It takes strength and courage to bring dessert to my mom’s for dinner. My mom is a famously good dessert maker. Most people would be too nervous to bake anything for fear it wouldn’t hold up to comparison. Fortunately, Annabeth is both strong and courageous, which meant I got cupcakes.
“Sweetheart, these look amazing!” my mom said, accepting a tray of Annabeth’s latest creations.
Annabeth teared up with gratitude. I have seen her shrug off compliments from gods, but my mom’s praise really got to her. I guess it was because she’d grown up with Athena as her distant maternal figure.
Sometimes I wondered if Annabeth was open to the idea of marrying me someday only because she was excited about getting Sally Jackson-Blofis as her mother-in-law. Honestly, I couldn’t blame her.
Annabeth had started baking because she literally ran out of classes she needed to take for graduation. Despite having the same crazy demigod problems I did, despite having a miserable junior year while I was missing in action, despite being just as dyslexic and ADHD as I was, she had accumulated so many advanced-placement courses and made such good grades that the counselor at SODNYC suggested Annabeth just take a study hall for her seventh course.
Me, I would have said, Yes, please, and can I have a pillow with that?
But coasting was not in Annabeth’s nature. She’d signed up for the elective Beginning Culinary Design. So far, she’d only been working on cupcakes (which was totally cool with me), but I was pretty sure by the end
of the year she’d be constructing bridges and skyscrapers out of angel food cake.
One thing Annabeth didn’t do, however, was make blue food. That was kind of an inside joke between my mom and me. Annabeth considered it sacred and off-limits. Her cupcakes today were green with purple sprinkles, for reasons known only to her.
While she and my mom chatted about frosting, I checked in with my stepdad, Paul, who was clearing stacks of student essays off the dining table. The dude worked nonstop, I swear. It almost made me feel bad I didn’t put more effort into my own homework. Almost.
“Hey, Paul.” I gave him a fist bump.
“Beat any good monsters lately?” he asked. “You know. Just the usual.”
Paul chuckled. He was still in his work clothes: blue dress shirt, faded jeans, wildly colored tie with pictures of books on it. His gray-flecked hair had gotten grayer and fleckier over the last few years, and I tried not to think it was my fault. He worried for me, knowing my demigod history. He worried for my mom worrying for me. He was a great guy. I just preferred to think the teaching job was aging him rather than the constant life-and-death fights I went through. I tried to keep the worst details to myself, but Paul knew. As much as any mortal could, he had seen my world up close and personal during the Battle of Manhattan.
Tonight, though, he seemed tenser than usual. You would never be able to tell if you didn’t know him, but he did this thing where he tapped his fingertips to his thumb when he was nervous, like he was trying to pinch a string that he couldn’t quite find.
“Going okay?” I asked him.
“Me?” He smiled. “No monster fights this week. Unless you count freshman essays on Romeo and Juliet. Help me set the table?”
There was something else going on, but I decided not to push. I set places for four. In the kitchen, garlic bread was toasting. Lasagna was bubbling in the oven. Annabeth was laughing about something my mom said, and the way they both grinned in my direction, I figured it had to do with me. Annabeth had already seen my baby pictures, so I wasn’t worried about what they were saying. I had no dignity left. Annabeth and I were still together. I figured that was good enough.
Some Bob Dylan vinyl was playing on Paul’s turntable, soft enough to be background music, but with Dylan’s voice, you can never quite ignore him. Not my jam, but I can deal with it. Paul says Dylan was one of the best twentieth-century poets. I mean, the guy can rhyme leaders with parking meters. I guess that’s something?
Once we were all seated, passing around the salad, I noticed something else strange. My mom was drinking sparkling water.
She wasn’t a big drinker, but she usually had one glass of red wine with dinner.
“No vino?” I asked her.
She shook her head, her eyes twinkling like she was still thinking about a private joke. “No. Actually, I wanted to talk to you about that.”
“About wine?”
“Ahem,” Paul coughed. He was now pinching with both hands, looking for that invisible string. Why so edgy?
Annabeth gave me a look. Seriously, Seaweed Brain? You don’t get
it?
Maybe my mom had told her something in the kitchen, or maybe
Annabeth had just figured out what was going on by herself. She notices things. Being with her is like being with somebody who’s watching the same movie, but fifteen minutes ahead of where you are.
“Not about wine,” my mom said. “More about why I’m not drinking it tonight. But first, I want to be clear that this should not affect your plans, Percy. I don’t want it to distract you from everything you’ve got going on . . . especially getting into New Rome University.”
