percabeth ; the babysitter

chapter 25

The footsteps echoing through the gym returned, signaling Annabeth was back.

I turned around to find her lugging a large ladder. I quickly climbed down, stumbling a little at the bottom step, and rushed over to help her.

"Perce, it's fine."

I gripped the ladder anyway and she relaxed a bit. Both of us carried and set it up near mine.

"You really need to help me with these streamers," I confessed.

She studied them. "They look fine."

I forced a smile. "You're just trying to be nice."

"Fine," she climbed up the ladder. "I'll see what I can do."

;;;

"I think I'm done," Annabeth declared.

The final product was perfect, a long table with baby blue tablecloth draped delicately over with empty, soon-to-be-filled plates and bowls placed evenly across.

The wall behind had a small arch of balloons with silver and blue streamers cascading down.

There was a photobooth section near the entrance with more streamers hanging down the wall and paper flowers and balloons resting along the borders.

On the table in front rested a camera, various silly headbands and glasses laid scattered on the table, and a large "$5" sign rested on the side of the table, facing forward.

The rest of the gym was taken up by the huge retractable bleachers, decorated here and there, and the actual pool.

At the first steps of the bleachers sat a trash can, which normally held sports equipment, filled with pom poms.

We surprisingly finished buying and setting up everything 3 whole days before the actual meet on Saturday.

I looked over to find Annabeth sharing the same dreamy expression, admiring our hard work over the past few hours.

"Nice work."

"Couldn't have done it without you."

"What do you mean?" I asked. "I did nothing."

"You did do a lot of stuff." she said. "I told you what to do and you did most of the hanging. I'm too short for this."

I let out a laugh and patted her head.

She finally met my eyes and shot a glare at me. "I'm not short short."

"Whatever you say."

I noticed a mischievous glint in her eye as she said, "I bet my hands are larger than yours."

I grinned. "You think so?"

She grabbed my hand and pressed it on hers.

Her hand was weirdly cold, and large compared to her height.

"What?"

"I'm not done growing yet," she stated proudly.

"How do you know that?"

"My dad brought me to a radiologic technologist. My growth plates are still open."

"And I'm not asking what that means."

She laughed. "Yes you are. My swim club requested for me to get an x-ray to see if I can still grow and my results came positive."

"Nice," I muttered. "You better not grow taller than me."

"We'll see," she taunted. "In all seriousness, you're probably not done growing either. I'll just shorten the height gap between us a little bit."

"It's a large height gap."