Annabeth crouched, her dagger in hand. Grover gripped her arm, trying to keep her from leaping into the fight. Not that she could hurt Old Age with a knife, but that wouldn’t stop her from trying.
As much as I appreciated the sentiment, I couldn’t let her take the risk.
“Over here, diaper man!” I yelled. “I’m your opponent, not her.”
Gary turned, narrowing his eyes. “So you are.”
Then he charged.
Well . . . I say charged. It was more of a determined hobble.
I had time to think, A plan would be really good now.
Then he was on me. He tackled me and pushed me backward—right into a tetherball pole. My spine creaked, but the pole kept me upright, even gave me some leverage.
I locked my hands around Gary’s biceps. My arms groaned. My vision dissolved into black and white strobe flashes. I managed to push Gary forward one step, then two. I was fueled not by strength but by desperation—and my rally didn’t last.
Gary clamped his bony fingers around my shoulders. I am here to tell you: shoulders have a lot of nerve endings. Gary found them all. I screamed as he pushed me back against the tetherball pole. The metal began to bend.
“You have lasted longer than most,” the old man conceded. “It was a good try.”
A good try, I thought, my mind drowning in pain.
Awesome. I couldn’t win, but at least I’d get a participation award from Old Age. After I dissolved into dust, Annabeth could frame the certificate and keep it in her dorm room when she went to New Rome University by herself.
My legs trembled. Pressed between Gary and the pole, my rib cage felt like an overtightened piano frame, ready to snap and implode.
I thought about how much pain I was going to cause Annabeth. I’d promised I would never leave her again. When we left this life, I wanted it to be together, many years from now, when we were old and gray. . . .
Wait a minute.
I felt some strength come back into my legs. I was still in agony, but maybe I was getting crushed a little more slowly?
I remembered something my buddy Jason once told me. In a moment of crisis, he’d had a dream that he was an old man, married to his girlfriend, Piper, with a bunch of grandchildren running around. He hadn’t taken the dream as an iron-clad glimpse of the future. When it comes to mortal lives, the Fates never hand out money-back guarantees. But he told me that wasn’t the point. When he’d needed it most, that vision had made him feel like there was a way forward—something to live for and fight for.
I dug my fingers harder into Gary’s arms. He grunted in surprise.
I thought about a conversation I’d had with Paul a few months back. I’d teased him about how he was getting more gray hair every year. He’d said, “Hey, getting older sucks, but it beats the alternative.” I didn’t really get that at the time. Were the only choices really dying or getting old?
When you’re a demigod, you worry a lot about staying alive. You hardly ever think about old age. I’d been so focused on just making it out of high school, becoming an adult . . . but maybe that wasn’t the ultimate goal. Getting old might be scary and difficult. It involved things I didn’t want to think about, like arthritis and varicose veins and hearing aids. But if you grew older with people you loved, wasn’t that better than any other alternative?
I glanced at Annabeth and Grover. We’d been through so much together. I imagined Annabeth with silver hair and wrinkles, chuckling as she called me Seaweed Brain for the four millionth time in our lives. I imagined Grover with tufts of white hair coming out of his ears, his back hunched as he leaned on a cane, bleating as he complained about his aching hooves, then maybe taking a nap on a bench in our beachside garden while I sat next to him, resting my aching bones as I watched the waves and smelled the sea air. Aching bones weren’t hard for me to imagine. Actually, the rest wasn’t hard to imagine, either.
Gary expected me to wrestle him. And unless I died young, I couldn’t beat Old Age. But what if I embraced him?
It was a ridiculous idea. Stop fighting and just hug it out with Geriatric Gary?
My knees started wobbling again. I had maybe one second before he crushed me against the tetherball pole.
I loosened my grip and wrapped my arms around the god.
Then I said what I was pretty sure would go down in history as the dumbest last words ever: “I love you, bro.”
Gary froze.
I hugged him so hard he hiccupped.
“What is going on?” His voice quavered as he loosened his grip on my shoulders. He was so surprised, I probably could have pushed him down onto one knee, but somehow, I knew that was the wrong move. I just kept hugging him.