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Sally finds it when digging through the trash for a Kohl's receipt. The new shorts she got for Percy don’t fit, or maybe he just doesn’t like them. In either case, they were back on the kitchen table this morning, tags still on. Hopefully he’ll come with her when she returns them. Will pick out a new pair on his own. She doesn’t know what he wants anymore.
Underneath a wet plastic bag that once held frozen peas, she sees a crumpled up piece of notebook paper. It takes her a second to realize it’s not the waxy material she’s looking for and she starts unfolding it. Unmistakably is Percy’s handwriting in thick black pen marks on the page. Biting her lip, she smooths it out the rest of the way.
Reason’s I’m not like Luke:
1. Annabeth ch
2. I’m alive
3.
Annabeth’s name is barely legible against his harsh pen lines scribbling it out, and Sally can only guess at what the ch is meant to be. Chase? Changed? Chose?
She can’t decide what breaks her heart the most: that he didn’t get to a third point or that the only one he believed was that he didn’t die as prophesied.
A single choice shall end his days
Words that haunted Sally before she knew them.
Words that sit heavy in the pit of her stomach. In her womb.
Paul makes her at least return to the Prius. The NYPD is covering the streets, talking to dazed mortals and field dressing wounded demigods. Sally’s lost track of who fought against or with the now dissolved monsters. The trio of gods disappeared into the Empire State Building with the little boy who Sally remembers from Percy’s last birthday party. Her little boy is sixteen now. For how long?
She chokes down a sob, pressing a closed fist to her lips, and Paul wraps an arm around her from the driver's seat.
Maybe time is different on Olympus. Maybe, if he stays there, he will never die. Maybe she will never see him again and maybe that's the only way for him to survive.
Beside her, Paul's breath catches in his throat. He points weakly, shock straining his movements, and she follows his gaze up the tallest building in the city. Haloed in blue. Her baby, alive.
Her baby, reaching out for her.
Thing is, she's faced down that choice before. Having him safe or having him close.
She's defied that choice before.
There used to be a mirror hung in the short entrance to their apartment. She picked it up at an antique store on the way home from Montauk one summer, just after she started living with Gabriel.
It’s in the donation pile now, taken down after the last time she caught Percy staring into it. Checking the color of his eyes.
Their bathroom floods three times in three days before her super just leaves the wooden board covering the water line detached. He shows her where the emergency shut off on the toilet is. Gives her a little tool to twist off the main pipes. Tells her to stop calling.
When she asks, he tells her. Small of his back, opposite his belly button. Where the umbilical cord used to connect them.
She wonders if he was thinking of her, of her blessing, when he swam in the River. She doesn't ask because now she knows he will tell her.
His body can’t be injured, but it can ache. He spends hours in the bath right after the battle. His skin doesn’t get pruny, hasn’t since he was twelve.
He tries, hard as he can, to heal. She has to put the ambrosia in her closet, locked in the fireproof box with his birth certificate and social security card, so he doesn’t eat too much at once.
All the reminders that he’s still mortal hidden away.
He goes to camp, sometimes, on the weekends. Blackjack picks him up from school on Friday and drops him off at home Sunday afternoon.
He’s never happier or sadder for being there.
She’s wracked with guilt, every time he leaves. The one thing she fought against so fiercely. A betrayal to her past self. The one who wore scarves and long sleeves and too much concealer. The one who couldn’t have any friends. Who worked a shitty job and cooked dinner and cleaned the house under duress.
But the nights he’s gone are the only ones she can sleep.
The nights where he wakes up screaming are better than the ones he doesn’t.
On the nights he doesn’t, she knows he isn’t able to escape his memories.
“Ms. Jackson?”
Sally presses her phone to her ear, holding up a finger to her coworker Bill. He rolls his eyes, but shoos her to the back room of the bodega she picks up shifts at when writing is slow. Second week of classes. She should be used to these calls, but two years at Goode and Percy had been doing so well. No fights, minimal monster interference.
“Yes. Can I help you?” Please don't be expelled. Please don't be expelled. Please don't be-
“Your son, Percy, is in the nurse's office. Would you be able to pick him up?”
