Chapter Text
Annabeth Chase has always thought of her world as a small one, despite living in a city.
Outside of the suffocating household she had called home once upon a time, Annabeth has one friend, and that is enough for her. Outside of her best friend, Grover, is a school filled with dozens of kids she could not care less about.
But out past the small world she knows is a much larger one—one she has yet to see the entirety of. She hopes to one day explore it all and establish something permanent so that she, too, could be a part of it. She knows that out there, in a world much bigger than the printer paper and cheap pens she quietly works with in her bedroom, is a blueprint waiting for her work to be drawn into it and a team of people who will receive her instructions on how to proceed.
Annabeth Chase believes she can expand her world, make something real and permanent—something that will not, and cannot, be torn away, broken down, nor abandoned.
Something that will last a lifetime, and perhaps even longer than that.
“Annabeth! Grover is at the door waiting for you!”
“Tell him to wait a moment!” Annabeth calls out in the direction of her bedroom door while she tugs on her jeans. She sits down on the end of her bed with a huff, fiddling with the cuffs of the pants to adjust them to be just right. Her system fills with dread as her ears pick up on her step-mother’s approaching footsteps.
Her step-mother Helen Chase, of a maiden name she never really cared to know, speaks with increasing volume as she nears Annabeth’s room. “It’s your move-in day, you should be early!”
While Annabeth had hopes—which she now realizes were terribly naive—for her day to be a good one, especially since she would finally be getting away from her ‘family’ until Christmas break, they were ultimately dashed the moment Helen opened her mouth. Annabeth can sense an incoming lecture from a mile away.
Her step-mother knocks on her bedroom door briefly, and bursts into the room the moment Annabeth mutters “Come in, I guess.”
“Really, you should have been ready at least twenty minutes ago,” Helen says, terribly exasperated, throwing her hands up into the air. Her hands fall down to land firmly on her hips in the classic ‘adult-lecturing-a-child’ pose. “I’ve had breakfast prepared for ages now. Even Grover has arrived and is now waiting for you in the living room.”
Annabeth resists the urge to roll her eyes or tug out her own hair in frustration, and instead puts on an impassive facade. Giving no indication of, well, anything, gets her step-mother off of her back fairly quickly, after all. So, she stares blankly at the woman.
“I began getting ready two hours ago. It takes a long time to do my hair, you know?” She says, rising from her bed to grab her backpack from her desk chair.
The air fills with tension in the way it always does when they argue, but the arguments have been ending up one-sided after Annabeth began taking Grover’s advice recently. Now she speaks passively to her step-mother to save her own time and efforts, but it does not mean she won’t continue to try to be the one to have the last word. That will just have to be an act of maturity she will learn to accept in the future—far in the future, because she certainly will not be committing to it anytime soon.
She continues, “I got caught up in the last thirty minutes trying to find unwrinkled clothing since the twins decided to play around with everyone’s clothes I had freshly ironed yesterday.”
Annabeth relishes in the flinch her blunt words achieve, watching Helen freeze in the doorway.
“I didn’t get around to re-ironing them,” her step-mother grits out with a frown, looking like she could not wait to be rid of Annabeth.
“Oh, don’t worry,” Annabeth says with a dismissive wave of her hand. She swings her backpack on and takes her luggage, brushing past Helen to leave the room. “I spent an hour ironing them again just fine. Thanks for breakfast, Helen.”
Her hand tightens around the strap of her backpack as she walks out of the room in victory. To her, she has successfully reclaimed her good day.
Annabeth almost collides right into Grover as she makes her way down the hallway, having been too focused on her new win. She only barely manages to stop right before their foreheads could smack together.
“Annabeth!” The boy beams, somehow unfazed by the near collision. He quickly swivels around to walk side by side with her on her path to the kitchen. “Good morning!”
“Good morning,” Annabeth smiles back, though blinking in surprise.
Upon entering the living space of the apartment, she leaves her suitcase at the door and begins to hurry around the kitchen to collect her breakfast.
“Sorry I took so long. We still have plenty of time until the train arrives, right?”
