Annabeth was ten and she had been at camp for three years and she had the specific quality of someone who had stopped being a child without becoming an adolescent — not rushed, not premature, simply genuinely herself at a speed that had nothing to do with age. She was who she was going to be, fundamentally, already. The years ahead would make her larger and more capable but not different in kind.
She had also, over two years of library afternoons and capture the flag and the general proximity of people who take each other seriously, become his closest intellectual companion at camp.
This was not friendship in its softest form — she was not soft and he did not require softness. It was the specific kind of friendship that is built on the foundation of two people who think at the same speed and have found that rare thing: someone to think with rather than at.
They were in the library one September afternoon when she said, without looking up from the scroll she was annotating: 'You knew Luke was going to leave.'
He was quiet for a moment. 'What makes you say that?'
'You weren't surprised. You were sad, which means you cared, but not surprised. And you had been spending more time with him this summer than any other summer. Like you were—' She paused, choosing the word carefully. '—making sure of something before it was too late to make sure.'
He looked at her. She was ten years old. She had grey eyes that did not miss anything and a mind that organized what it didn't miss into patterns and a pattern had just resolved clearly enough to say out loud.
'Yes,' he said.
She put down her stylus. She looked at him with the full weight of her attention. 'How much do you know that you haven't told anyone?'
'Enough to be careful about,' he said. 'Not everything. More than is comfortable.' He paused. 'I'm going to tell you some of it when the time is right. I haven't because the right moment matters — some information is only useful after you have other information, and I don't want to give you something you can't do anything with yet.'
She processed this for a moment. He could see her doing it — the actual visible work of a precise mind evaluating a statement for its structural honesty. 'You're not lying,' she said finally.
'No.'
'And you're not being condescending about what I can handle.'
'Definitely not.'
'You genuinely think the timing matters.'
'I do.'
A pause. She picked up her stylus again. 'All right,' she said. 'I'll wait.' Then: 'But when the time is right — all of it. Not a managed version.'
'All of it,' he agreed.
She went back to her scroll. He went back to his. The library was quiet around them, the autumn afternoon warm through the high windows.
He thought: I will tell her about Percy Jackson before Percy Jackson arrives. I owe her that much lead time — she is the one who will matter most to his success, and she should not go into that relationship blind if it can be helped.
He thought: one more year. One more year and then I tell her what is coming.
He thought: she will handle it exactly right, because she handles everything exactly right, because she is Annabeth Chase and that is simply what she does.