NEVER BE THE SAME . . . percy jackson

fifty eight: the trip back.

BROOKLYN FELT HERSELF sinking into ice cold water, her body too tired to swim up, and she thought, welp, I'm dead.

Which was probably why her mind brought her back to seeing red threads and nothing else around her but darkness and her own smoky body.

Well, here we are, she thought, faintly feeling her body sink, but for now she just felt . . . empty. Which was strange, because that wasn't a feeling that Brooklyn Hayward should be feeling.

But it was. She watched as her red threads started turning grayer and grayer.

If I die here, pathetically, she thought, whoever's listening . . . just make sure I leave a chaotic legacy.

And then someone was pulling her up. She looked up and saw that the red line around her pinky was connected to another one.

Her vision came back, and she was coughing water out, Percy next to her leaning over her body.

"Do you know how hard it is to save you when you turn into smoke?" he demanded, his hands grabbing her so he could make her dry. She let out a little sigh as her body became dry, slowly warming up. "I thought you were done with doing that."

"I don't choose when it happens!" Brooklyn argued, reaching out to half-heartedly swat at him. "It just happens, what am I supposed to do?"

"Oh, I don't know, maybe learn how to control it?"

"I don't even know what I'm doing because I don't remember it."

They mutually decided to wait for Hazel and Frank. So they stood there, bickering for several long minutes. Brooklyn had taken the eagle from Percy and was about to smack him with it when Hazel and Frank ran up to them.

"Hey," Percy said, as if he hadn't just been arguing with Brooklyn for the past twenty minutes.

"You're alive!" Frank marveled.

Percy frowned. "The fall? That was nothing. I fell twice that far from the St. Louis Arch."

"You did what?" Hazel asked.

"Never mind. The important thing was I didn't drown."

"Excuse you, I nearly did," Brooklyn scoffed. "Inconsiderate idiot."

Percy rolled his eyes, elbowing her.

"So the prophecy was incomplete!" Hazel grinned. "It probably said something like: The son of Neptune will drown a whole bunch of ghosts. And Brooks."

Percy shrugged. He was looking at Frank like he was miffed. "I got a bone to pick with you, Zhang. You can turn into an eagle? And a bear?"

"And an elephant," Hazel said proudly.

"So I wasn't hallucinating," Brooklyn muttered under her breath.

"An elephant." Percy shook his head in disbelief. "That's your family gift? You can change shape?"

Frank shuffled his feet. "Um . . . yeah. Periclymenus, my ancestor, the Argonaut — he could do that. He passed down the ability."

"And he got that gift from Poseidon," Percy said. "That's completely unfair. I can't turn into animals."

Frank stared at him. "Unfair? You can breathe underwater and blow up glaciers and summon freaking hurricanes — and it's unfair that I can be an elephant?"

Percy considered that. "Okay. I guess you got a point. But next time I say you're totally beast—"

"Just shut up," Frank said. "Please."