𝟬𝟬𝟭. nothing I had to remember

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⠀ ╲⠀ ╲⠀♡ ╲ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

⠀⠀⠀ ♡⠀ ╲⠀⠀ ♥

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"LUKE, YOU JERK!" Twelve-year-old Aera shouted, stretching her hand as high as it could reach. "Give it back!"

"Not a chance," the sandy-haired boy teased. He held her sheathed celestial bronze sword higher in the air and smirked down at her, his set of porcelain white teeth gleaming blindingly bright in the afternoon sun. Stupid Luke and his stupid perfect teeth.

"It's mine," Aera growled. "Chiron said I could have any weapon from the armory if I passed your training today."

"You're not ready for a blade this big yet," Luke told her, the skin between his eyebrows creasing. "What if you hurt yourself?"

Aera kicked the sand at her feet. With their seven year age difference, Luke was like an older brother to her but sometimes he acted more protective than her own father.

"What if I hurt you?" she shot back.

"With all that spunk," Luke said with a chuckle, "you might as well join Cabin Five for Capture the Flag tonight."

The son of Hermes exploded in laughter as Aera pounced at him. She chased him all around the bank of the ocean, threatening to shove his flying shoes up some very dark, very unpleasant places.

Meanwhile, just a few leagues away, their friends, Annabeth Chase and Silena Beauregard, were lounging peacefully on beach towels on the shore of Long Island Sound, listening to the back-and-forth lull of the crashing waves. Suntanning, Silena had her face covered with a large orange sun hat while Annabeth had hers covered with a large textbook about the history of the gods.

"Oh, here's a question," Annabeth said, sitting up and criss-crossing her legs together. "If you could be an Olympian, what would you be the goddess of?"

"Hmm..." Silena hummed, deep in thought. "That's a good one." Her hand skimmed across the heart-shaped box of deluxe chocolates her father had sent her from his shop. She delicately popped one drizzled in white chocolate into her mouth. "Maybe the goddess of chocolates? Or sweets?" She handed Annabeth a chocolate. "You?"

"I'd want to be the goddess of architwecture," Annabeth replied, mouth full of chocolate, "so I could build things forever."

Silena smiled affectionately at her younger friend, wiping the chocolate off Annabeth's mouth with her thumb. "That's a good answer."

"Why would anyone want to be an Olympian?" Having overheard their conversation, Luke scoffed when he flopped down in the sand next to them. "They're a bunch of self-centered half-wits."

"Luke..." Silena warned.

The daughter of Aphrodite studied the sky warily, as if something scary would come out of it, but before anything bad could happen, Aera finally caught up to Luke, kicking sand up everywhere as she trapped him in a headlock. Though, trapped was a rather generous term; it was clear the older boy was letting himself be manhandled by the girl three times smaller than him.

"What?" Luke challenged, unfazed by Aera's skinny arm choking his neck. "If what I said makes the big guys up on Mount Olympus unhappy, that's their problem. They can come down here and tell me to my face."

Silena adjusted the rim of her sun hat nervously. Annabeth quietly dusted the sand Aera had gotten everywhere off her thigh. Aera, who was too upset about her confiscated weapon to care about Luke's sudden change of mood or the gravity of their conversation, quipped, "One look at your big ugly face would be enough to scare them all off."

Luke's mouth broke out in a crooked grin. The long white scar winding from the bottom of his eye down to his chin glinted in the light, making him appear dangerous and devilish, but also incredibly handsome. His aura was so powerful Aera had to look away. A pink blush crept onto her cheeks, which seemed to make Luke's grin widen.

When Aera had been claimed by Aphrodite, the first thing her half-siblings asked her was if she could set them up with the attractive demigod that had arrived at camp with her.

For years, Aera's ears had been blasted with her half-siblings' frighteningly obsessive infatuations with Luke, but she hadn't realized just how good-looking he was until he came back from his quest with that scar last month. Most would have lost all confidence after such a grueling scar permanently marred their face, but Luke seemed to carry himself even more proudly since then, almost as if the scar was a new part of his armor.

Not that he ever received any opposition. Everyone went crazy for his scar, or his rebellious attitude, Aera wasn't sure. Good looks were the only thing worshipped in Aphrodite's Cabin, and as of late, Luke had become their new god.

