We Have Pizza with Extra Tears
“Nope,” I said, holding out the dog for Annabeth and Grover to see. Nope was so excited he peed on my shoes.
Annabeth moved back out of the splash zone. She looked exhausted. She had a mop in her hand, rubble in her hair, and smears of strawberry ice cream all over her clothes. Grover was standing up now, at least, but he still looked like he’d been punched repeatedly in the stomach.
“Adorable pup,” Annabeth said. “But I don’t think we can pass him off as Hecuba. Where did you find him?”
I told them the story while Annabeth mopped up the pee. I guess always being prepared has its disadvantages. When you’re the one who happens to be holding the mop, you get to mop.
Neither Annabeth nor Grover scolded me for failing to find Hecuba and Gale. Maybe they were just too tired, or maybe they figured we were doomed anyway, so we might as well be doomed with a cute puppy.
“Poor little guy,” Grover said. “That’s a nasty cut on his back.” “Nope!” barked Nope.
“Yeah,” Grover agreed. “That’s okay.” “What did he say?” I asked.
“Well, he’s just a pup,” Grover explained. “He isn’t barking in complete sentences yet. Basically, he said I pee on boy, boy is mine.”
“Makes sense,” I said. “Uh, anyone else want to hold him?”
Annabeth leaned her mop against the wall and came to get the puppy. He squirmed, pushing himself off my chest, apparently anxious to get to his new mama. I didn’t blame him.
“There we go,” Annabeth said, embracing the dark mass of hell-fluff. “Who’s a good Nope?”
The dog licked the side of her face and peed some more.
“Okay, we’re going to have to work on the bladder control,” Annabeth said. “But you’re too sweet to get mad at.”
“Nope!” Nope concurred.
Annabeth set down the dog and off he went, exploring his new digs.
Every time his nose bumped into something that startled him—a chair, a menacing-looking coffee table—he leaped back and barked at it until he was sure it had submitted to his puppy dominance.
“Grover, can you get him healed up?” I asked. “I figured you were his best hope.”
Grover had trouble meeting my eyes. Our emotions had been connected for years, ever since he formed an empathy link with me in seventh grade.
He was well aware of how mad I’d been earlier. I could tell he was still weighed down by a strawberry-scented cloud of guilt. Nevertheless, he seemed to realize I was making a peace offering.
“Sure thing,” he said. “A little nature magic and a warm bath, he’ll be good as new. Come on, Nope.”
“Nope!” He obediently followed Grover toward the kitchen, barking and snapping at the satyr’s hooves.
I turned to Annabeth. “So, what now?”
That’s what I do anytime I have a problem I can’t solve, which happens, like, every sixty seconds. I ask Annabeth.
She looked down at my pee-soaked shoes and her own splattered clothes. “First, let’s get cleaned up. I’ll meet you back here in thirty minutes.”
I must have been pretty tired, because I staggered into a bathroom I hadn’t seen before, where the shower sprayed sideways at the toilet. I didn’t feel like finding another bathroom, so I just willed the water to corkscrew
around me and took a tornado shower. It worked out okay, though I did give my hair a swirlie that wouldn’t come out no matter how much I combed it.
We reconvened in the ruins of the great room. I’m not going to say I felt refreshed, or more hopeful. When I looked at Hecuba’s empty dog bed, Gale’s heavy-metal harness, and the shattered stained-glass windows, I felt
a sinkhole opening in my stomach, swallowing all my hopes of getting through the week alive. But at least I was clean, and I was with my friends.
Somehow, Annabeth had managed to order pizza. How she’d gotten it delivered to an invisible mansion without the use of a phone app, I don’t know. It smelled amazing, though.
She was sitting cross-legged on her tattered, half-burned bedroll, chomping on a slice of mushroom and black olive. Lying on the floor next to her were the three door knockers she’d rescued from the wreckage of the
front entrance. They were silent, probably still in shock from losing their purpose in life to a giant rampaging goat monster.
As for Grover, he was eating garlic breadsticks. I knew from experience this would make his breath smell putrid for days, but the guy had had a rough afternoon, so I wasn’t going to protest.
Nope scampered back and forth between Annabeth and Grover, nuzzling for bites and wagging his tail so hard his whole body shook. Grover had done a great job of getting him cleaned up and bandaged. The puppy’s fur had puffed out so much he looked like a black Underworld dandelion.
When Nope saw me, he barked happily, slamming down his front paws in a play bow. I didn’t need to be a satyr to understand what he was saying.
Boy gimme pizza or I pee on boy again!
I got a slice and picked off pieces of pepperoni for him while he stared at me with those big, sad hell-spawn eyes.
“So, um …” I wasn’t sure how to follow up that great opener. I wanted to offer an incredible plan for solving all our problems, except I didn’t have one. “I guess I can get back out there and search through the night.”
Annabeth shook her head. “We can’t just randomly canvass the city.
Hecuba and Gale are magical creatures. They could be anywhere. They might decide to come home on their own, or …”
That was a pretty big OR.
