We Visit the Garden Gnome Emporium

**We Visit the Garden Gnome Emporium** is the fifty-ninth chapter of The Gift of a Best Friend. It was first published on May 22nd, 2018.

## Chapter

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**Annabeth's POV**
We continued walking through the woods along the New Jersey riverbank, the glow of New York City making the night sky yellow behind us, and the smell of the Hudson reeking in our noses.
Jasmine changed Toothless back to his normal size since we’re out in the open now. He flew above the trees and followed us.
Grover was shivering and braying, his big goat eyes turned slit-pupiled and full of terror. “Three Kindly Ones. All three at once.”
I was surprised myself, but I kept pulling them along. “Come on! The farther away we get, the better.”
“All our money was back there,” Percy reminded me. “Our food and clothes. Everything.”
“Well, maybe if you hadn’t decided to jump into the fight—”
“What did you want me to do? Let you get killed?”
“You didn’t need to protect me, Percy. I would’ve been fine.”
“Sliced like sandwich bread,” Grover put in, “but fine.”
“Shut up, goat boy,” I said.
“Annabeth, stop it,” Jasmine said angrily. “God, I hate it when you’re like this.”
“Don’t you mean gods?” Grover asked. “Plural?”
Jasmine glared at him. “There’s no way in hell I’m ever saying that.”
Grover brayed mournfully. “Tin cans . . . a perfectly good bag of tin cans.”
We sloshed across mushy ground, through mostly twisted trees that smelled awful.
“He came back to help us, Annabeth,” Jasmine whispered to me. “Don’t you dare make him feel bad for it, or I’ll kill you.”
She means that metaphorically, but should be careful about saying it. And I know she’s right.
I fell into line next to Percy.
“Look, I . . .” I faltered. “I appreciate your coming back for us, okay? That was really brave.”
“We’re a team, right?” he said.
A team.
I never really considered us as one until now.
I was silent for a few more steps. “It’s just that if you died . . . aside from the fact that it would really suck for you, it would mean the quest was over. This may be my only chance to see the real world.”
The thunderstorm had finally let up.
The city glow faded behind us, leaving us in almost total darkness.
“You’ve been living with Jasmine and her family since you were eight?” Percy asked me.
I nodded. “Yeah. My dad—”
“The history professor.”
“Yeah. It didn’t work out for me living with him. I mean, Jasmine’s home *is* my home, too, and so is Camp Half-Blood.” I started rushing my words out now. “At camp you train and train. And that’s all cool and everything, but the real world is where the monsters are. That’s where you learn whether you’re any good or not.”
Jasmine gave me a comforting rub on my shoulder. I guess she heard the doubt in my voice.
“You’re pretty good with that knife,” Percy said.
“You think so?” I asked.
“Anybody who can piggyback ride a Fury is okay by me.”
I smiled. “You know, maybe I should tell you . . . Something funny back on the bus . . .”
I was interrupted by a shrill *toot-toot-toot*.
“Hey, my reed pipes still work!” Grover cried. “If I could just remember a ‘fine path’ song, we could get out of these woods.”
He puffed out a few notes, but the tune still didn’t sound right.
“Percy, watch out for the . . .” Jasmine warned.
Percy slammed into something and groaned.
“Tree.” Jasmine laughed. “Here.”
She summoned a ball of light and had it float in front of us so that we could see where we were going.
After another mile or so, we started to see more light up ahead: the colors of a neon sign.
I could smell food, and I felt my stomach grumble.
We kept walking until we saw a deserted two-lane road through the trees.
One the other side was a closed down gas station, a tattered billboard for a movie, and one open business, which was the source of the neon light, and the smell of food.
It wasn’t fast-food restaurant. It was one of those roadside curio shops that sell lawn flamingoes and wooden Indians and cement grizzly bears, that kind of stuff.
The main building was a long, low warehouse, surrounded by acres of statuary. The neon sign above the gate was hard for me to read, because it’s written in red cursive English, which is harder to read with my dyslexia than regular English.
To me, it looked like: *ATNYU MES GDERAN GOMEN MEPROUM*.