Sally frowns. “Of course.” He looked fine this morning, or, the same amount of sick he's looked since his birthday. And Paul wouldn't have let him leave the house if he thought Percy were bringing a bug to school. “I'll- Yes, I'll be there as soon as possible.” She almost asks to speak with him before choking back down the words.
Last thing she wants to do is summon a monster to him. They've been lucky so far, only an empousa has gotten onto school grounds in the last year. Mrs. O’Leary has been snatching up any other monster that tries to get through the gate.
Sally quickly apologizes to Bill, swings her purse over her shoulder, and runs out the door.
For once, the MTA running late is in her favor, as she slips onto the train just as it arrives, grabbing hold of a pole as it whisks away again. In the back of her car is an old cyclops, half asleep. She averts her gaze as if the Mist has an effect on her.
A flash of her drivers license and a walk through metal detectors and then she's let into the front office of the school. The secretary points her toward the door past Trisha in the attendance office, an extension number Sally has memorized. She steps through.
Percy looks miserable. His head is in his hands, elbows digging into his knees, palms pressed against his eyes. Paul is sitting beside him, which warms her heart, until he says, “Hi, Sally,” in a voice that communicates all the worry and tension in the room.
She gives him a kiss of the cheek as he ducks out of the office to relieve a para from covering his classroom.
Crouching in front of her son, she pushes some of his hair, greasier than normal, from his face and tries to recall the last time he showered. “What happened, baby?” she asks quietly, aware of the nurse behind her.
“Fell asleep in chemistry,” he mumbles, voice thick. “Dreamed about, um." He shakes his head, dropping his hands into his lap, but not looking up. “Dreamed about Uncle Z and Annabeth’s mom. Woke up, threw up all over my desk.”
She touches his arm gently. He flinches, but she persists, rubbing small circles with her thumb. For a while, she says nothing. Nothing to say, not around the nurse. She had CPS called on her already last year, asking about the scars on his arms that she can't explain.
“Can we go home?” Percy asks finally, glancing up with bloodshot eyes.
She assures him they can and the nurse agrees easily, says that she's already put in an excused absence request with Trisha. His backpack is on the floor and Sally puts it on her own shoulders.
Percy stands unsteadily, eyes half-lidded as he follows her out of the school. He gives Mrs. O'Leary’s front leg a near boneless hug when they get outside and she licks the top of his head excitedly. “Go back to camp girl,” he whispers. “Be back tomorrow.”
She barks and then leaps over him, disappearing into the shadows of the alley across the way.
They walk a couple blocks until Sally can flag down a taxi, remembering the cyclops on the subway. Percy doesn't ask, even though she knows he thinks about their budget as often as she does. Just leans into her side after they climb in, face pale in the early morning sun. “They wanted to kill me,” he mumbles. “Then they wanted to make me alive forever. I don't. I don't understand.”
Sally wraps an arm around him firmly, eyes shining. She opens her mouth, but there's nothing to say.
The bulb in their hallway night-light burns out after seven years of unwavering service. She buys a special blue tinted bulb off Amazon.
Percy smiles, when he sees it in action for the first time.
Makes it worth the five dollars in shipping.
He gets a book from the library, specially requested. It’s a thick hardcover, small text. She sees him squint at it for hours, to only get a couple pages further. Sometimes, he writes down names he doesn’t recognize. Mails them to Annabeth in the long letters he writes every six days—three days from New York to California, three days back.
He renews it twice, and returns it, unfinished, a week before finals.
The Complete World of Greek Mythology.
It takes her until Thanksgiving break to realize that he doesn't stay up late deep-diving into new hyperfixations.
No more fun facts about otters or the Titanic or skateboard culture or digging wells or New York City pet-ownership laws.
No more spark in his eye when he tells her about them.
He smiles like he doesn’t think it’s his own. Like it was him, not Luke, who swam in the River to baptize his body for Kronos’ cause.
He spends hours pacing their apartment, scowl on his face, pipes creaking. When Sally asks what he’s thinking about, he says, “the Oracle” or “Westport” or “Hermes” or “Thalia” or “Annabeth’s knife” or “the pit scorpion” or “disarming maneuvers” but not “Luke.”
Never Luke.
There’s a period of time where he won’t eat anything blue.
There’s a period of time following it where he won’t eat anything not blue.