Aera wondered what it felt like to be that admired. Since everyone and their godly mothers were divinely exquisite around here, nobody paid much attention to her. Everyone in her cabin thought she was too ordinary to be a bombshell and everyone outside of her cabin thought she was too pretty to be a warrior. Annabeth was the smart one. Silena was the beautiful one. Luke was the handsome one.

Aera didn't seek recognition from anyone, but sometimes, she knew it must have felt good to be admired.

As if hearing the thoughts in her mind, Annabeth leaned closer to Aera, brushing her arm against hers in a coaxing manner. She adjusted the matching friendship bracelet Aera had made for her when they were younger, smiling softly. "That would be funny. Imagine the gods just fleeing at the sight of Luke."

Setting her melancholic thoughts aside, Aera played into Annabeth's jest. She always knew how to cheer her up. Just being around Annabeth always put Aera's mind at ease.

"Right?" She grabbed the bottom of Luke's face in her hand and squeezed his cheeks with her fingers, the matching half of their friendship bracelet shaking at her wrist. "You wouldn't even need to say anything. Just one look and—ckk!" Aera pantomimed snapping Luke's neck. "Then you could take over Olympus. Maybe get a new face while you're at it."

Annabeth and Silena both giggled.

Luke, himself, chuckled too, a satisfying sound tingling in Aera's ears. "Sounds like a plan."

"Speaking of plans," Annabeth said, her bright grey eyes locked on something over Silena's shoulder, "did you ever go on that date with Lee Fletcher, Sil?"

Silena shook her head lightly. "I promised to give Drew a mani-pedi that day. Why?"

Aera followed Annabeth's line of sight. Her friend, Charles Beckendorf, or Beckendorf as everyone called him, was walking through the dunes with his half-siblings from Cabin 9, transporting some kind of heavy metal to the armory. When he noticed Silena, he dropped the entire sheet of metal he was carrying on his foot.

Silena sprung to her feet and ran to his side at once.

Aera, Annabeth, and Luke howled with laughter. Beckendorf was Camp Half-Blood's most prized blacksmith, and the price of Aera's shiny new toy had been listening to him pour out his feelings to her about how much he liked her half-sister. Not that Aera was oblivious about his affections. You didn't need to be a child of the love goddess to know how massive of a crush he had on Silena.

As the three of them sat there together in the sand and watched Silena fuss over Beckendorf's no-doubt broken foot, Aera marveled in the way she could hear all of their heartbeats sync up.

Most of the time, being around too many people was overwhelming for someone with her gifts. Aera usually had to tune out the sound of countless patterns of breath, just to stay sane, but sometimes, when everyone was in a good mood, the rhythms of their heart would align in a perfect symphony.

It was moments like this that made Aera feel whole. Even if she was given the chance to become a goddess, she wouldn't have traded her friends for anything in the world.

What an utter fool she had been, to believe they shared the same sentiment.

Aera didn't want to wake up from her good dream. Though that memory had faded from years of repression, that part of her was still soft and warm. Returning to reality seemed to rob the comforting warmth she clung onto, throwing her back into the ice bath.

In any case, the first thing Aera knew was wrong was her hair. Even before her mascara was ruined, Aera was one split end away from cutting her own bangs. Having a bad hair day occurred once in a blue moon for the fastidious 16-year-old girl who often went out of her way to keep her silky black hair healthy and luscious with satin pillowcases and special hair vitamins.

But even after waking up on a bright yellow rolling metal death trap possessing no recollection of where she was, how she got there, or why she neglected to routinely apply moisturizer before going to sleep, Aera could still feel how unusually long her hair was, curling around the shell of her ear and winding down the gape of her neck to her bust.

Since she had turned thirteen, Aera followed a strict hair-cutting schedule with absolutely no leniency. On the 21st of every month, she trimmed off the same one and a quarter inch of hair to maintain a short, manageable length just above her collarbone.

Long hair is distracting, Luke had once told her. And demigods don't need any more distractions than they already have.

Trimming her hair soon became a rite of passage at the end of every month, a box Aera had to check off—along with several other beauty procedures—before entering the next 30 days of her dangerous, hair-trifling demigod life, so she couldn't even imagine which atrociously uncivilized spirit had come over her to jump the train on her perfectly established regime.

