drew for any kind of help she could offer, but was only met with a keen smirk of smug satisfaction. Piper resisted the urge to flip her off.
Despite her initial misgivings about the whole ordeal, Piper had… well, she had fun. Lacy and Mitchell both were more than happy to guide her through the application of all the weird face gunk (”It’s a hydrating and cleansing facial mask, not gunk!” Avery shrieked) and Drew had arranged for Goose to get them just about every junk food imaginable and Mitchell had picked Brother Bear of all things to watch, and Piper most certainly didn’t cry at any point, even when Lacy started sniffling. At one point, Amy and Valentina had blindfolded Aiden and made him guess what Jelly Bean flavor they were feeding him, which was put to a stop when Drew had offered her own hand-crafted Jelly Bean, made from rolling some of the jellied face powder in some nacho cheese dust until it was solid. Valentina and Amy had nearly wet their pants laughing while Aiden gagged and tried to get rid of the flavor with Coca-Cola mouth washes while he cursed them in Ancient Greek. The whole event was a lot louder and messier and more chaotic than Piper had really anticipated it being, and she could probably count one hand the number of times she’d had this much fun.
Once everything had started to wind down, some of their group had decided to retreat to their beds for the night, but Piper, Lacy, and Avery’s all decided to camp out on the beanbag chairs instead.
With Avery’s loud snores filling their little living room, Piper felt Lacy cuddle closer to her side. “Piper?”
“Yeah, Lacy?”
“I’m really glad you decided to do spa day with us,” she admitted in her tiny little voice. “I had a lot of fun with you here.”
“Yeah?” Piper asked, her lips curled up in a gentle smile. “I had a lot of fun, too.”
“Do you think you’ll hang out with us some more?”
Piper paused for only a moment before she rolled over and squeezed Lacy up in a hug. “I’ll hang out with you for as long as you want me, Lacy.”
Lacy giggled quietly, and Piper couldn’t help but giggle along with her.