Chapter Text
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“A ghost can be a lot of things. A memory, a daydream, a secret. Grief, anger, guilt. But in my experience, most times they’re just what we want to see. Most times, a ghost is a wish.”
- The Haunting of Hill House, episode 1, “Steven Sees a Ghost”
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“For someone who just moved here, you really know your way around,” Piper says. “I absolutely thought you were taking us to the wrong platform.”
Two descending notes play through the speaker above their heads. The Q train’s doors slide closed. The breaks release in a puffy exhale and the car lurches as they begin to move out of the Canal St station.
Annabeth shrugs. “I like research,” she says. “Figured if I was going to do the whole ‘move to New York as a broke twenty-something,’ I might as well be prepared for it.”
“What a load of baloney,” Percy says from somewhere behind her. “You were walking right for the Downtown platform, too. You could say ‘thank you,’ by the way.”
Piper doesn’t react—of course she doesn’t. She just tells Annabeth with a sheepish smile, “more than I did. God, this is so embarrassing, but I really did Uber everywhere for my first few weeks.”
“Asshole,” Percy cuts in again. “I can’t stand people who do that.”
Annabeth kicks one foot back as subtly as possible. She doesn’t feel it connect with his shin, but he does quiet down.
“You’re getting the hang of it,” Annabeth reassures her. “Silena said you moved here—what, two months before me?”
“Something like that.”
“Plus, I did a lot of exploring in the past few weeks and got turned around a lot of times. You’re seeing a well made facade.”
“Is that how you found that Wo Hop?” Piper asks. “God, I can’t get over that tofu. And it was in some random basement!”
While Piper waxes poetic about their lunch, Annabeth’s eyes slide to the left. It’s not an overly crowded subway car. There’s a couple pouring over the map on the wall, a short man reading a book in the seat parallel to the window, and around a dozen solo commuters buried in phones or listening to music.
But to Annabeth’s left, leaning against the door, is a man with short cropped hair and an angular jaw. His button up shirt is untucked, wrinkled, and saturated with blood. She has to breathe through her mouth because she can smell it wafting off of him. From the corner of her eye, she can spot the elderly woman trying to read over the shoulder of the man by the window, ranting a rant he can’t hear. A younger woman stands five feet in front of her, staring at her, her familiar eyes wide and unblinking. And, of course, right behind her is Percy, dripping wet.
“I really hope you’re not about to take credit for finding Wo Hop on your own,” he says.
“...in an article, right?” Piper asks, forcing Annabeth to tune back in again.
“Yeah, about the James Beard Foundation Awards,” Annabeth says. “It’s officially an American Classic.”
“Fucking typical,” Percy says. “I’m not telling you where that halal cart is now.”
“So cool,” Piper enthuses. “I didn’t even realize how much food there was out there that I’ve never even tried, you know? This city is crazy.”
“Best city in the world,” Percy and Annabeth say in perfect unison.
Of course, only Annabeth and Percy know that.
It started on her third day in New York, because Annabeth has, in general, always had completely shit luck. With a week until her new job began and her boxes (almost) unpacked, she woke up to a sliver of perfect blue sky visible between the brick walls outside her window and decided to spend the day exploring.
While she waited for the shower to heat up, she drank a glass of water—straight from the tap—and looked around her joke of a studio apartment. Despite the near negative space she now called her own for the next twelve months, her singular closet was pitifully half empty.
Annabeth frowned into her water. Half full? She’d never had many clothes, was the point. The t-shirts and jeans she’d favored in high school had stopped fitting once she started doing track and field more seriously, and her college dorm room hadn’t offered an abundance of space, either.
She wandered back to the bathroom and stuck a hand under the tap. Only lukewarm. The previous two days' experience told her she had another minute before it would get hot, so she took out her phone and googled thrift stores nyc.
The results were almost too many to believe. She shook her head.
“Best city in the world,” she said to herself, and finally stripped down to step into the shower.
In the end, she chose a thrift store in lower Manhattan, a little to the east so it was on the yellow line and she wouldn’t have to transfer trains. It was close to Washington Square Park, too, so she could check that off her architecture bucket list. Just like that, she had a plan for the day—and Annabeth loved having a plan.
She flew down the four flights of stairs, keeping her eyes on her feet so she wouldn’t get drawn into whatever was going on with the man who always lingered on the second floor landing. He left something in his jacket pocket, but Annabeth had never stuck around long enough to hear what it was or who he needed to tell. She’d get around to it eventually. Probably.
After riding the N train two stops in the wrong direction, she managed to get on a Manhattan and Brooklyn bound W. It was all part of the learning curve. The car was near empty, so close to the origin in Astoria, so she found a seat by the window and watched as the lower buildings of northwest Queens morphed into the skyscrapers of Long Island City before the train finally went underground. She pulled a book out of her tote bag before long and focused her gaze on the paper, even though the letters were swirling around the page so aggressively that she couldn’t read a word.
Her dyslexia always got worse when she was stressed. She turned a page in her book, a perfect pantomime of reading, so that the three ghosts standing within fifteen feet of her don’t realize that she can both see and hear them.
Spirits, earthbound souls, whatever. They were all ghosts, really, haunting people or places or things. She thought maybe they were haunting this specific subway car, except a man in a navy suit got off at 59th street and one of them—the woman in bright red lipstick and a mink coat—followed him off.
Annabeth kept looking at her book, flipping forward a page every minute or so. She had long ago perfected the half-glazed over expression that tricked most ghosts into thinking she was just like everyone else—unable to see them. It was a small part of the reason she’d decided to move to New York: everyone here had that expression on. Everyone here avoided eye contact on the sidewalk and went about their business, so maybe—just maybe—Annabeth wouldn’t acquire her usual ‘rude and standoffish’ reputation.
One of the ghosts sat down next to her. He was mumbling in a language she didn't recognize. Hungarian, maybe—a relief. She wouldn’t have to try so hard to not react if he said something appalling.
Annabeth turned to the next page in her book. She didn’t even remember what it was about. The stops got more frequent in Manhattan, crawling at times only five blocks between stations after Times Square, before the W finally pulled into 8th Street-NYU.
Annabeth put her book back into her tote and stood, edging around the ghost’s legs with a mumbled, “excuse me.”
She realized her mistake two steps later, when the voice got panicked and excited, rapid-fire consonant heavy speech trying to get her attention again. Annabeth kept her head down and walked towards the closest exit like she knew it would take her where she wanted. It worked, either because he thought it was a fluke or he was tied enough to that train car to stay put, and when she walked up into the autumn sunlight she was once again alone.
Not unhaunted. She was never really unhaunted, but she could be—however briefly—alone.
Maps told her that the Buffalo Exchange was close, only a few blocks south. She made her way there, realized she was on the wrong side of the street, and blatantly jaywalked to get to her destination. One thing she certainly would not miss about California was driving and cars and mechanics. She hoped Clarisse would love the hunk of bolts Annabeth couldn’t have more joyously parted with.