Both beat the period of time where he won’t eat anything at all.
He says it like it’s no big deal.
Paul is reading the newspaper on his tablet, which he likes to do each morning before work but that he only manages to do the first week of the semester.
There's an article buried about ten pages in about how meteorologists still can't explain the weather phenomenon that caused the destruction of the Reservoir in Central Park. Paul relates this story because he likes it when meteorologists admit that they’re confused.
Percy looks up from his soggy, uneaten Cheerios. Says, "I made a hurricane there. On accident,” he adds, like that makes it better. Like he understands it’s too much power for a sixteen year old to have.
He takes a bite of his breakfast.
Frederick Chase's phone number is saved in her contacts. Sally’s not exactly sure how she got it, the hours after Percy emerged from that elevator still a blur.
They text irregularly about their lives. Sometimes, they call to play literal telephone when their children have something urgent to communicate.
She almost asks him for some of the Celestial bronze bullets Percy mentioned to her. To take pot shots at the hellhounds and giants that still lumber down their block weeks after the battle.
But she knows the statistics about teen suicide and having a gun in the house.
Annabeth figures out how to set up a three-way Iris message between her, Percy, and Grover. It’s the highlight of Sally’s year, when she hears him laugh for the first time.
He lights up sometimes, when she least expects it.
A sign up sheet in a gaming store for a Mythomagic tournament. An ad on TV for a World Wildlife Fund donation drive. A big jar of peanut butter with a spoon in it. A performance art piece out on a street corner. A walking tour pointing out the architectural history of New York.
He’ll see these things and spend hours talking about his friends and their interests. It’s almost like he’s a little kid again, jabbering about skateboarding or otters or why he should be allowed a dog.
Then she'll remember that he’s not talking about himself. That his own interests no longer excite him.
She finds him, as expected, in the bath. The door has had its lock removed since the beginning of the week, but she still knocks before entering. She hears him moving around in the water, fumbling for a towel, swearing under his breath when he realizes he forgot one.
She pushes the door open and it creaks loudly. He greatfully snatches the towel she extends toward him, forgetting that he could dry himself instantly, or maybe scared he'll go to far if he does it. Keeping her eyes straight ahead, she says, “Chiron called. He wanted you to know that Chris was successful in getting in contact with some of the demigods who joined Luke. They're going to make their way toward camp in the next day or so.”
Percy, who is hopping dangerously on one foot to pull on his sweatpants, stills. “Oh.” He shivers, even though their small bathroom traps heat regardless of the air conditioning being on.
The funeral pyre was almost a week ago but he still smells of smoke when he crashes into her arms. Grief, the unending tide it is, swells again and he's crying and clutching at her arms and the towel on his shoulders trembles and he's taller than her. How is her baby taller than her? How is he here? How is he alive?
Sally holds him close to her, mourning her little boy all over again. She had been so prepared for him to die, the terminal diagnosis of a single choice. When she first saw him step out of that ornate elevator, she'd finally allowed herself to believe her little boy was alive. When she first held him in her arms again, she'd finally allowed herself to realize her little boy was gone.
This young man, sobbing and shaking and weak, so so weak. Sally doesn't know him. But she will.
Percy won't go into Central Park anymore. Instead, he crosses the river, goes all the way to the Bronx just to skateboard.
By the end of September, seventeen Student of Concern forms are submitted by Percy's teachers.
A call from the school counselor makes it an even thirty on Halloween.
Forty-four, into Thanksgiving break.
Fifty-eight total, by the end of finals week.
It's around the tenth that Sally breaks. Calls Chiron, asks if there are any therapists for demigods.
There aren't.
It was her blessing, she thinks. Her blessing is why he survived the River. Her blessing is why he survived the war. The fight with Luke.
Her blessing is why he can’t get up in the mornings.
He scratches his arms, sometimes, when he's stressed. His skin doesn't break, but it does turn red and white where his nails dug in.
He can still feel pain.
He eats every meal like it's his last. Brings countless snacks to school, fills his locker with them. Even walking to the subway burns more energy than breakfast can provide.
It's better, she knows, than those first few weeks. Where she had to bribe him to eat anything at all.
His curse does not anticipate mortal life.
