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I stopped, took him by the shoulders, and made him look me in the eye. “Grover, what aren’t you telling me? Why haven’t I ever seen you do that before, with the squirrels and everything?”

He hesitated. I got the feeling he was about to faint.

“Come.” I sat him down on the nearest bench, which happened to be outside a bakery. It wasn’t Papou’s Pastries, but the stuff inside smelled pretty good. “Wait here a sec.”

I went in and bought a slice of strawberry cheesecake for Grover, plus a couple of ice teas. I figured food might help him get his energy back.

As he nibbled his cake, I said, “Okay. Tell me.”

He shrugged listlessly. “It’s just…grounding myself like that? It’s pretty powerful magic. I can only do it because I’m a Cloven Elder.”

Grover was too modest. He rarely talked about it, but after the Battle of Manhattan, he’d been promoted to the council of the three most important satyrs in the world, which in my mind made him an elite boss.

“It’s dangerous?” I guessed.

“Oh…nothing I’d worry about,” he said. “Not a big deal. It’s just when I do that, when I connect with nature on that level, there’s always a small chance…”

“Yes?”

He nibbled more cheesecake. “That I might dissolve into nothing.”

Call me alarmist, but the idea of my friend dissolving into nothing seemed like a pretty big deal to me.

I expressed this in my usual calm way.

“WHAT?!”I shouted, and made the nearest fire hydrant explode (accidentally, mind you). The top of the hydrant shot into the air like a billionaire’s rocket, somersaulted a few times, and landed in the middle of Eighth Street.

“Grover—”

“I know.”

“Do you?” I paced back and forth, trying to contain my horror. A manhole cover by my foot blew open. “How could you? Why?”

“Can you sit down before you destroy any more city property?”

I paced back and forth a few more times before I was composed enough to join him on the bench. By then he had finished his cheesecake and both ice teas, because he eats when he’s nervous, or when he’s not nervous, or just when there’s food in the vicinity.

“Look, Percy…” He started picking at his fingers. His nails were more ragged than I’d noticed in a while. His goatee quivered. “I feel so bad about Hecate’s place.…I’m responsible.”

“Dude. You’renot.”

He gave me the sad eyes, the trembling lower lip. We could have been right back in sixth grade, when he used to hide at the back table of the cafeteria after getting bullied by the other kids at Yancy Academy.

“Except…maybe I am,” he said. “I was thinking Monday night, before everything went wrong…if you get this letter of recommendation, there’ll only be one more to go. Then you’ll be ready for college. And you and Annabeth will be gone. And I’ll…I’ll still be here.”

That hit me like a fastball in the stomach. All the anger got knocked right out of me, leaving nothing but guilt.

“Grover. Ah, man, we’d neverleaveyouleave you. You can come out to stay anytime. And we’ll be back.”

He sniffled. “I know. It’s just…I hate it. I’ll miss you two. And it’s selfish, so I haven’t said anything. I want to help. I really do. But part of me wonders…maybe that’s why I drank that strawberry potion. Subconsciously, maybe, but still…just to sabotage things. What if I did that? I couldn’t live with myself.”

I counted to five. I didn’t want to jump in too fast, because I got the feeling another denial wouldn’t help and I’d just end up flipping more manhole covers.

“We should’ve talked about this before now,” I said. “That’s on me. I should’ve realized how hard this has been on you, man.”

He wiped a tear from his cheek. “It’s not your fault.”

“Don’t do that,” I said, gently as I could. “Don’t brush it away.”