The thrift store wasn’t too crowded inside, because it was around 11 on a Tuesday, so Annabeth took her time. She started in the back, sifting through women’s cut jeans and giving up quickly, moving to the men’s section in the front where the inseams were longer. She found a few potential successes, all dark wash enough that she could probably dress them up for work, and made her way towards one of the circular clothing racks in the middle of the shop.
Annabeth hadn’t lived on the east coast since she was twelve, but she remembered the cold bite of the winters. She didn’t have nearly enough sweaters to get her through January and February, only a few short months away. A few hoodies with stains and holes got flipped past, but eventually she came across a maroon crewneck with a faded lettering that said MONTAUK. She threw it on over her shirt and managed to catch her reflection in a nearby mirror—exactly the kind of baggy she’s always preferred. Perfect.
“That’s mine,” someone said.
Annabeth looked over and gasped. Standing next to her, soaked from head to foot, was a guy about her age. He was a bit taller, with dark hair plastered to his head and green eyes so bright they forced the air out of Annabeth’s lungs. Every inch of him was dripping water in the middle of the perfectly dry Buffalo Exchange.
“You can see me,” he realized, eyes getting wider. “You can actually—holy fuck.”
She bought the sweater, in the end, because she stopped letting ghosts decide what she was and wasn’t going to do a long time ago. Percy— I’m Percy, by the way, can you still see me? — didn’t seem to mind, even as she ignored him and checked out with her new pants and sweater.
“I know you can hear me,” Percy said, following her out the door. “You’re not a very good actor, you know.”
Annabeth pulled out her headphones and slipped them on. She fiddled with her phone, miming a call, and finally turned to face the very wet ghost beside her.
“Percy, you said?” She asked.
He grinned. “Yes! Yeah, I’m Percy. I can’t believe you can hear me. It’s, like, so great to talk to someone.”
“I’m Annabeth.” She didn’t reach out to shake his hand, because they wouldn’t be able to anyway. “I’m going to the park. Want to come?”
They walked the two blocks to the north side of the park, until Annabeth stood directly under Stanford White’s famous arch. She knew it already, of course—the Tuckahoe marble used to construct it, the fact that it commemorated the centennial of George Washington’s presidential address in 1789—but Annabeth’s favorite thing about architecture isn’t facts or materials. It’s the way she feels looking at it; it’s something about the innate nature of human beings and the way they just can’t help their desire to create.
She could see Percy out of the corner of her eye, watching her. As she stood there, her gaze still fixed upward, someone in a purple t-shirt walked right through him.
“Okay,” she finally said. “What’s your deal? Normally I’ve gotten a whole life story by now.”
“Normally,” he repeated. “This happen to you a lot?”
“Look, do you see a white light?” Annabeth asked, already losing her patience.
“A what?”
“God, I can really pick ‘em,” Annabeth muttered to herself. “A white light. Bright, blinding even. Maybe a loved one standing there waiting for you? Walk into it.”
“I—what?”
“Unless there’s something you’ve left unfinished?” Annabeth prompted. It usually went smoother if the ghost came to terms on their own, but this whole conversation was messing with Annabeth’s plan for the day. She wanted it over and done with.
“What are you talking about?” Percy asked, his accent hitting harder than it had before. His ah vowel was like an A and U and W smushed together. “Why are you the only one who can see me?”
Annabeth closed her eyes. “Fuck,” she said. “Seriously? This is just my luck.” She turned back to Percy, kind of vaguely relishing how no one around them seemed to care that she was talking to thin air. “You’re dead.”
Percy blinked at her. A drop of water made its way down the arch of his nose. “What?”
“I can see ghosts. Spirits. People who haven’t yet moved on.” She let that sink in for a moment, then added, “like you.”
“Moved on to what?” He asked, his voice getting louder with pure panic.
“Your guess is as good as mine,” she said. “I’m not dead. I just have the pleasure of seeing all of you on your journey in between.”
“Fuck. What the fuck?” Percy started to pace, his hands on his head. “I can’t be dead! That’s such bullshit. I’ve never even left the tri-state area! And I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, lady—”
“Annabeth.”
“—Annabeth, because there ain’t no fuckin’ light, alright? There’s just this stupid park and a bunch of asshole NYU students walking right through me, and apparently, the only person who can see me is a goddamn Yankees fan, which is fucking rich. And!” He turned back to her, an almost triumphant expression on his face. “And I bet you you’re not from here, am I right? No shot.”
“I’m from…” Annabeth trailed off. She could’ve said Virginia, or the Bay Area, or something else. In the end, she just confirmed his suspicion. “I’m not from here, you’re right. This is my third day in New York.”
That made him laugh uproariously, too dramatic to be earnest, his hands flung out to the sides. “Of course! A fucking transplant in a Yankees hat. I can hardly believe my luck.”
With him standing facing her once more, Annabeth finally saw the logo made dark by his wet t-shirt. A baseball with dark blue skyline and orange piping, Mets written out across the front.
“Are you done?” Annabeth asked. “I want to go see the narrowest house in the city next.”
“I’m not a tour guide,” he seethed.
“Which way is Bedford Street?”
He pointed behind him. “Like, six blocks that way.”
And so Annabeth’s first friend in the big city was a chronically damp, kind of asshole ghost named Percy.
“Silena said Piper liked you,” Clarisse says. They’re playing Battleship online as they FaceTime, both unwilling to admit that they want to talk for the sake of talking, and certainly unwilling to admit they might miss each other.
It’s one thing to move across the country to an apartment you’ve never actually seen for the sake of a life you think you might like, and another to do it knowing you’ll leave behind the two best friends you’ve made in your entire twenty-two years on Earth.
That are still alive, at least.
“She was cool,” Annabeth says. “So different from Silena, though. We got greasy Chinese food.”
Clarisse snorts. “Uh, yeah. Duh. Half-siblings, you know how it goes. Get sunk, by the way.” Her missile lands in open water. “Seriously? What the hell.”
“Be better,” Annabeth replies, confidently clicking on G3. Sure enough, a tiny explosion graphic goes off on G3.
“What the—is there someone behind me giving you clues? I know that’s how you kept winning poker night in junior year—”
“I can’t see ghosts through FaceTime, that would be ridiculous,” Annabeth scoffs.
“Oh, that’s ridiculous,” Clarisse scowls. “Sure.” One of her shots finally connects, but Annabeth’s still smiling, two ships in the lead.
“Did I tell you I’ve got a new one?” Annabeth asks, pulling her fidget cube out from its drawer and flicking one side of it.
“A Casper? No.”
“His name’s Percy. He’s wet.”
“Is that some kind of horrible New York slang?”
“What?” Annabeth laughs. “No, he’s actually wet. Like, dripping water.”
“That’s new.”
“Plus, he had no idea he was dead. Bizarre.”
Clarisse frowns. Clarisse always looks like she’s frowning, so it’s really hard to tell when she actually is, but Annabeth’s had years of practice trying to read her from the other side of the locker room. “That’s happened before,” she says.