Or they could terrorize the five boroughs and bring death, destruction, and polecat gas upon the innocent people of New York. Or they could disappear into the Underworld and refuse to ever be found. Or, or, or.
My eyes drifted up to the balcony, where Hecate’s crossed torches were still fixed on the railing. “Maybe we could use those,” I said. “This seems like an emergency. They might … I dunno, light a way back home for the pets.”
Annabeth’s frown told me she’d already thought of this and dismissed the idea. “Just a gut feeling? I’d leave those torches alone. They’re a serious last resort. They might even alert Hecate that we’re in trouble. First, we should try to think our way through this, solve the problem on our own.”
“Problems, plural,” I said. “Missing hellhound. Missing polecat. Destroyed house.”
Grover dabbed his tears away with the end of a breadstick. “Guys …” “Don’t say it, G-man,” I told him. “Don’t apologize. Annabeth’s right. We’re going to figure this out.”
He heaved a sigh, possibly because Nope had taken advantage of his distraction and stolen the breadstick. It probably tasted even better seasoned with salty satyr tears.
“We all mess up,” Annabeth consoled him. “Remember when Percy sent Medusa’s head to Mount Olympus? Or when he got a nosebleed and woke up Gaea? Or that time—”
“Are you just running down a list of times I messed up?” I asked. Annabeth shrugged. “You’re cute when you mess up.”
That didn’t seem to help Grover’s mood. He watched listlessly as Nope chewed on his left hoof.
“We’re all going to die!” he sobbed. “We’re going to die with a puppy, which is always how I wanted to go, but still—”
“Nobody is going to die,” Annabeth promised. “We still have three days before Hecate comes back.”
Grover moaned. “You’re right. Then we’ll die on Halloween, with all our friends watching!”
I took a second to process that. “Wait …. You already sent out the party invitations?”
“Of course!” he said. “This morning, before everything went strawberry. I gave them to the aurae.”
I imagined dozens of wind spirits carrying Grover’s letters to Camp Half- Blood and beyond, fancy envelopes fluttering into the hands of every demigod we knew. Join us Friday for a party at Hecate’s! Watch us die a painful death! Costumes optional!
I sighed. “Grover …”
“It’s okay.” Annabeth sounded like she was trying to convince herself as much as the rest of us. “That just gives us more incentive to fix everything.
We know our deadline. We’ve got work to do.”
She brushed her hands on her pants and stood up. “Tomorrow morning, I’m calling in sick.”
My spirits lifted. “Cool. Me, too.”
“No, you don’t,” she said. “I’m ahead in my schoolwork. You need to go to class.”
“Awww,” I complained.
“Look,” she said, “hellhounds usually only roam at night, right?”
“I guess. But Hecate said we should walk them twice during the d—”
“And polecats are naturally nocturnal too, aren’t they?” She turned to Grover.
“Uh, I think so,” he said.
“Then tomorrow,” Annabeth concluded, “we can assume the pets will be okay sleeping during the day. They won’t be causing trouble. That means I’ll have time to hit Hecate’s library, learn everything I can about Hecuba and Gale. I know they were both human once. Hecuba was the queen of Troy. Gale … I think she was a witch? Anyway, hopefully I’ll find some clues about where they went. Then in the evening, when Percy gets back from school, we can continue the search.”
Grover sniffled. “And I’ll spend the day cleaning.” He gazed across the destroyed furniture and shattered windows. “Though that seems hopeless
….”
“One problem at a time,” Annabeth said. “We’ll figure this out.”
I’m not sure she believed that, but I think we both sensed that Grover’s present state of mind was a sheet of thin ice. It wouldn’t support much weight.
Nope kept gnawing on Grover’s hoof. Maybe it was his way of trying to help, or maybe he was just teething. Grover didn’t seem to mind, but I was kind of worried my friend might wake up in the morning without a left foot.
“Okay, then,” I said. “I’ll go to school tomorrow. At night, we’ll hunt for the pets.”
Nope got tired of gnawing. He yawned, curled up next to Grover, and closed his eyes.
“The pup has the right idea,” Grover said. “I guess …”
And just like that he keeled over and began to snore. I wished I could fall asleep as easily as satyrs and pups. I imagined Grover dreaming of strawberry fields, while Nope dreamed of tasty goat hooves.
I glanced at Annabeth. I could see the exhaustion and anxiety on her face.
Used to be, when we were younger, she was better at hiding it, or maybe I just didn’t know her as well then.
“We’re going to get through this,” I said.
She looked surprised—me comforting her, kind of switching things up. “Yeah,” she said. “We’ve overcome worse, right?”
“For sure.” I didn’t want to say what we were both probably thinking:
Eventually, our luck has to run out. You can only flip a coin so many times before it comes up tails, you lose.
But there was no point in dwelling on that. Instead, I cleaned up the pizza, said good night to the eels, and got ready for bed.
Wednesday, I would do the heroic thing and go to school. While I was there, maybe I could do more than just catch up on my work. Perhaps I could attempt something that had rarely been tried in a school environment: I could take a stab at learning useful information—something that might actually help us stay alive.