Aera peeled open her paperweight eyelids. She had fallen asleep with her forehead pressed against a window (which was not only the perfect way to get tangles in her hair, but also pesky sleep lines on her face). Her vision was still blurry, but she could make out a vague forest of green cacti in a bumpy desert rolling by through the glass. A few dozen teenagers were sprawled in the seats in front of her, chatting, listening to music, or drooling in their sleep. Was she on a school bus?

Where—?

Aera struggled to prop her head up, her dormant muscles stiff from sleep. Though she couldn't pinpoint its origin, a foul burning smell did figure-8's inside her nostrils. Dry claws left scratch marks in the chambers of her throat, but that wasn't important. What was important was what she was wearing and—Gods did what she was wearing make her want to chew her flawlessly manicured nails off.

Clad in the tightest pair of skinny jeans known to mankind, a pair of raggedy grey-white sneakers that looked like they had been mowed over by a truck, and a ridiculously hideous Christmas sweater with the horrific scene of two dolphins roasting marshmallows over a campfire stitched onto it, Aera's severely lacking appearance was more than enough to boost her systems right up.

What in Adonis' name...

When Aera shifted in her seat to locate a mirror, something stirred on her shoulder. That's when she finally noticed the boy who had been sleeping on her shoulder.

Aera had sensory overload to blame for being slow on drinking in her surroundings (not that drooling teenagers and the stench of body odor mixed with Hot Cheetos were much to take in anyway), but who on earth could Aera blame for the overwhelming ache that emerged in her chest when she locked eyes with him?

"Aera," the boy said softly, his voice raspy with drowsiness. Somehow her name sounded both foreign and familiar coming from his tongue. Aera's heart began to thud. "Aera," he said again, like he wasn't quite sure if that was who he was addressing. His eyebrows screwed tightly together. Then, to her ultimate surprise, he leaned over and pulled Aera into his arms.

Aera should have pushed him away. She should have told him off, reached for the nearest weapon, and taught him a lesson. Instead, her body fell limp in his arms, like two puzzle pieces falling into place. A tidal wave of indiscernible emotions washed over her. Her brain was flooded with white noise—a cacophony of impressions, feelings, and images that made no sense when mixed together on such a large scale. Without reason, Aera could only distinguish her own voice whispering instinctively in her mind.

Stay, it pleaded through the chaos. Stay here. Stay with me.

"Oh, give me a break!" an unknown girl's voice said. "You two just woke up and you're already flirting?"

Aera forced the boy off her so fast, he was thrown down into the aisle.

A couple of the kids on the bus started cackling, but Aera was far more concerned with the wet tears that had slipped from her eyes sometime through that weird exchange. Aera Kim was no crybaby, because crying meant puffy eyes and ruined mascara—the latter of which induced a panic that instantaneously seized her attention.

"Lend me a mirror, will you?" Aera asked the girl who had broken her out of that disgustingly emotional trance.

"Yeah, I'm okay," the boy groaned, hauling himself back onto the seat next to her. "Thanks for your concern."

The girl made Aera a funny face. Nevertheless, she complied to Aera's wishes and then turned back around to conversate with the curly-haired boy next to her. When Aera saw her reflection in the compact mirror, she almost hurled the circular object out the window.

Mascara dripped down her cheeks. Her hair was a frizzy, wavy bird's nest. Aera was sure she didn't even have chapstick on. A total hot mess if she had ever seen one.

Despite Aera's long-standing resentfulness towards all the gods and everything they stood for, her godly mother, Aphrodite, did pass down adequate beauty advice from time to time. One of the nuggets of wisdom that Aera inherited was that to truly enhance your beauty, you first had to take care of things from within. From the core of what really made you ugly.

And at that moment, Aera decided it was the boy sitting next to her.

"You." Aera narrowed her eyes at him, mascara still streaking down her face. "Who sent you? It was Styx, wasn't it?"

The boy was made immediately uncomfortable on the hot seat, but that was what he got for ruining Aera's mascara. His eyebrows furrowed together again like he was having a migraine "Styx? Who are you—"

"UGHHHH!" Aera let out a loud noise of frustration. The boy flinched, but Aera was just getting started. "Aren't you all done ruining my life? What else do you want from me? My limited edition Hermés Birkin bag? My islands in the Bahamas? My BTS concert tickets?" Aera did a double take. "Okay, you can only have those if you have the power to reincarnate me as J-Hope's wife in my next life. Otherwise, forget it."