Annabeth gets a flash of sun-bleached blond hair and that awful scar in her mind’s eye before she manages to shove it back into the box in the corner of her mind. “S’not common, though,” she says. “Usually means the death was traumatic.”
“Not to play Silena,” Clarisse says slowly, finally managing to figure out which way Annabeth’s submarine is pointing, “but should you be doing this?”
“Talking to you?” Annabeth snarks. Her next shot misses.
“No, bitch, getting wrapped up in helping a ghost your first few weeks in New York. Isn’t that why you left California? Oh, get fucked, I knew that was your battleship.”
Annabeth shuts that right down. “I left because I got a job. I knew New York would have a lot of ghosts; that was kind of a given, it’s huge. And yeah, I did say I was going to try and focus on me a little more, but…I don’t know, there’s something about him.”
Clarisse looks like she doesn’t know what to do with that. “He’s…nice?” She asks.
Annabeth laughs. “Uh, no. I’m not sure I would be if I just found out I was dead, so.” She shrugs. “I won’t be able to help him cross over until he starts to remember more, anyway. Googling ‘Percy NYC’ got me a pizza place in the West Village and some place called Percy’s Tavern that isn’t even open anymore.”
“Silena’s going to be so pissed that all we talked about on our call is your new familiar.”
Annabeth sinks Clarisse’s final ship. “No, she’s not.”
Clarisse raises her eyebrows. “Oh, yeah?”
“Mhm.” Annabeth smirks. “Because you get to tell her that the new ghost is, like, seriously hot.”
Clarisse just shakes her head, grinning. “She is going to love that. Damn. Well, good luck. I’ll call whenever my ego can handle a rematch.”
“Okay,” Annabeth says softly. “Bye.”
“Love you. No homo.”
Before Annabeth can reply, she gets hung up on.
“Typical,” she says to her empty studio apartment. No one, alive or dead, replies.
“Alright,” Annabeth says as she steps out of her office building, her headphones on. “Where am I getting lunch?”
“I’m not telling you,” Percy sulks. “You just abuse my knowledge. I spent a lifetime accumulating this stuff, only to give it away to some yuppie. Barf.”
Annabeth picks a direction and starts walking. “I read that Ess-a-Bagel is good,” she says, already knowing what will happen next with only a week and a half of experience.
“Overrated,” Percy says. He can’t seem to help himself. “Like, it’s good, but they only put the seeds n’ shit on one side. Shmear options are okay,” he adds a little begrudgingly.
“Like, cream cheese?”
“Like, cream cheese?” Percy mocks, his voice high-pitched and whiny. “If you ask for them to scoop out your bagel, I’m actually going to start haunting you.”
“As opposed to what this is,” Annabeth murmurs to herself, well aware that he can hear her.
“Hey! I’m, like, super chill. I haven’t even tried to get your lights to flicker.”
“You’ve never even appeared in my apartment,” Annabeth acquiesces. “Or at work.”
He shrugs, falling into step beside her. “Seems rude.”
Annabeth almost stops in the middle of the sidewalk, she’s so surprised. “Okay, that’s a first.”
“Are the people you see always rude?”
She wrinkles her nose and doesn’t mention that he’s said people and not ghosts. “It’s more like…it’s all on their terms. No one’s ever been that concerned about appearing in the middle of my calc final, for example.”
“Yikes.”
“Exactly.” Despite having the light, she looks both ways before joining the crowd in crossing 6th. One of the idling cars honks at her.
Percy flips the car off. It doesn’t make a difference to anyone but her, but she appreciates it. “If you want to spend too much money on a bagel, I’m not going to stop you,” he tells her.
Annabeth walks into Herald Square; she’d rather go through a tiny park than down the crowded sidewalk. “Where would you go for a bagel?”
“Absolute Bagels. 108 and Broadway. Or maybe Bo’s.”
She snorts out a laugh. “You knew that answer way too quickly.”
“I’m tired of these bougie, overpriced bagels! Absolute is good enough I drag my ass to the west side—that’s how you know it’s legit.”
“So you’re from the east side,” Annabeth follows, nodding. “Okay, that’s something. Remember anything more specific?”
“Yeah.” Percy grins proudly, pushing his wet bangs out of his face. “El Barrio, baby! Proud of it. Just off 2nd and…” His grin fades. “Shit. Goddamn it.”
“It’s okay,” Annabeth soothes. “That’s something. I’m assuming that’s…a Hispanic neighborhood?”
“Spanish Harlem,” he says. “East side, north of, like, 96.” He wrinkles his nose in distaste. “These days, north of 110.”
They’re already on the other side of Herald Square; Percy picks up into a jog. Annabeth follows suit, only realizing that he’s trying to catch the light before it changes a few seconds later. They make it to the other side and slow back to a walk.
“If you want,” Annabeth offers, “I could go there. With you, I mean. We could walk around, maybe spark a memory.”
“You’d do that?” Percy asks, his voice almost severe in its sudden quiet volume.
Annabeth shrugs. She pauses on the corner, barely a moment of hesitation, but Percy points diagonally to the side of the street she wants to be on. With a wince of thanks, she says, “I want to see more of the city. Might as well check off a good deed while I’m at it.”
“Well, I can make it worth your while,” he says with a confident nod. “D’you like Italian food?”
“Am I human?”
“Okay, so we’ll swing by Patsy’s, then. Oh, or Sam’s! And that bakery with the killer conchas—”
“I have no idea what that is, but I’m sold,” Annabeth says. “Why does Spanish Harlem have Italian food?”
He shrugs. It sends tiny flicks of water flying. “Dunno. Why does the NYPD have a budget of six billion dollars? Nothing makes sense if you think about it long enough.”
“That’s so illogical,” Annabeth says, because what is there to say when someone spews the exact opposite of everything you’ve ever believed.
“Still better Italian food than Little Italy.”
“I guess I’ll have to put that to the test.” She pushes a heavy door into the surprisingly large bagel shop and immediately struggles to focus.
“Well, Little Italy’s mostly gone. I’ll swing you by Arthur Avenue, though. Hey, you good?”
“Hm?” Annabeth blinks away from the menu behind the counter. Someone behind her is talking about the mayor, someone next to her about the weather. “Oh, yeah, it’s just loud in here. You weren’t kidding about the cream cheese.”
Percy doesn’t say much as they wait in line, or as she orders—toasted sesame bagel with olive cream cheese—but he sort of squints his eyes, like he’s sizing her up.
“What?” She hisses out of the corner of her mouth as the cashier rings up her order.
Percy shrugs, the movement of his shoulders just barely visible out of the corner of her eye. “Nothing.”
She raises as much of an eyebrow as she dares, smiling quickly at the cashier, tapping her credit card, and hoping to get back outside as quickly as possible.
“It’s clearly not nothing,” Annabeth says once they’re on their way again. The bagel is hot even through the paper bag it’d been stuffed in.
Percy moves like he wants to grab the door for her, then awkwardly follows her as she jerks it open herself. “I just think you’re a sociopath for getting olive cream cheese.”
