"Percy, you can't keep avoiding this forever," Annabeth insisted, pulling her long, blond hair into a ponytail.

"But there's a new exhibit at the Skyscraper Museum that I thought we could check out," I said, searching my jeans pockets and—aha!—pulling out the badly crumpled pamphlet I'd obtained expressly for this purpose.

"You're not going to distract me by…" Her voice trailed away as her eyes widened. "Simeon Hughes is giving a talk about the architectural designs being utilized at the next World's Fair! I just heard that they were going to be accepting amateur submissions for…"

This was one of the great things about dating a fellow half-blood. No matter how smart Annabeth is (and it's a lot), she can't control her ADHD any better than I can. If I can just get the word "joists" and "bearing walls" into the conversation a couple of times, then pretty soon we'll be out of here.

"Hey, I see that!" Annabeth accused, snapping me out of my (admittedly boring) daydream. "But nothing you say is going to get you out of filling out these college applications. Deadlines are almost here."

When she had told me she was going to stop by a little over an hour ago, I'd done a quick sweep of my room, stuffing dirty clothes into the hamper, getting the empty pizza box off the floor, and doing a bad job of making the bed. Not that it mattered now, with her massive pile of forms spread over the dark blue sheets.

"Of all the things I could be doing on my bed, homework is definitely the least fun," I groaned, a second before Annabeth's raised eyebrows caused my face to flush. "I meant sleeping. Or watching TV," I stuttered, gesturing vaguely at the wide-open door, kept that way per my mom's instructions whenever I had my girlfriend over.

"Right…" she sail, a secret smile curling the corners of her lips. "Come on," she prompted, patting the space beside her. "It really won't be that bad."

"Like I'm going to trust the person who translates books into Ancient Greek for fun."

"It's so that younger demigods can read Harry Potter and The Hunger Games like their classmates in a language that's easier for them to understand."

"Or they could just go watch the movie." Somehow, I didn't manage to foresee the pillow coming to smack me in the back of my head.

"I've seen movies get everything wrong from the female lead's hair color, to aging up the characters by several years, to completely getting rid of some of the main villains."

"Okay, okay, no need to get violent," I mumbled, finally bringing myself to pick up the first form. "Name," I read. "At least I know that one," I said, clicking my pen (not Riptide) and starting to write in "Percy Jackson."

"Perseus," Annabeth corrected. "You need to list your full name."

"Uggghhhh."

I confused the numbers in my address and poked a hole in the form while circling "male" before Annabeth decided that she would write all the answers down for me.

"G.P.A.?" she asked, pen poised.

"3.27," I answered, playing with a yo-yo I'd found on the bedside table.

"Are you sure?" Annabeth asked.

"Pretty sure," I shrugged. 'Report's on the fridge if you want to go check."

She came back a few minutes later, beaming a smile. "Why didn't you tell you'd improved so much?"

"I didn't think about it. Almost getting killed like three billion times tends to put the unimportance of grades in perspective," I pointed out, throwing the yo-yo toward the ceiling.

"You don't go from failing to getting mostly A's and B's without caring," Annabeth insisted.

"Or maybe you just talk about math equations way too much on dates and now it's stuck in my head," I told her. "Besides, I took Greek and Roman Studies as my history this year." Annabeth was still smiling. "Can we just move on the next question, please?" I begged her.

"Fine," she said, her fingers scanning for the next question.

"If you could be any animal, what would you pick?"

"You're kidding me. That's an actual question?"

"Colleges are placing more emphasis on personality and creativity these days."

"In that case…a Pegasus. That way I could hang out with Blackjack and Tyson or my dad would still be able to understand me."

"Percy!" Annabeth exclaimed, "You can't put a mythological animal. Mortals don't know they really exist."

"I thought you said the point of the question was to show my creativity."

Annabeth chewed on that a second, before eventually writing "Pegasus" neatly intot he fourteenth box.

I didn't even need to say anything for favorite food; she just filled out "Blue Chocolate Chip Cookies" right under the last question.

"Extracurricular activities?"

"Captain of the swim team," I thought out-loud. "Um…That's it."

"Percy, what are you talking about?! You're a camp counselor, a martial arts instructor (you can leave out the sword bit), you're a mentor for children from broken homes…"

"A) That's all stuff I do at Camp Half-Blood, which no-one's allowed to know about and B) Not all demigods are from "broken homes…" A little scorched by monster fire, maybe, but…"

"Of course, you can count it! The camp's registered with the government and at the end of high school, Chiron will supply us with whatever back-up paperwork we need support our claims. I listed my redesign of Olympus as one of my extra-curricular activities."

"You did?" I asked, startled.

"Yah, I just said that my blueprints were selected by a 12-person committee of distinguished individuals to be used in the creation of a new Senior Citizen Community. After all, I figured everyone who lives in Olympus is either centuries old or dead—sometimes both."

"I have never been more impressed with you than I am at this moment."

Annabeth rolled her eyes. "You're still a Seaweed Brain," she declared, emphatically.

It was almost—sorta, kinda, a little bit—fun after that as the two of us spent the next hour recalling a lot of our best adventures and trying to see how we could make it sound like something a normal high school student might have done. I was starting to feel pretty good about myself, especially about the time I spent "volunteering to clean up the Easter River" as code for when I used Poseidon's sand-dollar during the war with the Titans, although Annabeth still drew the line at "Olympic athlete."

"Looks like we're all done," Annabeth said, stuffing the forms into a manila envelope and spreading the little metal wings to seal it.

"You're not leaving, are you?" I asked, sounding sadder about the possibility than I really meant to.

"Well…" she began, leaning closer to me so that our lips were almost touching. "I suppose I have a little time before I need to be heading back…"

"Yes," I said, breathing in the strawberry smell of her. And man, even if I had accepted the gods' offer of immortality, I would never get tired of that electric zap that ran through me every time we were together.

Just as we were beginning to tilt backwards into the bed, we heard a strange crinkling noise underneath us. "What's that?" Annabeth asked, probably worried she'd forgotten form 22A of the never-ending college applications. Instead, she discovered the pamphlet for the Skyscraper Museum. "Oh my gods!" she exclaimed. "Percy, they're still open to six!" Already, she had her jacket on and was standing, waiting at the door.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the definition of a self-fulfilling prophecy.