1
" You sneaked into my cabin?”
Annabeth rolled her eyes. “Percy, you’ll be seventeen in two months. You can’t seriously be worried about getting in trouble with Coach Hedge.”
“Uh, have you seen his baseball bat?”
“Besides, Seaweed Brain, I just thought we could take a walk. We haven’t had any time to be together alone. I want to show you something—my favorite place aboard the ship.”
Percy’s pulse was still in overdrive, but it wasn’t from fear of getting in trouble. “Can I, you know, brush my teeth first?”
“You'd better,” Annabeth said. “Because I’m not kissing you until you do. And brush your hair while you’re at it. "
― Rick Riordan , The Mark of Athena (The Heroes of Olympus, #3)
13
" You know that's not true. We have something, Helena. In another life, it would have been a beautiful something." That hurts. God, does it. I've seen that life. He doesn't even know what he's talking about. In his mind, I'm just some possibility that could have been, but in my mind, he's the only possibility. I step close to him, close enough to see the stubble on his cheeks. I reach up to touch it, and it scrapes against the tender side of my hand. Kit closes his eyes. " There's a house uptown on Washington ; we live there together in that life," I say softly. " Everything is green, green, green in our backyard. We have two children, a boy and a girl. She looks like you," I say. " But she acts like me." I carees his cheek because I know it's the last time I'm going to get to do it. Kit's eyes are open and storming. I run my teeth across my bottom lip before I continue. " In the summer, we make love outside, against the big wooden table that still holds our dinner dishes. And we talk about all the places we want to make love." I lick the tears from my lip where they are pooling. Running in a straight line down my cheeks, a leaky faucet. " And we're so happy, Kit. It's like a dream every day." I reach up on my tiptoes and kiss him softly on the lips, letting him taste my tears. He's staring at me so hard I want to crack. " But, it's just a dream, isn't it? "
14
" And new physical problems are arising almost daily. I'm getting problems from a painful trapped nerve in my shoulder, where my rucksack strap has been pinching it, and I can't straighten my arm above shoulder level - soon I will be limping like Richard III. By now my back is covered with eczema, the result of a perpetually sodden shirt and rucksack pressed against it day after day in this heat. In one place my pack has rubbed a painful hole in my skin through the eczema; carrying my rucksack was unpleasant before, but now it is purgatory. This eczema must be partly due to eating bad food for so long - I never had this problem at home. I'm expecting my teeth and hair to start falling out before long, and I've got more or less a permanent acid indigestion from eating so much junk. Week after week I've lived on lukewarm Coca-Cola, stale buns and doughnuts, slurps, green bananas, powdered milk and far too many cigarettes. With all the rubbishy food and sugar soft drinks I've been consuming, I'll see the east coast through a hypoglycaemic haze. "
18
" I thumped her on the back, picked her up and dropped her on top of her dungarees. “Put them pants on,” I said, “and be a man.” She did, but she cried quietly until I shook her and said gently, “Stop it now. I didn’t carry on like that when I was a little girl.” I got into my clothes and dumped her into the bow of the canoe and shoved off.
All the way back to the cabin I forced her to play one of our pet games. I would say something—anything—and she would try to say something that rhymed with it. Then it would be her turn. She had an extraordinary rhythmic sense, and an excellent ear.
I started off with “We’ll go home and eat our dinners.”
“An’ Lord have mercy on us sinners,” she cried. Then, “Let’s see you find a rhyme for ‘month’!”
“I bet I’ll do it … jutht thith onthe,” I replied. “I guess I did it then, by cracky.”
“Course you did, but then you’re wacky. Top that, mister funny-lookin’!”
I pretended I couldn’t, mainly because I couldn’t, and she soundly kicked my shin as a penance. By the time we reached the cabin she was her usual self, and I found myself envying the resilience of youth. And she earned my undying respect by saying nothing to Anjy about the afternoon’s events, even when Anjy looked us over and said, “Just look at you two filthy kids! What have you been doing—swimming in the bayou?”
“Daddy splashed me,” said Patty promptly.
“And you had to splash him back. Why did he splash you?”
“ ’Cause I spit mud through my teeth at him to make him mad,” said my outrageous child.
“Patty!”
“Mea culpa,” I said, hanging my head. “ ’Twas I who spit the mud.”
Anjy threw up her hands. “Heaven knows what sort of a woman Patty’s going to grow up to be,” she said, half angrily.
“A broad-minded and forgiving one like her lovely mother,” I said quickly.
“Nice work, bud,” said Patty.
Anjy laughed. “Outnumbered again. Come in and feed the face. "
― Theodore Sturgeon , The Complete Stories of Theodore Sturgeon, Volume III: Killdozer!