"Um..." the boy said. He didn't look very open to negotiation about her K-Pop concert tickets. "You've got it wrong. I don't want your concert tickets. I...Do I know you?"

Aera had half a mind to throw him off the seat again for his terribly outdated pick-up line, but admittedly the way he was looking at her with his pleading sky blue eyes made her melt a little.

Earlier, Aera hadn't had the chance to take a proper look at the boy, but when she did, she found his appearance to be...not bad. He had a scruffy head of close-cropped blond hair, gentle sky blue eyes, and a strong jawline rivaling the regal features of an ancient sculpture.

Unfortunately, his outfit had as much personality as unseasoned chicken breast—jeans, sneakers, a repulsively purple T-shirt, and a thin black windbreaker—though Aera probably had no right to rag on his fashion while wearing an ugly Christmas sweater with dolphins camping on it.

"If you're trying to butter me up," Aera said shrewdly, "save your breath. I might look nice, but I don't make nice with the monsters I'm about to send back to Tartarus."

"Tartarus?" His eyebrows screwed tightly together like he was having a migraine. "Monsters?"

Aera glared at him. It was his fault her mascara was ruined. And he didn't even seem completely gobsmacked by her and her divine beauty yet.

Am I not his type? she wondered. But I'm everyone's type.

She raised her chin at him. "Only a monster would have the guts to do what you just did."

"What I just did?" he asked.

Aera snapped the compact mirror shut. "Hug me."

A faint hint of red emerged on his face as he studied her carefully. Aera could picture the gears turning in his brain, trying to discern her words—which was an annoyingly slow process—but what bothered her more was how she couldn't sense his heartbeat at all.

Every mortal on the bus emitted a loud heartbeat like pounding on a drum that signaled her of their presence nearby. Aera had long mastered the art of drowning out certain pulsations to focus on specific targets, but even though they were sitting so close to each other, Aera had no grasp on where his heartbeat was. Or if he even had one.

"Sorry." He rubbed the back of his neck. "I don't know why I did that. In fact, I don't even know why I'm here. I...I don't even think I'm supposed to be here."

Aera tried not to roll her eyes. Key word: tried. "Are any of us supposed to be here? Maybe if the gods could keep it in their pants for about three seconds, they wouldn't have to worry about so many of their spawn running around like little ants."

"What are you talking about?" he demanded, scowling. The crease between his eyebrows deepened as if his migraine had turned into a lobotomy. "I'm not—"

"Whatever," Aera cut him off, turning back to the most pressing dilemma at hand: her appearance. She glanced around the school bus for something useful and discovered a medium-sized tote bag at the foot of her seat with the words: "LOOKS THAT KILL" printed on it.

Aera grabbed the bag and shuffled through it. Inside was almost everything she could pray for: a hairbrush, makeup wipes, lip balm, eyeshadow palettes, and even a small hand-fan that gleamed with bronze...

"Just hold off on that whole deadly monster gig until this bus stops," Aera ordered, trying to figure out what to do with her more critical hair dilemma. She could not be seen in public like this. "I get carsick when I slay demons on moving vehicles. And I have more important things to do than entertain whichever deity sent you to bother me. My hair is already messed up enough."

"That's not true," the boy told her with surprising finality as Aera began to go to town on her face. "The monster part, I mean. Not your hair."

Aera's jaw dropped. "Excuse me?"

"I mean," he tried again, "I'm not who or what you think I am—"

Had it not been for the teacher who yelled, "All right, cupcakes, listen up!" from the front of the bus, Aera would've stuffed that blond-haired monster out the bus window.

The teacher was obviously a coach. He had a wispy goatee and a perpetually sour face, like there was something moldy growing on his tongue. His beefy arms and chest pushed out against the nylon fabric of a bright orange polo shirt. His even more repulsively bright workout pants and Nikes were spotless white. He might have been intimidating if Aera wasn't exactly five inches taller than him. And she knew exactly who he was—what he was.

The second Aera recognized him, another wave of irritation surged through her while she patted cushion foundation onto her freshly cleaned forehead. She could recognize that ratty old baseball cap anywhere. Gleeson Hedge. If that old goat was here, that could only mean one even more aggravating thing. There were other demigods around.