Annabeth rolls her eyes. “You’re so dramatic. Ever heard of not yucking someone else’s yum?”
“Nope. Where we headed?”
“I thought we’d sit in the park?”
“The squirrels are going to maul you.”
“Well, you’ve never seen me fight before.”
Privately, even as Percy laughs, she casts a few suspicious glances at twitchy squirrels as they make their way into the park. Most are high in the trees or lingering around the trash cans. She picks a free table that’s far away from both, sits down, and kicks out the empty chair so that Percy can sit down, too.
“I feel like a food critic,” she says, unwrapping her lunch. She opens the bagel using two hands to get the visual, her stomach rumbling at the sight of cream cheese going a little runny from being sandwiched between two warm halves of bagel. “Except kind of like I’m cheating, you know? I haven’t had to look up any new things to try in two weeks.”
“You’re welcome,” Percy says. He rubs at one eye and flicks the water off his hand after. “But I feel like you should know that I’m not telling you everything.”
Annabeth gasps in mock offence. “But you’re so endeared by me.”
“Lie. I’m living vicariously through you.”
“By not telling me everything?” Annabeth asks cheekily, taking her first, relatively heavenly bite.
“You know what?” Percy says, clearly trying to sound pissed off but failing by laughing halfway through his sentence. He flicks some water at her, and Annabeth swears she can feel it land on her arm.
“What’re these big secrets you’ve been keeping?” She asks. “It’s not like I’ve gotten food poisoning or anything.”
Percy sighs, still kind of smiling. “Well, then they wouldn’t be secrets, would they? Gotta keep some stuff for the locals.”
Annabeth pouts.
“Fine, whatever,” Percy says. He jerks his thumb over his shoulder, gesturing back across the street. “You didn’t have to wait on line in there.”
Annabeth chews slowly, trying to figure out what’s been lost in translation. “I…ordered in person?” She says. “I didn’t use, like, an app or something.”
Percy looks just as confused. “Yeah, I was there. I’m saying you could’ve skipped the line.”
“No, you said I didn’t need to be online.”
“Yeah,” he repeats a little slower. “You didn’t have to wait on the line. Have you, like, stopped being able to hear me?”
“Who says wait on the line?” Annabeth asks incredulously. “You wait in a line, Percy.”
“Everybody says that! There’s an invisible line on the ground, and we all stand on it.”
Annabeth takes a bite without looking away from him, wondering how she ended up here. “I’ve literally never heard that before in my life,” she says through her mouthful. “Online is the internet. You wait in a line. I live in a city. I ride in a car.”
“You get on a bus. On a boat. And I wait,” Percy says, leaning in, “on line.”
“Maybe you’re not dead,” Annabeth theorizes. “Maybe you’re a demon raised from hell, come to torment me. Maybe you’re from an alternate universe!”
“This is what I get for revealing the schmear only express line at Ess-a-Bagel.” Percy shakes his head. “I should’a known.”
“What?” Annabeth asks. “I didn’t have to wait in that stupid fucking line?”
Percy throws his hands up. “That’s what I’ve been saying!”
“Tell me that before next time. You had to wait in the line, too.”
He shrugs. “Not so bad. I’ve got nowhere to be.”
It sends her into a little bit of a tailspin. Sure, he’s actively dripping water on an otherwise dry and sunny day, but he’s around her age and died relatively recently, if the in-style cut of his jeans is anything to go by. He’s easy to talk to. It’s easy to forget he’s dead.
Annabeth takes another bite of her bagel. It’s a little strange that the sesame seeds are only on one side, but it’s just the right amount of chewy and pretty big for what she paid. The olive cream cheese is more of a disappointment, but she’s not going to tell Percy that. She swallows, accidentally makes eye contact with the ghost of a young woman standing about five feet away, and quickly focuses on Percy once more.
“This is really good,” she says. “Your place is better? Or are you going to gatekeep that now?”
“Oh, shut up. It’s not like Absolute is a big secret, they’ve got a crazy line all weekend.”
“Good to know.”
“I don’t fuck around when it comes to bagels, Annabeth. Honestly, have any of my food recommendations let you down?”
“No,” she agrees. “Why do you think you remember all of that so well?”
He shrugs, his eyes sliding to the side. Annabeth doesn’t think he’s particularly interested in the squirrel eating a cigarette butt, so he probably just wants to avoid looking at her. It strikes her somewhere beneath her ribs, how sad it is, to wander around your home with only the innocuous pieces left.
Not for the first time, she wonders what will happen when she dies. Will someone see her? Will she even know that she’s dead? Will she be here, or in San Francisco, or on Berkeley’s campus, or back in Richmond? Has she ever known a place her soul would cling to?
“What’s your favorite thing about New York?” Annabeth asks, deciding to change tactics. “Since you keep insisting us transplants don’t know—”
“—know shit about shit,” Percy finishes. He looks back at her. “Uh, it’s the best city in the world.”
Annabeth rolls her eyes. “I know that. That’s why I moved here. You could argue that means I love it more than you.”
“Shut up,” Percy says, his face screwed up with indignation. “No, it doesn’t!”
“Great comeback,” she drawls.
“Okay, I love the people,” Percy answers. “I love New Yorkers, and the way we treat each other.”
“Like?” Annabeth prompts him.
“We leave each other alone, but if I’m short a dollar on groceries there’s almost always someone who’ll cover me. And I just…I don’t know, the stupid stuff? Or, not stupid, but little. Like, walking wherever I want, or the subway. I love it when I hop the turnstyle so smooth you can’t even tell I jumped it. I love the old guys who play chess in the park. The graffiti. I love riding the bus at night and shitting on Jersey and the goddamn Mets. I love not giving a fuck, I guess.”
“Well, that’s things you love, but what’s your favorite?” Annabeth pushes. “Mine is easy, it’s the—”
“—the architecture, I know,” Percy finishes again. “I like that, too. I…well, maybe it’s the food. The food here is the best.”
Percy has admitted to never going anywhere else, so Annabeth doesn’t really know how he knows it’s the best, but she doesn’t call him on it.
“But my favorite…” Percy goes a little still, like he’s remembered something. “My favorite thing when I was a kid is gone now,” he says.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. It was on the west side, if you can believe it. When you got off an uptown 1 at 79th, if you went up the staircase that took you to the northwest corner—there used to be a Circuit City there, next to the DSW.”
“Circuit City? Jeez.”
“Yeah, it closed ages ago, but it was in this little, two story building. And it meant, when you were going up the stairs, if you looked up all you could see was the sky. Like the sky was the ocean and you got to go down the ladder and jump into it.” He goes quiet for a moment. Then, “now there’s an ugly fucking apartment building.”
Annabeth resists the urge to scoff. “You think any new building is ugly.”
“That’s not true! I like the Jenga building downtown.”
“The Jenga…” Annabeth thinks. “You mean 56 Leonard?”
“Is 56 Leonard the building that looks like a wonky Jenga tower?”