Annabeth is facing away from Grover as she wraps herself a stack of pancakes to take with her out the door. The brief silence tells her that Grover forgot for a moment and had nodded in response to her question.
“Yeah, we’ll probably still have an extra half hour by the time we get to Yancy,” he replies.
“Perfect. I’m ready to go!” She says, holding her napkin-wrapped pancakes in one hand and keys in the other.
As they walk away from the Chase apartment and step into the elevator, Annabeth thinks of how surreal everything feels.
She wishes that summer break could have been longer, even if it meant more time at “home.” Just a little more time with her drawing materials, sketching and designing building after building; her books and the public library, even though reading for too long with her dyslexia would leave her with headaches; and her best friend without any care for obligations like homework and waking up early.
Anything to not have to be forced into a place she didn’t want to go and be surrounded by people she didn’t want to know. Anything to not have everything change with another school year.
The only blessing of going to a boarding school, Annabeth supposes, is the fact she does get to be away for almost the entire school year.
Grover knocks on her head lightly with his knuckles, right as the elevator chimes and the doors open in front of them, bringing her back down from her thoughts to earth. “What’s going on up there?” he asks.
The desire for things to stay the same grows even more at that. Grover’s actions feel like proof to Annabeth—proof that there isn’t any need for things to be different. She especially doesn’t need new people in her life when she has him for a friend.
Grover, who has known her since they were seven years old; Grover, who knows what she’s like; Grover, who has seen the good, the bad, the ugly, of her life alongside her; Grover, who can interpret all her body language in a way no one else has been able to for years; Grover, who is her best and only friend, because she does not need anybody else.
But instead of spontaneously dropping her worries on him at roughly six in the morning while making their way out of her apartment building, she just smiles.
“Nothing, just thinking of lunch,” She evades and takes a bite of her breakfast. Annabeth chews thoughtfully and the smile she had put on for her untruth turns content. “Helen can be a real devil at times, but she sure does make mean pancakes.”
The boy clicks his tongue in response, though he knows it’s true because he has had her step-mother’s pancakes many times before.
“I know you’re just changing the subject, but I’ll let it pass because of first-day nerves,” Annabeth’s brain homes in, yet again, on how well he knows her, “and out of the kindness of my heart.” She rolls her eyes at the last comment, aware of his attempt at something lighthearted.
When they leave the lobby and step out into the bustling streets of New York, the two of them only get a moment to take in the busy movements of the early morning before they hear a shout of, “Watch out!”
Annabeth's reflexes have her snapping her head to the source of the voice, spotting a boy on a skateboard that is speeding forward towards her and Grover at an impossibly high speed. She is distracted by the way the boy seems to be panicking, desperately trying to decelerate the momentum without crashing into other people on the sidewalk, and notices too late that there really is no way he could slow down in time to avoid an accident.
In the blink of an eye, Annabeth is knocked over and her luggage is crashing into the ground with her.
The first thing she thinks is of how dirty the ground of a busy New York sidewalk is—which is a very valid concern, mind you—and the next is worry over the possibility of a concussion.
The last thought is the observation that her breakfast has also been knocked out of her hands and onto said dirty street. So much for being the most important meal of the day, Annabeth snarks in her head.
Doing her best to ignore the stares from all the passersby, Annabeth quickly stands up and dusts herself off. She holds a hand out for Grover to grab as she reclaims the hold of her suitcase with the other.
“Ouch…” Grover groans, reaching an arm up to grasp onto Annabeth’s offered support.
She yanks him off the ground with strength she didn’t know she had, invigorated with adrenaline from the rapid sequence of events.
Annabeth turns around to yell at the perpetrator, who was hastily picking himself off of the ground. “Hey! What the hell was that?!”
“I’m so sorry,” The boy apologizes, looking thoroughly embarrassed. He holds tightly onto the skateboard underneath his arm, rubbing the back of his neck. His curly blond hair covers his upper face as he looks down at his beat up Vans. “I didn’t mean for that to happen, I swear. I tried warning you guys, but I lost control of the skateboard way before then.”
“Seriously?” Annabeth scoffs, crossing her arms.