My mouth dried up. My first thought was, Oh, gods, she’s got some terrible disease.
“Mom, I—I live in distracted. It’s my zip code. Whatever is wrong, I want to help.”
“Oh, sweetheart.” She reached across the table and took my hand. “Nothing’s wrong. I’m pregnant.”
She could have hit me upside the head with a rainbow staff and the message would have stunned me less.
“Pregnant . . .” I repeated.
She gave me a brave smile—the same kind she used to give me when she found me a new school after I got kicked out of the last one. Surprise!
“Like . . . you and Paul.”
I looked at my stepdad, who hadn’t touched his lasagna. I realized everybody at the table was holding their breath. Maybe they were afraid I would make all the plumbing in the apartment building explode. Which, for the record, I only did that one time.
“Yes, me and Paul.” My mom took his hand. I wondered if they’d had some awkward conversations about whether it was safe to have a human child after having a demigod. After me.
Annabeth was watching me carefully, gauging my reaction. Concerned for me? Concerned for Paul and my mom?
A warm feeling washed over me. I started to grin. “That is awesome.”
The tension broke, which was a lot better than the pipes breaking. I jumped out of my chair and hugged Paul because he was closer. I think I startled the poor guy. He accidentally dragged one of his shirtsleeves through the lasagna.
Then I rounded the table and hugged my mom. She let out a laugh/sob that was a great sound: total relief, total happiness. There was some crying. I am not going to point fingers at who it was, though. Finally, we got settled back into our places, though I still felt like I was floating a couple of inches off the floor.
“I’m really glad you’re happy,” my mom said.
“Of course I’m happy.” I couldn’t seem to stop smiling, which is a problem when you’re hungry and you have a plate of lasagna in front of you. “Hold up. When?”
“The due date is March fifteenth,” she said. Annabeth’s eyebrows shot up. “The Ides of March?”
“That’s just a best guess.” My mom winked at her. “Percy came much later than expected.”
“I was stubborn,” I said. “So this means I’ll be here when the baby comes. That’s awesome. I’ll have a few months before . . .”
My smile finally faded. If all went well and I got into school with Annabeth, I would be leaving for California during the summer. That meant I’d miss so much with the new baby. I wanted to hear the kid’s first laugh, see their first steps. I wanted to play peekaboo and teach the little rug rat to make rude noises and eat blue baby food.
“Hey,” my mom said, “you will be here for the delivery. And you can come home from California as often as you want. But you also need to stick
to your plans. They are excellent plans!” “Yeah, of course,” I said.
“Besides,” she said with a mischievous smile, “we’re going to need your bedroom for the baby.”
I was in a fog for the rest of dinner. I was still floating, partly from happiness . . . partly from a feeling like I’d been cut free from my moorings and was now drifting away. I was thrilled for my mom and Paul. Absolutely. I couldn’t believe they were going to have a kid I could watch grow up. That baby was going to be so lucky.
But also, it made my own departure seem even more real. I would be leaving just as my mom and Paul were starting a new chapter. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. . . .
I did remember to compliment Annabeth on her cupcakes. They were really good: buttery and sugary, the icing a little too thick . . . just the way I like them.
She and I did the dishes together. By the time I walked her down the street to the subway, it was growing dark.
“I’m glad you were okay with the news,” she said. I hadn’t realized until that moment how relieved she was.
“You were thinking about your stepbrothers,” I guessed.
The arrival of those babies had meant the beginning of the end for Annabeth’s relationship with her dad. At least, at the time. She’d run away from home shortly afterward, feeling forgotten and unwanted.
She kissed me. “You’re not in the same place as I was, thank the gods.
You’re going to be a great big brother.”
A warm flush of joy washed through me again. “You think?”
“ ’Course. And I can’t wait to see you learn how to change diapers.” “Hey, I cleaned Geryon’s stables of flesh-eating horses. How bad can
baby diapers be?”
She laughed. “In April or May, I’m going to remind you that you said that. You’re going to be begging to leave for college then.”
“I dunno,” I said. “I mean . . . to be with you, sure. It’s just . . .”
She nodded. “I know. Families are hard. Long-distance families are even harder.”
That was something we both understood.
She squeezed my hand. “See you Monday, bright and early.” And she headed down the steps of the station.
At least I have Annabeth, I thought. We would stay together. Assuming, of course, we solved this whole chalice issue. Otherwise, I’d be stuck in New York, and I’d have a whole lot more diaper changing to look forward to. At that moment, though, both options felt okay. . . . I could make either one work.
Multiple positive outcomes?
Wow. There was a first time for everything.