“I—” She sighs. “Yes. But it’s a Herzog & de Meuron.”
“You’re a hotdog and demure one.”
“You’re not that funny.”
He shrugs. “I dunno, you’re smiling.”
You’re flirting, Annabeth realizes. You’re flirting with a ghost, and he’s flirting back.
“I can show you the ugly building some time,” he offers, blinking some water out of his eyelashes. “It’s right by the Natural History Museum. You like museums, right?”
“My second favorite thing about New York,” Annabeth confirms, and just manages to stop herself from saying it’s a date.
Her dad texts her on a Saturday morning, the first time he’s reached out since she moved to the east coast, and his message reads [Hi, Annabeth. I hope you’re settling in well at your new job. How is New York? Let me know when you might be free to talk.]
She doesn’t respond for three days. What’s there to say? She wishes she could explain to him that you can walk south on the east side of Broadway, from Grand to Howard, and you can look up and see the top of One World Trade peak through the buildings. You can look down so you won’t trip over the subway grate, and when you look back up again 56 Leonard has taken its place.
She could tell him that if you walk past the entrance to the NQWR to the corner of Canal, you can see all of Herzog & de Meuron’s creativity, bottom to top, and you can decide that from then on out you’ll be calling it the Jenga Tower. She could type it out, or even try and call and inevitably tell him in a voicemail, but he wouldn’t get it. He’d probably say something ridiculous, like ask what Jenga was, or tell her about an exhibit that has something to do with planes that’s soon to arrive in the tri-state area, and Annabeth would remember why she hadn’t reached out either.
Instead, she tells him about work, and doesn’t talk about buildings or bagel shops or the bitter and charming conundrum of a ghost that’s taken to appearing at her shoulder as she makes a city her father hates her home.
From the lookout point on top of Belvedere Castle, the light tan brick of the buildings that line Central Park West seem to grow out of the tree line itself. The limestone that covers their first few stories is invisible behind overlapping leaves and branches, but it thrills Annabeth all the same, knowing they’re there. Going north to south, she points and lists off.
“El Dorado, the Beresford, the San Remo—”
“How d’you know all this shit?” Percy asks.
“They’re pretty famous,” Annabeth tells him. “Landmarked and everything. Paul Simon lives there,” she says, pointing again to the Beresford.
“Who?”
“You know, like, ‘hello darkness my old friend,’” she mumble-sings.
“No way! He’s from New York?”
“Very famously. You’re a terrible New Yorker.”
“It’s not like he sings with an accent,” Percy says.
“I mean, he does sing about New York. A lot.”
“So does Bad Bunny, Annabeth.”
“Who?”
“Oh my fucking god. I cannot believe this is my afterlife.” He raises his hands to the sky imploringly. “I never even smoked crack!”
“What?” Annabeth manages to ask through her laughter.
“Okay, not afterlife. Though it is after my life, according to you. I just didn’t think I’d end up here.”
Annabeth glances at the tourists milling around them, smiling for photos and huffing from their walk to the top of the hill. “Belvedere Castle?”
“No—here.” He gestures vaguely around his head, around them. “Where I’ve always been.”
She squints at him. It’s bright out, but it’s more to really size him up. She wants to understand him better. He’s like a puzzle with fifteen different right answers hidden under sarcasm and almost-amnesia. She has a sneaking suspicion that, even if he had all of his wits about him, she’d still be a little confounded.
“Isn’t that better than somewhere unfamiliar?” Annabeth asks. He’s been confident all afternoon, guiding them around the Upper West Side and Natural History Museum, stepping over uneven spots on the sidewalk where tree roots have started to break everything loose.
He shrugs. “Probably. Sometimes I think I can grab onto something, like how I learned about the planetarium entrance of the museum, but when I try to follow the thought it slips away.” He turns to look at her, and under his wet bangs his eyes are particularly bright against the green of the Great Lawn in the distance. “Then I slip away and come back, only you’re in a different outfit and in a different part of the city. It’s hard to tell how much time has passed.”
“Never all that much,” Annabeth says in a poor attempt to comfort him.
He hums and looks back over the park.
Annabeth feels her mind jump from thought to thought at a speed too quick for her to really process. Time is opaque for most ghosts. She’s met some who have been dead for only hours, but she’s also met some who have been dead for decades. Percy’s extra hazy, that perpetual little crease between his eyelids, his poorly hidden confusion.
“Well, you were right about one thing,” she concedes, thinking of the new apartment building she’d been guided to see as they exited the 79th Street 1 station. They can see a corner of it from where they’re standing, peeking out from the taller buildings along Central Park West. “That building sure is ugly.”
The little crease between his eyebrows vanishes under his smile, exactly as she had hoped. “Thank you.”
“But it’s not as bad as I thought it’d be. Just boring.”
“Isn’t that a bigger crime, though? At least truly ugly buildings are saying something.”
Annabeth purses her lips. That’s annoying. He’s annoying, in the way he seems to get all of the thoughts inside her head out with half the words and twice the cohesion. He’d led her through the Shakespeare Flower Garden to get up to the castle, because he’d ‘figured you’d know some of this shit.’ Percy the dripping ghost, who seems perfectly content to wander around with a stranger, lost in his own home, in himself.
“Something you said gave me an idea,” she tells him.
“For a better looking building?”
“Well, sure. Always. But I meant—when you mentioned it last week, you said you came out of the train in front of a DSW.”
Percy’s eyebrows twist up in confusion. “Yeah?”
“You seemed surprised that it’s a PC Richard & Son.”
“Yeah.” He clearly has no idea the point she’s trying to make.
“If we look up when that change happened, we might be able to narrow down when—”
“When I died, you mean.”
“Yeah. That.”
He nods, then slunches over to rest his chin on his hands. Annabeth watches him a second longer and realizes that he’s not actually looking at the lawn: his gaze is fixed a little to the right, towards the northeast. Spanish Harlem. A drop of water collects on the tip of his nose, grows fatter, and drops.
“Do you remember spending time in this part of the park?” She asks. He had remembered the Hall of Ocean Life at the museum with startling accuracy, but was clueless as to how to get to the Hall of African Mammals.
“Yeah,” he answers quickly. He points to the northeast corner of the lawn. “Can you see those basketball courts?”
Annabeth leans in to follow the sightline of his arm and gets a whiff of salt. Brine? Her head turns from the courts in the distance to Percy’s profile, the plastered down hair over his ears. Salt water. The ocean? The bay?
“I see them,” she says.
“I used to play pickup there, in high school.”
Annabeth opens her mouth to ask what else he can recall, a friend or a direction he came from or went to, but she’s interrupted.
“Excuse me?” A man with a large and complex camera steps closer with an awkward wave.
Annabeth rushes to take one of her headphones out. “Yeah?”
“Hi, sorry—” He leans in further and lowers his voice. “I’m here for a proposal that’s happening in a few minutes, so I’m pretending to take photos of people so I don’t look suspicious. Do you want one?”