“What the heck does that sign say?” Percy asked, obviously not being able to read it like me either.
“I don’t know,” I said.
I’m use to Jasmine changing the words to Ancient Greek for me, but not this time.
“Aunty Em’s Garden Gnome Emporium,” Jasmine and Grover translated.
Flanking the entrance, as advertised, were two cement garden gnomes, ugly bearded little runts, smiling and waving.
Toothless landed next to us.
Percy crossed the street, I think smelling the food too.
“Hey . . .” Grover warned.
“The lights are on inside,” I said. “Maybe it’s open.”
“Snack bar,” Percy said wistfully.
“Snack bar,” I agreed.
“Are you two crazy?” Grover said. “This place is weird.”
We ignored him. Jasmine laughed.
The front lot was a forest of statues: cement animals, cement children, even a cement satyr playing the pipes, which gave Grover the creeps.
“*Bla-ha-ha!*” he bleated. “Looks like my Uncle Ferdinand!”
We stopped at the warehouse door.
Jasmine turned Toothless back into a baby dragon and he climbed onto her shoulder.
“Don’t knock,” Grover pleaded. “I smell monsters.”
“Your nose is clogged up from the Furies,” I said. “All I smell is burgers.”
“So do I,” Jasmine agreed, and Toothless nodded.
“Aren’t you hungry?”
“Meat!” Grover said scornfully. “I’m a vegetarian.”
“You eat cheese enchiladas and tin cans,” Percy reminded him.
“Those are vegetables. Come on. Let’s leave. These statues are . . . looking at me.”
“Yeah,” Jasmine agreed sarcastically. “They’re probably telling you not to be a scary cat. Or goat.”
Then the door creaked open, and standing in front of us was a tall Middle Eastern woman—at least, she seemed to be Middle Eastern, because she wore a long black gown that covered everything but her hands, and her head was completely veiled.
Her eyes glinted behind a curtain of black gauze, but that was all I could make out.
Her coffee-colored hands looked old, but well-manicured and elegant, so I imagined she was a grandmother who had once been a beautiful lady.
“Children, it is too late to be out all alone,” she said in an accent that also sounded vaguely Middle Eastern, too. “Where are your parents?”
“They’re . . . um . . .” I started to say.
Luckily, Percy covered me.
“We’re orphans,” he said.
Jasmine glared at him, obviously not liking that word, but she went with it.
“Orphans?” the woman said. “But, my dears! Surely not!”
“We got separated from our caravan,” Percy said. “Our circus caravan. The ringmaster told us to meet him at the gas station if we got lost, but he may have forgotten, or maybe he meant a different gas station. Anyway, we’re lost. Is that food I smell?”
“Oh, my dears,” the woman said. “You must come in, poor children. I am Aunty Em. Go straight through the back of the warehouse, please. There is a dining area.”
We thanked her and went inside.
“Circus caravan?” I muttered to Percy.
“Always have a strategy, right?” he replied.
“Your head is full of kelp.”
The warehouse was filled with more statues—people in all different poses, wearing all different outfits and with different expressions on their faces.
They were all life-size.
The place looked very familiar to me, a vague memory, but I was too hungry to think too much about it. Even to notice Grover’s nervous whimpers, or the way the statues eyes seemed to follow me, or the fact that Aunty Em locked the door behind us.
We reached the dining area. It was a fast-food counter with a grill, a soda fountain, a pretzel heater, and a nacho cheese dispenser. Everything you could want, plus a few steel picnic tables out front.
“Please, sit down,” Aunty Em said.
“Awesome,” Percy said.
“Um,” Grover said reluctantly, “we don’t have any money, ma’am.”
“No, no, children,” Aunty Em said. “No money. This is a special case, yes? It is my treat for such nice orphans.”
“Thank you, ma’am,” I said.
She stiffened, as if I had done something wrong, but then she relaxed just as quickly, so I figured it must’ve been my imagination.
“Quite all right, Annabeth,” she said. “You have such beautiful gray eyes, child.”
Jasmine frowned, looking confused.
“What?” I asked her.
She looked at me, but shook her head. “Nothing.”
It obviously wasn’t nothing, but I decided to wait and ask her again later, *after* we ate.
Aunty Em disappeared behind the snack counter and started cooking.
