Chapter 77 77
Annabeth's POV:
Mara showed up Saturday morning with a Tupperware of leftover food from her celebration, which was always delicious, by the way, and a face that said she was not leaving without answers.
I was at home for the first time in days, trying to exist in my bedroom again, except everything felt too clean and too normal and too much like the life of someone who hadn't been drugged in a hotel room less than a week ago.
Mara didn't knock. I'd left the front door unlocked for her because she'd texted "im outside let me in or i break a window" and I believed her.
"You still look like shit," she said from my doorway. Puffy jacket over pajama pants with little chili peppers on them. Hair up in a claw clip that was losing the battle. UGGs that had survived three winters and looked like it.
"Nice to see you too."
"Don't 'nice to see you' me, Annabeth Clarke. A stomach virus does not last five days. My cousin had norovirus in college and she was done in forty-eight hours." She dropped the Tupperware on my desk. "My mom sent this. Eat it or she'll call your aunt and then you'll have two women harassing you."
I opened the container. The food smelled incredible, garlic and oregano and slow-roasted pork, and my stomach growled so loud we both heard it.
"See? Starving. Not a virus." Mara sat on my bed cross-legged and fixed me with The Look. "What's actually going on?"
"I told you. I was sick."
"You're lying. Your eyebrows do a thing when you lie. They've been doing it since third grade."
"My eyebrows don't do a thing."
"They absolutely do."
I ate a piece of meat with my fingers because I couldn't be bothered to get a fork. It was so good it almost made me cry, which was embarrassing but I'd been eating canned Campbell's and scrambled eggs for days so my standards were underground.
"There's a guy situation," I said. Half truth. Good enough.
"Kaelen."
"Yeah."
"I thought that was over."
"It was. It's... not simple to explain."
Mara waited. She could be the loudest person in any room and then suddenly go dead quiet and the silence was always worse than any question she could ask.
"We're talking again," I said. "Not together. Just... figuring stuff out."
"Is he the reason you look like you haven't slept in a week?"
"Part of it."
"And the other part?"
I looked at her. My best friend since elementary school, the girl who'd been theorizing about paranormal activity and guys with glowing eyes since before I knew any of it was real. She was sitting on my bed in her chili pepper pajamas with genuine concern under all the attitude, and I wanted to tell her everything so bad it physically hurt.
But I couldn't. Not about the dragons, not about the Order, not about Marcus or the hotel or any of it.
"Family stuff," I said. "With my aunt. And some things I can't get into right now."
Her expression shifted. Not offended, not suspicious. Just sad. "You know you can tell me anything, right? Like, anything anything. I don't care how weird or crazy it is."
"I know."
"Even if it's aliens. Especially if it's aliens."
I laughed and it came out watery. "It's not aliens."
"That's exactly what someone hiding aliens would say."
She let it go after that. Mara pushed hard but she knew when she'd hit the real wall, the one where pushing harder would break something instead of opening it.
We talked for an hour. She told me about Thanksgiving at her parents' house, her dad burning the turkey for the third year running, her little brother getting busted watching Netflix during grace, her grandma falling asleep on the couch at six PM and snoring loud enough to drown out the football game. Normal family chaos. The kind I used to find exhausting and now missed with a pain that sat right behind my sternum.
"I have to go at two to arrive early," she said eventually, checking her phone. Back to school, three states away, the communications program she'd chosen because it was the best on the East Coast and also because she wanted actual nightlife.
"When do you come back?"
"Winter break. Three weeks." She stood up and hugged me hard, her chin digging into my shoulder because she was two inches taller. "Take care of yourself. And eat all the leftovers."
"I will."
"And fix things with Kaelen or don't. Whatever makes you not look like a zombie." She pulled back and pointed at my face. "But if you send me one more fake sick voice memo I'm driving back here and kicking down your door."
"Noted."
"Love you, weirdo."
"Love you too."
She left and the house got quiet and I stood in my room holding the Tupperware and thinking about how in three weeks, when Mara came back for winter break, I might not be here anymore.