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Fucking.
God.
There’s a shrill, ringing sound in my head that ends a few seconds later when the sounds of the party tumble back in.
Maybe the episode earlier was worse than I thought. Maybe I’ve been hospitalized. Maybe I’ve imagined this entire aircraft carrier party. Maybe I’m frighteningly ill, and that’s why I just heard Apollo announce Artemis is mine with total confidence.
I flip through my memories of the day, searching for weird gaps that would account for this situation. I got up. I lifted weights at the gym across from my apartment. I went to Daisy’s house. Both of us—and Hercules—went across the street to my dad’s house. We came to the getting-ready event together.
We got ready.
Daisy asked me if I was okay, so she would have noticed if I suddenly broke with reality and forgot key details of my life during our manicures.
Thus readied, we came to the aircraft carrier—Daisy kept whispering aircraft carrier into my ear, and I kept laughing—and clapped when Calliope and Orion made their entrance.
We milled around.
We’re still together post-milling. Daisy is frozen at my side, Hercules silent. I would love to turn toward them and ask did you hear that, too? through my teeth. I’ve spent many an hour honing my decision-making skills, both with others and by myself, and second-guessing my own reality is an incredibly disturbing sensation.
Nothing from today suggests that I’ve slipped into an alternate timeline or suffered a brain injury or been beset by an unknown affliction that would cause my reality to be in doubt.
So this has to be happening.
This is happening.
“Yours?” Senator Chris Walsh says, his nose wrinkling with an amused smile. It’s an open invitation for Apollo to explain himself.
This is when Apollo will say, my sister. He might even say, my adoptive sister. That won’t explain why I can’t be Chris Walsh’s future First Lady, but it would give his protective outburst a veneer of?—
Of something. Some kind of veneer. It would put his outburst into a context.
Any context would be nice.
Apollo tilts his head as if he’s indulging Senator Chris Walsh’s ignorance on a lark. “My fiancée.”
Daisy makes a choking sound that’s so soft that the party sounds probably cover it up for everyone else. She slips her hand into mine and squeezes, and then slowly, very slowly, pulls it behind my back.
What is she doing? Writing a note on the palm of my hand so we can communicate? Twisting my arm so—what? So we can run away into the crowd and hide behind our dads? There’s a certain appeal in hiding behind our dads, actually, because they would immediately try to find out what we were hiding from and rid the earth of that thing. It doesn’t matter that Daisy and I are in our twenties. Our dads are still six five and it’s perfectly possible to hide behind them.
But, though I feel an almost overwhelming nostalgia for being a little kid and thinking my dad was all-powerful and could save me from anything, even an awkward situation at a party, I don’t need to hide behind anyone’s dad.
That’s the polar opposite of what I need to do.
What I need to do, for my sake and Apollo’s but especially for Calliope’s and Orion’s, is take inventory.
Firstly and most obviously, Apollo isn’t okay. He was a sickly, feverish red when he stumbled—literally stumbled, which is not a thing Apollo allows himself to do in normal circumstances—out of the thick of the party. The way he glows feels weird and unsteady, like he’ll spontaneously combust any second. I suspect another episode. That’s bad for many reasons that we’re not in a position to discuss.
Secondly, Apollo has announced that we’re engaged—oh my holy freaking fucking God, oh my God, oh my God—within earshot of my best friend slash cousin slash sister Daisy and her fiancé, Hercules, who is Apollo’s adoptive brother. Functionally, he has just told our entire family that we are engaged. To each other.
Thirdly, other people have noticed.
I’ve been aware of the party in a more granular way than other people since we arrived on the Intrepid. Sure, my dad and Uncle Poseidon were the main event planners, but Calliope is my dad’s youngest child. One doesn’t simply abandon a man experiencing that level of emotion. One backs him up. One makes sure that the party is going off as elegantly as possible.
There was a minor hiccup about fifteen minutes after we arrived, when Ares, Apollo’s biological older brother and my adoptive eldest brother, arrived in what I can charitably describe as a tizzy. His face was red, his tie was askew, and his attention was wandering. I fixed that with a glass of champagne, dragged him into posing for some press photos with Daisy and Hercules, and sent him in the direction of some hors d’oeuvres.
Ares is not currently in eavesdropping range of this conversation. Neither are my parents, or Daisy’s, or Uncle Poseidon and Aunt Ashley. Calliope, Orion, Castor, and Pollux are elsewhere.
But the whispers around our group are increasing. A big, huge rock has been dropped into the pond of the party, and the ripples will reach the rest of the family very, very soon.