Before we knew it, she’d brought us plastic trays heaped with double cheeseburgers, vanilla shakes, and XXL servings of French Fries.
Jasmine didn’t seem so suspicious now when she saw the shakes. She loves shakes.
She turned Grover’s burger into a tofu burger for him, and shared her cheeseburger with Toothless.
I slurped my shake. Percy was halfway through his burger. Jasmine was almost done with hers.
Grover picked at the fries, and eyed the tray’s waxed paper liner as if he might go for that, but he still looked too nervous to eat.
“What’s the hissing noise?” he asked.
“I hear it, too,” Jasmine said.
Toothless nodded in agreement.
I listened, but didn’t hear anything. Percy shook his head.
“Hissing?” Aunty Em asked. “Perhaps you hear the deep-fryer oil. You have keen ears, Grover.”
“I take vitamins. For my ears.”
“That’s admirable,” she said. “But please, relax.”
Aunty Em ate nothing.
She hadn’t taken off her head dress, even to cook, and now she sat forward and interlaced her fingers and watched us eat.
“So, you sell gnomes,” Percy said.
“Oh, yes,” Aunty Em said. “And animals. And people. Anything for the garden. Custom orders. Statuary is very popular, you know.”
“A lot of business on this road?”
“Not so much, no. Since the highway was built . . . most cars don’t go this way now. I must cherish every customer I get.”
“Like Radiator Springs,” Jasmine said.
“Indeed.”
I doubt that Aunty Em realized that Jasmine was referring to a Disney movie.
I noticed Percy staring at a statue of a young girl holding an Easter basket.
The detail was incredible, much better than what you see in most garden statues. But something was wrong with her face. It looked as if she were startled, or even terrified.
“Ah,” Aunty Em said. “You notice some of my creations do not turn out well. They are marred. They do not sell. The face is the hardest to get right. Always the face.”
“You make these statues yourself?” Percy asked.
“Oh, yes. Once upon a time, I had two sisters to help me in the business, but they have passed on, and Aunty Em is alone. I have only my statues. This is why I make them, you see. They are my company.”
The sadness in her voice sounded so deep and so real that I almost felt sorry for her. And almost sympathetic, since I, too, have lost a sister.
But the only reason I didn’t is because the story she was telling us about her sisters sounded very familiar. I could tell that Jasmine agreed with me by her expression.
I stopped eating.
“Two sisters?” I asked, sitting forward.
“It’s a terrible story,” Aunty Em said. “Not one for children, really. You see, Annabeth, a bad woman was jealous of me, long ago, when I was young. I had a . . . a boyfriend, you know, and this bad woman was determined to break us up. She caused a terrible accident. My sisters stayed by me. They shared my bad fortune as long as they could, but eventually they passed on. They faded away. I alone have survived, but at a price. Such a price.”
I definitely have heard this story before. I looked at Jasmine and could tell that she remembered it too. We locked eyes and had a silent agreement.
I looked over at Percy. He looked very sleepy. I was too, but I’m wide awake now. And now I remember why this place looked so familiar when we first came in: I had a vision of it.
“Percy?” I was shaking him to get his attention. “Maybe we should go. I mean, the ringmaster is waiting.”
“Uh, yeah,” Jasmine agreed.
We were tense. But Percy just looked confused.
Grover was eating the wax paper off the tray now, but Aunty Em didn’t seem to find that strange, which just proved my suspicions of her even more.
“Such beautiful gray eyes,” Aunty Em told me again. “My, yes, it has been a long time since I’ve seen gray eyes like those.”
She reached out as if to stroke my cheek, but I stood up abruptly. Jasmine did too, sending a death glare toward Aunty Em for trying to touch me. Toothless growled at her.
“We really should go,” I said.
“Yes!” Grover swallowed his wax paper and stood up. “The ringmaster is waiting! Right!”
Percy remained seated, obviously not wanting to leave.
“Please, dears,” Aunty Em pleaded. “I so rarely get to be with children. Before you go, won’t you at least sit for a pose?”
“A pose?” Jasmine and I asked warily.
“A photograph. I will use it to model a new statue set. Children are so popular, you see. Everyone loves children.”