When he picks out some candy to buy at the store, he scans it like a battlefield.
When he's called on in class, he feels the gaze of an army on him.
When he bumps into someone on the street, he swivels around, ready to face the pedestrian in combat.
Paul buys him one of those water bottles that measures out how much you should drink over the course of a day. Eight ounces by eight AM, sixteen by nine. Thirty-two by one PM, refill, start again.
He promises to be honest, to not dump any out. At lunch, he shows the bottle to Paul, eating in his classroom because the clamor of the cafeteria is too overwhelming this semester.
At dinner, he shows it to Sally.
No prizes, no star chart, no big deal. Just a quick thank you and moving on.
Sally can't dwell on dehydration.
He can't eat the birthday cake she makes him, spends two full days sleeping in the bathroom so that when he wakes up nauseous he only has to lift his head to get to the toilet.
She makes cupcakes for him instead a week later, blue frosting, blue batter. One of their neighbors, Wayne, asks Sally for the recipe when they bump into each other in the stairwell. Says his daughter loved them, thanks her for thinking of them.
Paul holds her as she cries that night. Then Percy wakes up screaming from a nightmare and Sally holds her son instead.
Before the first monster attack, before everything got so complicated, Sally kept a meticulous scrapbook. Birth to age three, she has every birthday, every trip to the beach, every picnic at the park, every playdate with the other toddlers in their building.
On nights that she can't sleep, she flips through it. Traces the face of her baby.
On nights that she dreams, she can't open it. Too scared of who her baby may become.
It’s after the third nightmare in one night, the ash of his friends’ funeral shrouds still dusting his hair, that she collapses. On the floor outside his bedroom, door cracked open. Smoke detector battery discarded beside her.
She drops a lit match into an aluminum pot filled with a sleeve of fancy sesame crackers that Paul bought her for their anniversary.
Staring into the flickering flame, she silently begs Poseidon to take him to his palace. To care for him, to hold him, to do something, anything, to help their boy.
The fire spreads through the crackers faster than it should. Her first true love hearing her prayer. The tears turn to sobs as he responds. The living room window is cracked and through it comes a burst of cool, sea-salt air.
Brace yourself, it seems to say.
It's a mistake. She knows it from the moment she gets in the car, Paul insisting on driving the hour north even though he has finals to grade.
Five bucks on one of those online Yellow Pages and she can't even bring herself to feel bad about it. She knocks on the door of this isolated house, averting her eyes from the molding Beanie Babies in the yard.
“Luke, you're-” The woman fumbles. Her eyes flash green, then clear long enough for her to choke out, “Sally,” before she begins sobbing.
Sally grabs her as she collapses onto the steps of her too-big home.
They hold each other, for a long, long time. Weeping, mourning their boys. Mothers of the prophecy, sons connected by the electric blue thread of fate.
The sun is beginning to set when May, just barely, leans away. She wipes at her face and when Sally looks up through her own tears, she sees the grief has been replaced with confusion.
“Oh my,” she murmurs to herself. “I need to clean myself up. If my Luke were to see me like this…” She laughs and it's a sob.
Sally watches her retreat into the house. She swears she can hear someone else inside, just before the door closes. An older man.
Sally wonders if Poseidon would have come to Percy's funeral.
He carries around a frayed blue string. Stares at it for hours, still but for his foot pounding against the linoleum. She asks where he got it. Asks what it is.
He doesn't answer. Drops it on accident once, getting ready for school during the second week back in class and the third week of the semester. When Sally picks it up for him, she sees Percy as an infant, cradled in her arms in the empty hospital room. As a toddler, swimming at the Y. As a fifth grader, shouting at a boy in his class for making fun of his new friend. As a twelve year old, gazing at her own suspended body. As he is now, turning down immortality. As a college student, raising his hand in class to answer a question about Hercules. As a young father, chasing his child across Central Park. Swimming deep in the Atlantic, his father's palace in the distance. At Sally's funeral, dressed in all black, Annabeth at his side. At the edge of a river, wrinkles set deep in his face, heart beating slowly. At a funeral pyre, his body wrapped in a mottled blue shroud. Chiron and Poseidon, side by side.
Sorrow, grief, joy. Unending guilt. Unending love.
Sally drops the string.