minutia_r

Imagine Annabeth Chase, at nine or ten years old. Thalia has been a tree for a few years now, and Annabeth never forgets what she looked like–she still has pictures and she looks at them every day–but sometimes she can’t remember what Thalia sounded like, or what she liked to eat for breakfast. Luke is so cool, and brave, and good at swordfighting (and so handsome now!) but he doesn’t have as much time for Annabeth as he used to, and there’s something else–Annabeth can’t quite put her finger on it, but she knows there’s something wrong with him. Even though she has Chiron now, who’s there for her in ways she always wished her dad would be, even though she has brothers and sisters and lots of new friends, and she’s safe and well-fed and learning so much, she still misses the days when she and Thalia and Luke were a family, and she wonders if she’ll ever have anything like that again.

One day, with no reason or explanation, Chiron lets her read the Great Prophecy. Thalia is the only child of the Big Three she knows, so her first thought is that maybe it means Thalia will come back! But that would be bad, because then she would die for real on her sixteenth birthday.

Annabeth keeps thinking it over, until she’s memorized all the words, and she thinks maybe Zeus didn’t change Thalia into a tree to keep her safe at all, but to stop the prophecy. But then, that would be a way of keeping her safe, wouldn’t it? And then if the prophecy gets fulfilled by someone else, maybe Zeus would turn her back.

And here comes Percy Jackson, who is just some kid Annabeth doesn’t care about, and anyway it turns out that he is super annoying. Maybe the prophecy could be about him; no great loss.

And then Thalia turns back ahead of schedule, and Annabeth doesn’t know what to think. Percy isn’t some kid she doesn’t care about anymore, and when it turns out that Thalia is still older than Percy, Annabeth is a little relieved, because maybe Percy isn’t doomed to die after all. And what’s wrong with her for feeling this way, when Thalia is her oldest and best friend?

When Annabeth meets one of the Hunters of Artemis, maybe at her school, she’s immediately suspicious, because she remembers how mad Thalia got when Zoe tried to recruit her. But Annabeth hears the girl out, and when she says that boys will only mess up your thinking and cloud your judgment, Annabeth thinks, yes, that’s about right. And she takes the pamphlet that the girl gives her and keeps it at the bottom of her backpack, not looking at it again but not quite forgetting about it either.

After all the adventures of The Titan’s Curse, Thalia has joined the Hunters and she’s safe, which is a huge relief to Annabeth, but now she has to worry about Percy again. And now here’s Nico DiAngelo, and Annabeth has literally spent like two minutes with him, and it sounds like he’s got a vendetta against Percy, and Percy tells her that Nico is a son of Hades. And that’s perfect. Who would miss him?

And then Percy says, “I choose the prophecy; it will be about me.”

And honestly Annabeth just wants to shake him and say, “You idiot, you don’t know what you’re talking about.” And she almost tells him the whole prophecy then and there, and to hell with her promise to Chiron …

But she realizes that it would only make Percy more determined to protect some snot-nosed kid who nobody cares about.

Because Percy Jackson really is the most annoying boy in the world.