Based on how that girl with the Easter basket looks, I didn’t want to sit for a pose.
Jasmine’s looking at me, watching me decide.
I shifted my weight from foot to foot. “I don’t think we can, ma’am. Come on, Percy—”
“Sure we can,” he said. “It’s just a photo, Annabeth. What’s the harm?”
“Yes, Annabeth,” Aunty Em purred. “No harm.”
Tell that to the young girl with the Easter basket.
I knew I wasn’t going to get Percy to listen to me, so I willingly allowed Aunty Em to lead us back out the front door, into the garden of statues.
Aunty Em directed us to a park bench next to the stone satyr.
“Now,” she said, “I’ll just position you correctly. The young girls and the baby dragon in the middle, I think, and two young gentlemen on either side.”
“Not much light for a photo,” Percy remarked.
“Oh, enough,” Aunty Em said. “Enough to see each other, yes?”
“Where’s your camera?” Grover asked.
Aunty Em stepped back, as if to admire the shot. “Now, the face is the most difficult. Can you smile for me please, everyone? A large smile?”
Grover glanced at the cement satyr next to him.
“That sure does look like Uncle Ferdinand,” he mumbled.
“Grover,” Aunty Em chastised. “Look this way, dear.”
She still had no camera in her hands.
“Percy—” I said.
He looked really tired now, trying hard to keep his eyes open.
“I will just be a moment,” Aunty Em said. “You know, I can’t see you very well in this cursed veil. . . .”
“Percy, something’s wrong,” I insisted.
“Wrong?” Aunty Em said, reaching up to undo the wrap around her head. “Not at all, dear. I have such noble company tonight. What could be wrong?”
“That *is* Uncle Ferdinand!” Grover gasped.
And that’s all I needed to know.
“Look away from her!” I said.
I whipped my Yankees cap onto my head and vanished. I pushed Grover and Percy off the bench.
Jasmine covered Toothless’s eyes and turned herself invisible too.
Grover scrambled off in one direction, Jasmine followed me in another.
We stopped behind a statue about twenty feet away, turning back to watch Percy on the ground in front of Aunty Em, looking too dazed to move.
Aunty Em had removed her veil and I saw tens of hundreds of snakes attached to her head. That was the hissing sound that Jasmine and Grover heard earlier, and I’m positive for who Aunty Em really is now.
“I hate snakes,” Jasmine said through gritted teeth.
The only creatures she hates.
I continued to watch Percy. He slowly looked above him, almost seeing her face. I knew I had to stop him before the unbearable happened.
“No!” I screamed. “Don’t!
“Run!” Grover bleated.
He was racing across the gravel, yelling, “*Maia!*” to kick start his flying sneakers.
Percy stayed still. He was finally starting to listen to me.
“Such a pity to destroy a handsome young face,” Aunty Em said. “Stay with me, Percy. All you have to do is look up.”
I prayed he didn’t.
He looked to one side and saw a gazing ball. I could tell that he saw her reflection, and is seeing what I’m seeing.
“He knows it’s Medusa now,” Jasmine whispered to me.
“I know,” I said.
We continued to watch.
“The Gray-Eyed One did this to me, Percy,” Medusa said. “Annabeth’s mother, the cursed Athena, turned me from a beautiful woman into this.”
“Don’t listen to her!” I shouted.
“She’s telling the truth,” Jasmine whispered to me.
“Shut up. Run, Percy!”
“Silence!” Medusa snarled. Then her voice modulated back to a comforting purr. “You see why I must destroy the girl, Percy. She is my enemy’s daughter. I shall crush her statue to dust. But you, dear Percy, you need not suffer.”
“No,” he muttered.
I could see him trying to make his legs move.
“Do you really want to help the gods?” Medusa asked. “Do you understand what awaits you this foolish quest, Percy? What will happened if you reach the Underworld? Do not be a pawn of the Olympians, my dear. You would be better off as a statue. Less pain. Less pain.”
“Percy!”
Behind him, Grover was flying toward him, finally getting the winged shoes to work, and holding a tree branch.
“Duck!” Grover yelled.
Percy turned and saw him. Grover’s eyes were shut tight, his head twitching from side to side. He was navigating by ears and nose alone.
“Duck!” he yelled again. “I’ll get her!”
Percy dove to one side.
I watched as Grover flew by Medusa and hit her in the face with the tree branch.
Medusa roared with rage.
“You miserable satyr,” she snarled. “I’ll add you to my collection!”