“Oh!” She flounders for a moment, glances to Percy, and realizes that they’re not being asked as a pair. Of course they’re not. “Um.”
Percy jerks his head towards the photographer. “Go for it,” he says. “You look cute.”
Later, when the photographer—Matan—sends her the photograph, Annabeth doesn’t see the fluffy white clouds or her shirt tucked perfectly into her pants, or even the natural way she’s resting an arm against the stone wall of the castle. Instead, she sees the tiny pink flush blooming on her face and the way she’s leaning ever so slightly into the empty space by her side.
Annabeth puts her headphones in, actually planning on listening to music for once. As she waits for the F train, ignoring the ghost trying to get the attention of a young woman in a skirt suit, she opens Spotify and types in ‘Spanish Harlem.’”
The first result is an Aretha Franklin song. Annabeth taps on it, puts her phone away, and lets her eyes glaze over as she listens.
“Baby, come on,” the ghost pleads. “Just look at me. I’m sorry, Jess. I just need you to know I’m sorry.”
The F train pulls into the station. The ghost’s words are drowned out, and so is Aretha Franklin, and Annabeth’s hair whips across her face, but then the train stops and everything goes still and comes rushing back.
“Walk up, you’re embarrassing me,” Percy says from somewhere behind her.
Annabeth rolls her eyes in annoyed silence. Percy means walk faster but he never actually says it that way. She scrambles up the last few steps of the 116th street station two at a time, moves to the side at the top, and watches as tired looking guys in paint splattered jeans and dusty backpacks speed past her like horses let out of the gate.
Percy comes up the stairs last, shaking his head.
“I wasn’t even going that slow,” she complains.
“Tell that to those guys who just got off shift. What time is it, 2:45?”
Annabeth glances at her watch, cheap and analog since her dyslexia messes with digital numbers. It’s 2:51. “How did you—”
“Union, he was in a 79 hat. Shift was done at 2:15.”
She gapes at him.
“What? You’ve gotta keep your eyes on. Yo, watch your step.”
Annabeth narrowly avoids stepping in dog poop. “That was annoying.”
“Me saving your shoes?”
“You immediately being right.”
He leans a little to look at her more closely, then grins. “Wait, you’re serious.”
Annabeth walks up. She has no idea where she’s going, but then again: neither does he.
“Hey, wait!” Percy comes into view in her peripheral vision. “Now you’re going fast, shit. What bothers you about being wrong?”
“I wasn’t wrong,” Annabeth immediately refutes. “You were right. There’s a difference.”
“Dude.”
Annabeth makes a frustrated noise in her throat. “I don’t like not knowing things, okay? Is that so crazy?”
“I never said it was crazy,” he says.
“Dude,” Annabeth imitates. “Give me a break.”
“Sorry I know my literal hometown better than someone who moved here a month ago? Yeah, dude.”
Annabeth makes a face. “I still hate it.”
“Hate it all you want, girlypop. You’re a fast learner, if it helps.”
“It does help,” she admits.
“You navigated the transfer at Union like a pro,” he says. “Truly. I hate 14th Street.”
Annabeth smiles to herself, just a bit, her face turned away from him. Percy, in her experience, isn’t the type to pass out compliments he doesn’t mean. To know, in his eyes, that she’s learning a city known for its size and complexity, means more than she thought it would.
Of course, so much of it is because of him. The rocks turned over and nooks and crannies explored; wet footsteps no one else can see, leading her around like Ariadne’s thread.
“I know the yellow line best,” she says. “Those transfers are easiest for me.”
“Barf at calling it ‘the yellow line,’” Percy says, “but good to know. We’ll get you comfy on the 4/5/6 before long.”
“That’s your line?”
He nods. “Yeah. This is all…familiar. Weird kind of deja vu.”
“Anything in particular?”
“Those burritos will change your life.” Percy jerks his chin towards an innocuous looking corner store. It doesn’t look like it sells burritos, but Percy sounds confident enough for her to believe him.
“You can point,” Annabeth says. “No one else can see you.”
“Okay, C- for bedside manner. Sorry I grew up in a place where pointing at the wrong guy gets you beat up.”
“I’m just saying,” Annabeth mutters.
“Well, it’s not so easy to be invisible and then have some west coast chick tell you that you’re actually dead. I’m processing.”
Annabeth sighs. She was being a bitch not even two minutes ago, so she can give him a pass for doing the same. “Sorry.”
Percy sighs back, trying to brush some of his wet hair out of his face only to have it plaster right back over his eyebrows with a new stream of water. “Me too. I don’t need to take it out on you. This is really nice of you, you know?”
Annabeth shrugs. “All in a day's work. Anything else ring a bell?”
“Kinda. Do you mind if we, I don’t know, just walk?”
Annabeth agrees easily. It’s still exciting for her: walking around New York. The font of the street signs and the flags hanging from fire escapes and planes flying low on their way in and out of LaGuardia. The city of dreams, unfolding under her feet.
“How did you know I'm from the west coast?” She asks. They’re vaguely making their way east, meandering down quiet avenues and pausing every once and a while so Percy can turn in a low circle, shrug, and keep moving.
“Accent,” he says.
“I don’t have an accent!”
He raises his eyebrows.
“Seriously? Ugh.”
He swallows a laugh, lips pulled into his mouth.
“Shut up! What about that was west coast?”
“I don’t know, the snobbery?”
“Percy.”
“Oh, relax, I’m mostly messing with you. It’s more in, like, the rhythm. You kinda hit the ends of your sentences more than the middle.”
“And you noticed that?”
“Well, I don’t know if you’ve noticed,” he says, leaning in as if sharing a secret, “but you’re kind of my only friend at the moment.”
Annabeth snorts.
Percy grins in response. “Plus, you know. You hear a lot of different accents in a city like this. This guy from New Zealand paid for my lunch once because I knew he wasn’t Australian.”
As if on cue, a woman with a strong Jamaican accent blows past them, speaking rapid-fire into her phone. Percy gestures dramatically towards her with both hands.
“See?”
“Alright, alright,” Annabeth agrees. “I wasn’t doubting you, I promise.”
Percy opens his mouth to speak, but his expression freezes strangely before any sound comes out. His lips come together in a thin line. He takes a step towards the street, around the beat up metal barrier protecting a tree trunk, and stops by the trunk of a car.
Annabeth moves too, hoping to see what’s captured his attention. It’s just a car—a Prius. Light blue. There’s a Let’s Go Mets! bumper sticker, a back windshield in pretty desperate need of a wash, and a strange dent in the roof.
“What’s up?” Annabeth asks.
Percy doesn’t respond. One of his hands reaches out towards the trunk; for a single breath, one of his fingertips looks like it’s grazing the paint. The next moment it sinks through the metal as though the whole car’s made of air instead of Percy.
And damn if that hadn’t always been Annabeth’s problem. A life lived in between, wondering what’s real and what’s a reflection.
“Do you recognize it?” She asks.
