Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
chapter forty-two ☄︎. *. ⋆
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
WE LEFT FOR THE QUEST the next morning. I didn't have many people to say bye to, seeing as all of my friends were pretty well-occupied—Will and my siblings being at home, Percy no longer being a 'friend,' Annabeth being.. well, missing. That left Thalia and Connor, I supposed, and Thalia was coming on the quest with me anyways.
No longer coming on the quest, though, was Phoebe, Zoë's tracker that she'd insisted on coming along with us. The shirt she'd been given by Travis and Connor had been laced with centaur blood. I shuddered to think where they'd gotten such a magical item, but they insisted it was from a healthy centaur blood drive. I wanted to believe them, just for my own sanity.
According to the doctor (me), Phoebe would be stuck in bed for at least two weeks with horrible hives. Centaur's blood is like acid. Phoebe was lucky she didn't die. Though now that I think about it, the Stolls don't usually aim for fatal with their pranks. More often than not, their tricks are just bad enough to make your life miserable for a few weeks. I guess they knew what they were doing.
Either way, we couldn't afford to wait two weeks for Phoebe to heal. Zoë and I argued for a few minutes the next morning over whether or not we needed to bring someone else, but she insisted that this could qualify as 'losing someone in the land without rain,' because the magic borders protected Camp Half-Blood from nasty weather. I knew she was wrong, but it was seven in the morning and I barely had enough energy to be speaking, much less arguing with an immortal maiden.
We took a white van, three of us crammed into the back while Zoë drove like a maniac and Thalia criticized her from the front seat. I sat between Grover and Bianca. This was not by choice, by the way—Zoë, cheerful as ever, had forced us all into the back of the van, insisting that we were already running out of time and could not waste any more of it by arguing over seating arrangements. I figured I'd be bored for most of the ride, but Bianca was nice company. She was easy to keep a conversation with. Once or twice, Grover would try to throw in a word or two, but eventually he gave up and soon began snoring.
Some hours later, we stopped at a gas station in Maryland. Yes, I said Maryland. Zoë drove like a maniac. We got halfway across the coast within a few hours because of her. I wondered what would have happened if she got pulled over—would the cop arrest her? It wasn't like she was doing anything illegal, I supposed. She was at least sixteen.
When I came out of the bathroom of the rest stop, Thalia was holding a cup of cheap hot chocolate for me. I took it, offering her a muttered 'thanks' as she argued with Zoë.
"Yo, Thalia." I interrupted them as we left the store, tugging her sleeve. "Is this made with milk or water?"
She rolled her eyes. "Lactose intolerant, my ass," she grumbled, taking the paper cup from me. I took that as milk. "Anyways, Zoë, Grover said we have to go to D.C. He did the acorn-tracking-thing."