“That was for Uncle Ferdinand!” Grover yelled back.
Percy scrambled away and hid in the statuary, which happened to be where Jasmine, Toothless, and I currently were, while Grover swooped down for another pass at Medusa.
*Ker-whack!*
“Arrgh!” Medusa yelled, her snake-hair hissing and spitting.
“Percy!” Jasmine and I both said.
He jumped so high his feet nearly cleared a garden gnome.
“Jeez!” he said. “Don’t do that!”
Jasmine laughed. I stifled mine.
I took off my hat, Jasmine used her powers, and we both became visible.
“You have to cut her head off,” I said.
“What?” Percy asked. “Are you crazy? Let’s get out of here.”
“Medusa is a menace. She’s evil. I’d kill her myself, but . . .” I swallowed. “But you’ve got the better weapon. Besides, I’d never get close to her. She’d slice me to bits because of my mother. You—you’ve got a chance.”
“What? I can’t—”
“Yes, you can, Percy,” Jasmine encouraged him.
“Look,” I said. “Do you want her turning more innocent people into statues?”
I pointed to a pair of statue lovers, a man and a woman with their arms around each other, turned to stone by the monster.
I grabbed a green gazing ball from a nearby pedestal.
“A polished shield would be better,” I said, studying the spear critically. “The complexity will cause some distortion. The reflection’s side should be off by a faction of—”
“Would you speak English?” Percy asked.
“I *am!'”*
“Believe it or not, she is,” Jasmine agreed.
I tossed Percy the glass ball. “Just look at her in the glass,” I said. “*Never* look at her directly.”
“But how about with something easier to reflect on,” Jasmine suggested.
She touched the glass ball, concentrating on it, her hand glowing white, and the whole outer glass changed in seconds so that you could see your reflection in it from the exact same glass used for mirrors.
“There,” Jasmine said.
“Thanks,” Percy said. “But if you can use your powers to do that, can’t you also use them to cut off her head too?”
“Oh, I could use many things to cut her head off with, even from just standing right here. But as Annabeth said: the real world is where the monsters are, where you learn whether you’re any good or not, and how can you learn whether you’re any good or not if I keep using my powers to solve all of our problems?”
“Fair point.”
“Exactly. That’s why I hold back and only use my powers when absolutely necessary.”
“Hey, guys!” Grover called from somewhere above us. “I think she’s unconscious!”
“*Roooaaarrr!*”
“Maybe not,” Grover corrected. “He went in for another pass with the tree branch.
“Hurry,” I told Percy. “Grover’s got a great nose, but he’ll eventually crash.”
He took out his pen and uncapped it. The bronze blade elongated in his hand,
He followed the hissing and spitting sounds of Medusa’s hair.
“Does that sword/pen of his look familiar to you?” Jasmine asked.
I nodded. “Yeah.”
“Do you remember where from?”
I shook my head. “No. Do you?”
She shook her head. “No. It’s a really vague memory. How about you, Toothless?”
He shook his head too.
We focused back on Percy and watched him try to kill Medusa.
Grover was coming in for another turn at bat, but this time he flew a little too low.
Medusa grabbed the stick and pulled him off course. He tumbled through the air and crashed into the arms of a stone grizzly bear with a painful “Ummphh!”
Medusa was about to lung at him when Percy yelled, “Hey!”
He advanced on her, watching through the reflection of the glass ball. But she let him approach.
“You couldn’t harm an old woman, Percy,” she crooned. “I know you wouldn’t.”
He hesitated.
Great.
“Percy, don’t listen to her!” Grover moaned from the cement grizzly bear.
“Too late,” Medusa cackled.
She lunged at him with her talons.
Percy slashed up with his sword, and Medusa’s head was cut straight off, only her body disintegrating, but her head fell to the ground next to Percy’s foot.
Percy didn’t look at it.
“Oh, yuck,” Grover said. His eyes were still tightly closed, but I guess he could hear the thing gurgling and steaming. “Mega-yuck.”
Jasmine, Toothless, and I went up to Percy, my eyes fixed on the sky.
I had picked up Medusa’s black veil. “Don’t move.”
I knelt without looking down, very carefully, and draped the monster’s head in black cloth, then picked it up.
It was still dripping green juice.
“Are you okay?” I asked Percy, my voice trembling.
