two
The train’s fluorescent lights flickered slightly as we sped through the countryside, casting weird, shifting shadows around the train. Peggy was practically vibrating in her seat, brown eyes alight with excitement as she twirled a strand of her wavy dark brown hair around her finger.
“Alright Nadine, hear me out,” she said, which immediately made me not hear her out. “What if, instead of worrying about the weird guy watching us, we just—oh, I don’t know—pretend we’re spies to throw him off? Like, start speaking in code, make shady handoffs, maybe even wear disguises?”
“Because the goal is to not get caught, and we don't have disguises,” Nyla said. She sat across from me, back straight, arms crossed over the front of her Camp Half Blood shirt. Her dark brown eyes flicked toward the reflection of the trench coat guy in the train window before returning to her notebook. “Drawing attention to ourselves is probably the worst idea we could have.”
Peggy scoffed. “Worst idea you’ve heard. I think it’s genius.”
I sighed, tucking a stray curl behind my ear. My hair—brownish blonde, wild, and completely uncontrollable—was already starting to frizz from the humidity in the train car. I glanced at Nyla, whose neatly braided black hair was contrast to mine. I never understood how she was able to keep her hair that neat.
Nyla sighed and snapped her notebook shut. “we should be careful. We’re on a quest because of a prophecy, and now we’ve got a guy tailing us. That’s not a coincidence.”
Peggy leaned in like she was about to unveil some grand conspiracy. “Maybe he is the prophecy.”
I rubbed my temples. “That’s not how prophecies work.”
Peggy threw up her hands. “Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t realize you had a PhD in Fate. Did you get that in between sword-fighting and being the golden child of Apollo?”
“Ellen claims to be the golden child of Apollo, I’m the bronze child at best” I say "and I actually have a PhD in defenestration."
"what's defenestration?" Peggy asks Nyla. Nyla doesn’t respond and just rolls her eyes.
The joke didn’t shake the feeling gnawing at the back of my mind. Something was coming—I could feel it in my bones. And if the prophecy was right… the truth wouldn’t be easy to find. Not in a city like Chicago.
Prophecies are normally vague, but they usually give you something to go off of. Take this old prophecy for example:
Seven half-bloods shall answer the call
That immediately gives you something to go off of. 7 half-bloods. That prophecy hasn’t happened though. It was said so long ago I wonder if it expired. My prophecy is a lot more vague. We only know to go to Chicago because of someone else. Our camp, Camp Half Blood, which is a safe haven for demigods or ‘half-bloods', is the only way to keep us safe from monsters who want to hunt us down. It is a satyrs job to find these half-bloods and take them to camp safely.
One of those satyrs is a guy named James. He was on his way to pick up a demigod when he started to sense a group of monsters nearby. It isn’t rare for monsters to attack in groups, but apparently there were too many monsters to just be ganging up on one half blood. James did what he was supposed to, take the half-blood safely to camp and the monsters never attacked. That might seem like a good thing that the monsters never attacked, but that also has to mean that they were after something bigger. Chiron then issued a quest, and the three of us were picked to go on it, and off to Chicago we went.
In order to go on a quest, we have to get a prophecy from the oracle of Delphi. Thankfully she is a dead corpse who lives in the attic of the big house. I never really got the story behind why she is, well, dead. She gave us a prophecy, and this is what it said:
They who hold the vat of knowledge
Hold the path to a hopeful passage
It bends the years, both near and far,
To write the truth beneath the star.
No knowing gaze, no path to see,
Yet in her hands, the key shall be.
The goddess waits, just she will know,
Who has freedom and who can’t go
It makes no sense, and it is a lot more vague than any prophecy I've heard. I’m probably overthinking it. Prophecies never make sense. Thinking about it is probably just a waste of time, but that doesn't stop me from being nervous.
The mysterious guy two rows back began to get up. I stiffened and got ready for a fight. He walked past us and went into the bathroom. Thank the gods. I know we will have to deal with him eventually, but now is not the time. I was about to go back to theorizing about the prophecy when the train stopped. The guy on the speakers announced that we were in Chicago, so I grabbed Peggy and Nyla and we walked out to the streets of the city.
After coming out of the train, we tried to piece together what the prophecy meant. We decided that we needed to be looking for something that could be considered a vat of knowledge. I have no idea what that would mean.
"Could this be what we're looking for?" I wonder.
"What? The trash can?" Nyla asks.
"No, this" I explain, holding up a cat trying to eat a piece out of the garbage. He only then realized he was being carried like a baby, and he screeched. His meow echoed off the walls of the small alley we were in. he would make a great vocalist.
"I'll name him Dave," I exclaim.
"that's great, but I doubt he is a 'vat of knowledge'. We need to look somewhere that isn't in a filthy alleyway behind a McDonalds," Nyla says. I hate to agree with her, but I agree with her. This alley smells like Godzilla farted back here.
"we could go to the McDonalds, you know to regroup and figure out what to do next?" Peggy says. She's been trying to get us to go to McDonalds from the moment we stepped off the train.
"fine," Nyla says, giving in.
We walk out of the dark alley to the bright streets of Chicago, and turn left into a slightly worn down McDonalds. Dave the cat follows us, and I decide to pick him up. It can't hurt to have an extra pair of eyes.
The rusty old McDonalds wasn't what I would consider the best place to regroup, but no one was going to stop Peggy from going in there. Dave climbed onto my shoulder as we walked into the building. I was surprised that animals would be allowed inside the McDonalds, but no one seemed to notice, or care.
After ordering our food, we go to the back of the restaurant to wait for our food. We start a random conversation about the possibility of flying fish when I see the same trench coat man from out of the corner of my eye. He's looking nervously around the McDonalds, as if he is afraid he will get caught doing something. He sees me and immediately looks away, suddenly very interested in the ketchup stain on his table. I wander what that's about. He doesn't seem to be a monster, otherwise he would have killed us a long time ago, but I see no other reason he would be following us around.
Before I can overthink anything, the waiter comes by with our food. Despite all my worries, I am still quite hungry. Peggy doesn't think twice before immediately diving into her happy meal. I start to eat mine at a normal pace, while Dave the cat starts to eat my fries. He sits on the table at the verry edge of the booth, eating the fries like there's no tomorrow.
"As much as I'm glad that you've made a new friend, Nadine, we should probably give him a bath. He smells disgusting" Nyla says, "you can probably wash him out in the sink in the bathroom."
I nod and go to pick up Dave the cat. He does smell pretty bad. He doesn't squirm in my arms as much, but it is still obvious he doesn't want to be heled. I immediately start to feel bad for what I'm about to do. As I walk by the trench coat guy, he gets up in front of me.
"Nadine Baudelaire, you’ve got to take this," he says, and hands me a book. Before I can question him about it, he goes to leave the McDonalds. I continue toward the bathroom, confused as to why a man followed me all the way from New York to Chicago to give me a book.