“I don’t know,” Percy admits. “God, I’ve got—just no clue. No goddamn clue. I think I remember…” He rubs at his eyes, water streaming steadily down the back of his neck, soaking his t-shirt into an even darker blue. “A Camaro? And riding the subway all the time. I don’t know.”
Annabeth reaches out to put a hand on his back, remembers she can’t, and pulls it back before he can realize. “It’s okay,” she soothes, even though it really isn’t. “We’ll keep walking. We’ll find something.”
He turns around. His eyes are really just startlingly bright, astoundingly emotive.
“I know it feels like you’re lost,” Annabeth tells him, “but you’re not. You’re home, and I found you. It’s only a matter of time, okay?”
Percy nods. He steps back from the trunk, the Mets bumper sticker, the dented hood, and they walk together further into layered, overlapping streets of East Harlem.
In the diagonal light under the clanking Manhattan Bridge, Annabeth has the best burger of her life. Her sunglasses do almost nothing against the glare of the sun, but her eyes are rolling back in her head anyway. Percy’s laughing where he’s leaning against stained concrete. They’re next to a fruit stand advertising dragonfruit for $3.99 a pound.
The Q train roars past above them. The strangest parts of her life are quickly becoming the most beautiful.
Annabeth walks two blocks south from the 110th Street 1 station and balks once she realizes that the line wrapping around the corner of the block is her future. Scowling fiercely, her stomach rumbling, she finds the tail and joins in.
She opens up the notes app on her phone, makes the text as big as possible, and types out I THOUGHT YOU SAID WAITING IN LINE WAS FOR SUCKERS????
Percy leans over her shoulder and squints at her screen. A drop of water slips off his nose, lands on her phone, and blurs the word LINE. “Would now be a bad time to tell you that I’m super dyslexic?”
Annabeth turns to look him in the face and even manages not to jerk back in surprise when she realizes how close they are. After a second—the longest second she thinks she’s ever relatively experienced—she holds her phone up to her ear and mimes a call.
“Hey,” she says, looking right into Percy’s damp face. “Yeah, I just got in line. It’s crazy.”
“It’s always crazy at this time on a weekend,” he says with a shrug. “Worth it, though.”
“It better be.”
“See, it’s moving! It’s not even that bad.”
“It’s around the corner of the block!”
He grins. “Good thing you’ve got excellent company.”
“I didn’t know you were dyslexic,” she says, hoping the people next to her line aren’t listening into the random throughline of her ‘phone call.’
Percy doesn’t seem that fazed by her line of questioning. “Never much of a student. I always got an A in PE, though. The ADHD picked up the slack.”
Annabeth manages to avoid gaping in surprise. “Um, me too.”
“You got an A in PE?”
“Well, yeah, but I mean the dyslexia thing. And the ADHD.”
“Huh. Nice.” He holds up his hand for a high five, visibly remembers that he can’t actually give one, and drops it again. “We finally found something we have in common.”
“We have more than that in common,” Annabeth says. “We both like food.”
Percy laughs hard enough that his eyes crinkle around the corners. “Dude, that is so bare minimum. Everybody likes food.”
“And we love New York.”
“Also not super unique.”
“You know what I mean,” Annabeth says. “Not in the ‘Times Square’ way. In the…you know, the real way. The people, the noise, the parks.”
He smiles, affable and easy. It’s hard to see him the way they first met sometimes, so angry it slammed out of him like waves lashing against the shore. He also looks way more natural in the line than she or the few visible tourists in the crowd. With his mid-faded jeans, well-worn Mets t-shirt, and beat up (off brand) Vans, he looks casual and self-assured. Notwithstanding the wetness, of course.
“Yeah,” he says. “I know what you mean.”
Annabeth knows the moment the line progresses enough that she’s inside that Percy was right. It’s the most stereotypical New York bagel shop she could possibly imagine, from the standing fridge of cling-wrapped cups of orange juice and wire baskets of bagels to the linoleum floors and ancient letter board of options. There’s no seating, just one side for the line and one side for people waiting for their orders. It looks like something from a Seinfeld scene, only better, because Annabeth’s starving and the smell of freshly baked bagels is kind of turning her into a monster.
“What am I getting?” She asks, hungry enough that she’d be fine eating nearly anything. “Breakfast sandwich?”
She can see him make a face of distaste from the corner of her eye. “I mean, I’d usually say yes,” he starts, “but they don’t cook the eggs to order here. You’re better off with cream cheese and lox.”
“Don’t you mean ‘schmear,’” Annabeth mutters.
“Fuck off,” he says, rolling his eyes. “God, I never should’a taught you nothing.”
Annabeth’s eyes catch on a laminated paper sign hung up against the wire basket overflowing with sesame bagels. She reads it over twice to make sure her dyslexia isn’t messing with her. “They charge you 10 cents to toast the bagel? What the hell?”
The guy in front of her in line glances back with a mildly annoyed expression.
Percy clutches his heart. “God, I love this place. I hope they raise it to 20.”
“Next,” the guy behind the cashier says. His eyes are a little glazed over the way Annabeth remembers from her high school summer job working at Gelson’s.
“Everything bagel, scallion cream cheese and lox,” Percy mutters into her ear. Annabeth echoes him and adds an iced coffee. They shuffle past the cream cheese options to join the small crowd of people waiting for their orders—Percy makes faces at her and she tries not to laugh.
Once her order’s in her hand—not warm, since she really hadn’t wanted to pay the extra ten cents—she has to shove past the people in line holding the door open to get back out again. It’s a strange sort of euphoria, seeing everyone else still waiting, knowing she’s got what they haven’t.
“There’s nowhere to sit,” she complains.
“We could go to Riverside,” Percy says, pointing west. “Up here there’s a pretty good view of the Hudson.”
Annabeth’s already walking in the opposite direction. “Don’t think I don’t know that St. John the Divine is two blocks away.”
He groans, knocking his head back for the full effect. “A church?”
“The largest cathedral in the entire country?” Annabeth replies. “St. John the Unifinished, that managed to escape landmark certification for over thirty years so that they wouldn’t have to seek city council approval to continue construction? Come on.”
Percy grumbles the whole avenue over. Annabeth starts grinning the moment St. John comes into view and doesn’t stop even as they navigate their way into the park just to the south of the cathedral itself. There’s benches wrapped around the central foundation; Annabeth finds one without too many people around. Fewer people to look at her like she’s crazy.
“This better be the best bagel in the whole city,” she mutters, unwrapping the tinfoil and then the paper. Her mouth waters the second the smell hits her nostrils, fresh bread and salt and onion.
She takes a bite. Chews, then swallows.
“Well?” Percy asks, nearly bouncing next to her on the bench. “Was I right or was I right?”
“Shush,” she tells him. “I’m having a Ratatouille moment.”
“The strawberry and the cheese!” Percy exclaims, pumping his fist in victory. “I knew you’d love it.”
Annabeth opens her mouth to offer him the other half of the bagel and then takes another hasty bite when she remembers. Percy’s a ghost, and she’s eating a bagel alone on a bench.
