Trials of Apollo 5

He tilted his head, as if wondering what other kind of man anyone would
possibly try to be. “Well, I’ll leave you to get cleaned up and dressed. We
don’t want dinner to get burned, do we, Estelle?”
The baby went into a fit of giggles as her father scooped her up and
carried her out of the room.
I took my time in the shower. I needed a good scrubbing, yes. But mostly
I needed to stand with my forehead against the tiles, shaking and weeping
until I felt like I could face other people again.
What was it about kindness? In my time as Lester Papadopoulos, I had
learned to stand up under horrendous verbal abuse and constant lifethreatening
violence, but the smallest act of generosity could ninja-kick me
right in the heart and break me into a blubbering mess of emotions.
Darn you, Paul and Sally, and your cute baby, too!
How could I repay them for providing me this temporary refuge? I felt
like I owed them the same thing I owed Camp Jupiter and Camp Half-Blood,
the Waystation and the Cistern, Piper and Frank and Hazel and Leo and, yes,
especially Jason Grace. I owed them everything.
How could I not?
Once I was dressed, I staggered out to the dining area. Everyone was
seated around the table except Estelle, who Paul informed me was down for
the night. No doubt all that pure joy required a great amount of energy.
Meg wore a new pink smock dress and white leggings. If she cherished
these as much as the last outfit Sally had given her, she would end up
wearing them until they fell off her body in burned-and-shredded rags.
Together with her red high-tops—which thankfully had been well cleaned—
she sported a Valentine’s Day color theme that seemed quite out of character,
unless you considered her sweetheart to be the mountain of garlic bread she
was shoveling into her mouth.
Lu was dressed in an XXL men’s work shirt with ELECTRONICS MEGA-
MART stitched over the pocket. She wore a fluffy turquoise towel around her
waist like a kilt, because, she informed me, the only other pants in the
apartment large enough to fit her were Sally’s old maternity pants and, no
thank you, Lu would just wait for hers to get out of the dryer.
Sally and Paul provided us with heaping plates of salad, lasagna, and
garlic bread. It wasn’t Sally’s famous seven-layer dip, but it was a familystyle
feast like I hadn’t experienced since the Waystation. That memory gave
me a twinge of melancholy. I wondered how everyone there was doing: Leo,