Oh, this all had to be some elaborate plan to get back at Aera. It was everything she hated wrapped up in one disgustingly yellow school bus. A dreadful outfit? A semi-cute boy witnessing her at an all-time beauty low? More half-bloods to babysit?

Hedge stood up in the aisle. Immediately, one of the students called, "Stand up, Coach Hedge!" which would have been funny had the circumstances been more entertaining for Aera. Instead, she was stuck in the backseat with chapped lips and a mildly attractive monster.

Aera Kim was a long way from Olympus now.

"I heard that!" The coach scanned the bus for the offender. Then his eyes stopped on the blond boy beside Aera, and his scowl hardened. He must have sniffed out the issue.

Curling her eyelashes, Aera was preparing to temporarily team up with the satyr on steroids to end this as quickly as possible so she could go and get her hair professionally done when Hedge's beady eyes fell upon her with an even fiercer glower. Aera still wasn't sure exactly what she was doing there, but did a pageant queen wave anyway.

Hedge had no choice but to tamely divert his glare elsewhere. He cleared his throat. "We'll arrive in five minutes! Stay with your partner. Don't lose your worksheet. And if any of you precious little cupcakes cause any trouble on this trip, I will personally send you back to campus the hard way."

He hefted a baseball bat and swung it like he was hitting a home-run. Aera let out an amused scoff as she applied the finishing touches of her makeup. Whatever that goat lacked in height, he made up for in spirit.

The blond-haired monster peered back at Aera. "Can he talk to us that way?"

"Didn't I tell you not to bother me until the bus stops?" Aera snapped. He moved his lips to reply, but another idea came to fruition in her mind. "Can I really blame you, though?" She bat her freshly curled eyelashes at him. "I am pretty irresistible."

The girl sitting in front of them turned around and stuck her tongue out, feigning a gag. "Aera, please. Some of us are trying not to get carsick. Can't you wait until we actually get to the museum to flirt with Jason?" She then rolled her eyes and craned her neck toward the boy next to her. "See, Leo, this is why I don't believe in love. Jason and Aera flirt with each other all day and night and still act clueless about their feelings."

Jason? Aera mentally digested. What kind of name was Jason?

"This has to be some kind of a mistake," apparently-Jason said for the gazillionth time. "I'm not supposed to be here." He regarded Aera. "Are you?"

Aera scrutinized him with suspicion. What was he trying to play at?

The curly-haired boy next to the girl turned around and laughed. "Yeah, right! We've all been framed! I didn't run away six times. Piper didn't steal a BMW."

Piper blushed profusely. "I didn't steal that car, Leo!"

"Oh, I forgot. What did you say? You 'talked' the dealer into lending it to you?" Leo raised his eyebrows at Aera like, Can you believe her?

What Aera was having trouble believing was why this pair of misfits was butting into her conversation with Jason, the mascara monster.

The curly-haired boy's heartbeat was completely out of the park; both spasmodic and excessively loud. He was slim and scrawny, adorned with a mop of dark, disheveled curls, pointy ears, and a mischievous smile that gave Aera the impression he should not be left alone with any of her flammable beauty products. His long, nimble fingers wouldn't stop moving—drumming on the seat, sweeping his hair behind his ears, fiddling with the buttons of his army fatigue jacket.

The girl, on the other hand, seemed nice enough. Her soft heartbeat was anchored at a steady pace. She had chocolate brown hair that was choppy with thin, uneven strands braided down the sides of her oval-shaped face that Aera's meticulous hand was itching to re-plait herself. She wore faded jeans, hiking boots, and a fleece snowboarding jacket—a fairly questionable outfit, but she was the kind of pretty that didn't need any extra accessories for her beauty to shine. She didn't have any makeup on, but her eyes still drew attention to her face, rotating colors from a wheel of blue, green, and brown every time she blinked.

Aera envied the girl's naturally good looks while she knew it wouldn't be difficult to capture the little elf's affections and crush his puny heart. However, their lighthearted tone of voices and ease told Aera that they were supposed to be friends, but Aera could not, for the life of her favorite pair of Jimmy Choo's, remember who either of them were. What was even worse was how much they both reminded her of people she used to know...

"Who are you?" Aera blurted before her heart could start aching again.

Leo gave her a crocodile grin. "That's a good one, Aera."