What Annabeth wishes she could tell people is that the first trees to change in the fall are the ones with tiny, yellow wisps of leaves. They fill up the cracks of the sidewalk, bright and saturated against faded gray. She thinks maybe the people flowing through Ellis Island with whispers of the streets are paved with gold rushing through their blood had a point.
“What are you talking about? I love Queens,” Percy insists. “The Mets play there.”
“Then how come I’m always getting dragged into the city?” Annabeth counters.
“Um, hello,” Percy says, gesturing around them. “This is where shit happens.”
Queens probably also has farmer’s markets, especially in the craze that is autumn in the northeast, but Annabeth at least knows enough about New York to know that nothing really compares to Union Square. Even at 9:30 in the morning, little white tents dot each side of the walkway, apples spill out of crates, and the smell of mulled cider wafts through the rapidly thickening crowd.
It’s kind of like a movie. Or, maybe, movies were always trying to be something like this.
“Oh, that maple syrup place is insane,” Percy says, snapping rapidly the way he does sometimes when he’s excited. “Get the ginger stuff.”
Annabeth has no idea what he means by ginger stuff until she steps closer and sees they don’t just sell maple syrup but also chunks of flavored maple sugar. Annabeth buys a piece of the ‘ginger stuff’ and nibbles on it as they make their way through the rest of the market.
“Should I get on line for that cider?” Annabeth asks, nudging at his side and then swallowing hard when she gets only a freezing cold elbow instead of warm contact.
Percy cranes his neck to see the stall the line of twenty people is snaking towards before he realizes what she’s said. A grin splits apart his lips. “Annabeth! Look at you.”
“Are you proud of me?” She asks, popping another piece of maple candy in her mouth.
“For surely.”
Annabeth blinks, filing that one away as another New York-ism or Percy-ism or something in between.
“You’re such a local now. But that cider’s mid. You want one of the produce stalls that also makes cider on the side.”
“Heard.” Annabeth picks up her pace, weaving between slow walking couples and a few pushing carts piled high with flowers and vegetables. Percy follows the path she cuts even though he could walk through them all with no issue. He watches her try a sample of a cosmic crisp apple, laughs as she groans around the mouthful, and waits patiently as she pays for as much as she can reasonably afford.
Her tote bag digs into her shoulder under all the weight. Annabeth takes a big, shiny apple out, still a little warm from sitting in the sun, and lifts it to her mouth. She bites in with a crunch. The juice spills down over her fingers, makes rivers of the creases in her palm.
“Good?” Percy asks.
“So good.”
He looks content, despite being soaking wet on a crystal clear day.
“Do you…” Annabeth takes another bite of her apple to delay her own question. “Do you get hungry?”
Percy shrugs. Someone walks through him, but it doesn’t seem like he even notices. “Not really.”
“You don’t get cold, right?”
“No. I mean, I feel it.” He pushes his hair back and gets doused with another stream of water. “I can feel. I just don’t really…feel.”
“Makes sense.”
“It absolutely does not.”
“Yeah, I was being facetious.”
“Okay, little miss college degree.”
“It means, like, being inappropriate in a serious situation.” She quirks an eyebrow. “In a funny way.”
“Oh, we’re so facetious,” Percy agrees, leaning in with the expression that rolls across his face whenever he wants to make her laugh.
It usually works; this time is no different. Percy relaxes back with a self-assured sort of posture, like he’s proud of himself. He looks up; water drips down his neck, gets absorbed into the dark blue of his t-shirt.
Annabeth swallows hard. She wants to know him. She wants to know what strange, wonderful, random assortment of nature and nurture created someone just like him. What random, awful, hideous moment that cut it all short.
“I like the fall,” Percy says. His gaze is fixed on auburn trees overhead. “But it makes me a little sad, you know? Summer’s always been my favorite.”
“Yeah,” Annabeth agrees. “When I flew in, it was all so…green. Like a jungle. Summer on the west coast is all gold.”
Percy blinks at her, slow, like he’s trying to make friends with a cat. After a strange second delay, he says, “yeah?”
She hums. “I knew the fall got like this, I’ve seen photos, but it’s still kind of crazy to watch the colors change. There’s so many more colors. And the air smells different. On the west coast, summer just sort of…slips away. It gets gray and foggy in the bay and then it’s winter.”
“With no party? Fucksake.”
Annabeth barks out a laugh. “Yeah. Exactly.”
Jumpers and hoodies, boots and scarves. The first puffer jackets of the season, sunglasses still on at 6PM, crunchy brown leaves underfoot.
It’s not When Harry Met Sally. Annabeth only has one cable-knit sweater, and it’s in a dark gray, not cream. New York doesn’t slow down for changing seasons. If anything, it feels like the whole city speeds up; subway cars change from AC to heating, and one morning her walk to the subway is marked by a pale cloud every time she exhales.
The time falls back. Annabeth wakes up in the dark, for just a few months longer.
“We need to find somewhere to sit ASAP,” Annabeth tells her watery ghost, “because this smells so good I might cry.”
“Casa Adela never fails,” Percy says smugly. “That pollo is going to rock your world.”
“Okay then, Balto, mush.” Annabeth holds up her to-go bag, the smell wafting up as she moves. “I’m not New York enough to be able to eat this entire platter on the go.”
“Hey.” He points at her. “Balto was a legend, I’ll take that. There’s a garden around the corner, vamos.”
Casa Adela had looked cozy, the way a mom-and-pop shop should look, Puerto Rican flags plastered on everything, but there’s definitely a point of too cozy for them. Annabeth can’t very well sit and talk to thin air in a ten foot wide restaurant.
“We’re going to have to adapt soon,” Annabeth says.
“Huh?” Percy asks, turning his head back as he walks them down 5th street.
“It’s getting colder. The whole sitting outside thing won’t last much longer.”
“Right.” Percy slows so that they’re side by side.
“You said you can feel it,” Annabeth says, her sentence dragging up towards the end in a half-question.
“I can. Mostly. It’s just different.” He raises a hand and drags his fingertips through her shoulder. “What does that feel like?”
“Just a bit chilly for a second. It doesn’t last. What does it feel like for you?”
His jaw clenches and unclenches so quickly she almost misses it. He smiles. “Like nothing,” he says. “Hey, we’re here. Grab that bench, maybe?”
Maybe Annabeth’s spent her whole life desperate for attention from people who were actually there. She got perfect grades and got into atrocious levels of trouble and it never really made a difference. Dinner was at 6:30. Her father’s office door was closed.
Parents weekends came and went, and the perfect family unit of four with their matching, blended features—they stayed across the bay. Her dad called, maybe. She can’t remember.
Annabeth learned Greek to unpick the life of a fisherman whose ghost stubbornly lingered outside the library. She laughed at jokes no one could hear from the wannabe comic who never lived past sophomore year. One by one, they all turned and vanished, made identical by that glare in their pupil.
She hoped New York would be different, but even ghosts are all the same by the end.
..