“Yeah,” he said. “Why didn’t . . . why didn’t the head evaporate?”
“Once you sever it, it becomes a spoil of war,” I said. “Same as your minotaur horn. But don’t unwrap the head. It can still petrify you.”
Grover moaned as he climbed down from the grizzly bear statue.
He had a big welt on his forehead. His green rasta hat hung from one of his little horns, and his fake feet had been knocked off his hooves. The magic sneakers were flying aimlessly around his head.
“The Red Baron,” Percy said. “Good job, man.”
He managed a bashful grin. “That really was *not* fun, though. Well, the hitting-her-with-a-stick part, that was fun. But crashing into a concrete bear? *Not* fun.”
He snatched his shoes out of the air. Percy recapped his sword.
Together, we all stumbled back to the warehouse.
We found some old plastic grocery bags behind the snack counter and double-wrapped Medusa’s head. We plopped it on the table where we’d eaten dinner and sat around it, too exhausted to speak.
“So we have Athena to thank for this monster?” Percy finally asked.
“Oh, great,” Jasmine said sarcastically.
She was right. I flashed Percy an irritated look.
“Your dad, actually,” I said. “Don’t you remember? Medusa was Poseidon’s girlfriend. They decided to meet in my mother’s temple. That’s why Athena turned her into a monster. Medusa and her two sisters who had helped her get into the temple, they became the three gorgons. That’s why Medusa wanted to slice me up, but she wanted to preserve you as a nice statue. She’s still sweet on your dad. You probably reminded her of him.”
Percy’s cheeks turned red. “Oh, so now it’s *my* fault we met Medusa.”
I straightened and imitated his voice, which probably sounded bad. “It’s just a photo, Annabeth. What’s the harm?”
“Forget it,” he said. “You’re impossible.”
“You’re insufferable.”
“You’re—”
“Oh my God,” Jasmine interrupted. “Shut up.”
“Yes,” Grover agreed. “You two are giving me a migraine, and satyrs don’t even *get* migraines. What are we going to do with the head?”
I stared at the thing.
One little snake was hanging out of a hole in the plastic, which Jasmine had Toothless burn to ash.
The words WE APPRECIATE YOUR BUSINESS! were printed on the side of the bag.
I glanced at Percy. He was also staring at the bag, looking angry. Then he got up.
“I’ll be back,” he said.
“Percy,” I called after him. “What are you—”
He searched the back of the warehouse.
While he was gone, I faced Jasmine and Grover.
“Something’s not right here,” I said. “Do any of you guys feel that this quest is strange?”
They both nodded in agreement.
“The Kindly Ones were sort of holding back,” Grover said.
“But why?”
“They asked us ‘Where is it? Where?’” Jasmine said. “But what’s it?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know.”
Percy came back a few minutes later with a box and some packing slips for Hermes Overnight Express, each with a little leather bag attached for coins.
Percy packed up Medusa’s head, and filled out a delivery slip:

*The Gods*
*Mount Olympus*
*600th Floor,*
*Empire State Building*
*New York, NY*

*With best wishes,*

*PERCY JACKSON*

“They’re not going to like that,” Grover warned. “They’ll think you’re impertinent.”
Percy poured some golden drachmas that he got from the cash register in the pouch. As soon as he closed it, there was a sound like a cash register. The package floated off the table and disappeared with a *pop!*
“I *am* impertinent,” Percy said.
“Well, at least he admits it,” Jasmine said.
Percy looked at me, daring me to criticize.
I decided not to. He obviously has a major talent for making the gods mad.
But I was wondering why in Hades I’ve been having so many visions of him since I was seven years old and that Jasmine’s assumption for that reason seems wrong.
Even she seems to be doubting that herself right now.
“Come on,” I muttered. “We need a new plan.”

**I'm still not happy about Jason's death. Ugh.**
**Also, do you guys remember this chapter? At the beginning, Annabeth says to Percy:** "You know, maybe I should tell you . . . Something funny back on the bus . . ."
**Do any of you know what she was going to say? I still have no idea so many years.**
**Please review** here**.**

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## Character Appearances

### Main Characters

* Annabeth Chase
* Jasmine Saturday
* Percy Jackson