"I don't know you either," Jason put in. "Any of you."

Leo's mischief tore across his face in another impish smile. "Sure. I'm not your best friend. I'm his evil clone."

Aera quirked a brow. "Why is that easier to believe than us being friends?"

"Ouch." Leo feigned a wince. "That one almost hurt, hot stuff."

"Hot stuff?" Jason repeated in disbelief.

Aera glared at him. "Why do you sound so surprised?"

Piper rolled her eyes and took a peek over her shoulder. "Yeah, Isabel's putting on her 8th layer of lip gloss right now. You don't have to keep acting like you're obsessed with Jason when she's not looking, Aera."

"Me?" Aera didn't trust her own ears. "Obsessed with him?"

"Did you already forget?" Leo snickered, but Aera could detect a faint hint of displeasure in his voice. "It was your genius idea last week to be Jason's fake girlfriend so Isabel would hop off his d—"

"That can't be right," Jason interjected. He seemed quite taken aback at the idea Leo was conspiring, which Aera didn't know was part of his act or downright offensive.

Either way, she fumed. "No, what isn't right is your—"

"Aera Kim!" Coach Hedge suddenly shouted from the front. "Problem back there?"

"Don't worry." Leo winked at Aera before she had a chance to respond. "I got this." He turned to the front. "Sorry, Coach! We were just having trouble hearing you. Could you use your megaphone, please?" Coach Hedge grunted like he was pleased to have an excuse. He unclipped the megaphone from his belt and continued giving directions, but his voice came out like Darth Vader's.

Everyone cracked up. The coach tried again, but this time the megaphone blared: "The cow says moo!" The kids howled, and the coach slammed down the megaphone. "Valdez!"

Piper stifled a laugh. "My god, Leo. How did you do that?"

Even Aera was suppressing a smile. "Not bad for a pipsqueak."

"Well, I don't know about pip but I certainly don't squeak." Leo slipped a tiny Phillips head screwdriver from his sleeve. He shot Aera a huge, crooked grin. "I'm a special boy."

Aera smirked. "That, I can believe."

"Guys, seriously," Jason interjected pleadingly, still looking around with considerable confusion. "What am I doing here? Where are we going?"

Piper knit her eyebrows together. "Jason, are you joking?"

"Yeah," Aera said breezily. She was a demigod, so some part of her remembered it was her job to protect fragile mortal brains from exploding around the supernatural whatnot. Plus, she had many bones to pick with this particularly easy-on-the-eyes monster, starting with that outfit. "Jason's just mad he looks like Johnny Bravo."

The miffed expression Jason loaded onto her made Aera giggle. Served him right for sleeping on her.

"No, wait..." Piper inspected Jason closely. "I think he's being serious."

"That's it!" Coach Hedge yelled from the front. "The back row has just volunteered to clean up after lunch!"

The rest of the kids cheered.

"Shocker," Leo muttered.

But Piper kept her eyes on Jason, like she couldn't decide whether to be peeved or worried. "Did you hit your head or something, Jason? You really don't know who we are?"

Jason gulped. "It's worse than that. I don't know who I am."

He was being melodramatic enough to give Dionysus a run for his drachmas, but the hair vitamin that was harder to swallow was that Aera was actually starting to believe his ignorance to be true.

In addition, Aera couldn't remember the last time she had sat among other kids her age. For the past three years, her only company had been a vicious army of man-eating monsters and the boy of her dreams who was much older than her.

And a field trip in transportation less than first class? Completely unheard of. Aera had once raked across the globe in a wicked plan of world domination, but even mortal public school was terrifyingly uncharted territory.

Even worse was that she couldn't remember the last time she had properly brushed her hair.

"Something wrong with your wrist?" Jason asked as the yellow rolling metal death trap pulled up to some stucco red building in the middle of nowhere.

Aera mentally cursed herself. She hadn't noticed that she was rubbing her wrist again. Aera used to wear a friendship bracelet every day on her left wrist until about five summers ago when she realized excessive sentimentality wasn't a very fashionable accessory. That and the person who shared the other half of that bracelet with was a total backstabbing liar.

"Did you remember something?" Jason asked.

Aera thought about the past and how much she wished she could forget it ever happened. Some habits were just too hard to shake.

She shook her head. "There's nothing I had to remember."