The tone surprises the boy and his previously sheepish stance goes rigid, hand dropping from his neck to clutch at the strap of the duffle bag slung across his body.
“What are you skating in the busy streets for if you’re inexperienced? You’re not even wearing a helmet or other safety gear. Don’t you know how dangerous that could be?”
Anger flickers in the boy’s sea green eyes when he looks up, hair no longer covering his face from view. If he didn’t look so disgruntled and Annabeth wasn’t so irritated by him, the thought that the skater was sort of cute, in a raggedly charming way that he had yet to grow into, might have crossed her mind—but those things were reality, so the thought did not, in fact, cross her mind then.
“I said I lost control of the acceleration, not that I’m a total newbie at using a skateboard!” He snaps back, planting a foot forward and jutting his head towards her.
Grover rushes in between them to placate the two. “Woah there guys! It’s alright, man. Honest mistake– don’t worry about it.”
Annabeth shoots Grover a look. “‘Honest mistake’? If he’s got experience, shouldn’t he know better?”
“Ugh, aren’t you just contradicting yourself at this point?” The boy shouts. “I already said I was sorry! And more than once!”
“You know what? We don’t have time for this. Grover, let’s get going, and watch where you’re going next time,” Annabeth says, turning away towards the direction of the subway.
The watch on her wrist told her they would have about fifteen minutes of waiting for the train to arrive if she and Grover promptly made their way to the station—so, technically, they did have a few minutes to spare for this altercation, if they really wanted to, but Annabeth certainly did not.
Behind her, she hears the skateboarder say, “Gods, what is her problem?”
“Sorry about Annabeth. She easily loses patience when unexpected things happen,” Annabeth’s eye twitches at that, “I really have to go though,” says Grover.
“Whatever, it’s fine, I guess,” The boy settles on. “Bye, then.”
Grover jogs a little since Annabeth is a few paces ahead and determinedly power walking her way to the station, his poor rolling suitcase being dragged haphazardly behind him in his effort to catch up to her.
“What was that?” he asks, gently, shortening his long strides to swift steps that match her speed.
Inexplicably, she’s seething.
She doesn’t speak until they reach the stairs to the subway station, stomping down each step while hauling her heavy suitcase with her. She wishes she had just packed light and efficiently.
“Can you believe that guy?” She asks, slightly out of breath from the combination of her speedwalking and heaving her luggage down the stairs. “He had the audacity to crash into us, and then act like that? ”
“Um, Annabeth,” Her friend says, “You kind of shouted at him first?”
She pauses on the stairs to turn back and give him her deadliest glare. Grover backs off immediately, gulping. Annabeth proceeds to descend the steps at a speed Grover—and herself, to be frank—can just barely manage to keep up with. The two quickly swipe their MetroCards and make their way through the turnstiles.
They reach the platform and stand in silence while they wait for the train to arrive, as Grover lets Annabeth have some time to continue to sulk.
A few minutes later, Annabeth spots something in the corner of her vision. She whips her head around and, lo and behold, there stands the boy who had collided into them earlier. It bothers her that she had immediately noticed his presence in her peripheral.
“Do not tell me he is going to the same school as us,” Annabeth grits out, annoyance flaring once again.
Seriously, what was it with this guy and the universe’s insistence on ruining what should be a great first day of school?
Grover gives her an utterly bewildered look, and it occurs to Annabeth that she had been too vague in her outburst. She tosses her head in the direction of the skater boy, who is walking closer and closer to them. It takes Grover a moment to spot who she is motioning towards, but he smiles a little when he finally picks out the boy and his skateboard from the crowd of people waiting around for the subway.
The blond boy is standing just a few feet away from them, unaware of their stares.
“There are dozens of other middle schools. He just happens to be taking the same train as us, right? Right?”
“Who knows? Maybe he is, maybe he isn’t. It might not be so bad if he were.”
“No, that would be awful,” She groans in despair, starting to feel shame for her actions from not even half an hour ago. “…I don’t even know why I reacted like that.”
Grover hums a little, leaving room for her to elaborate if she wants. Annabeth feels badly about the glare she gave him earlier on the stares, too, so she supposes one explanation won’t be the end of her.
“I guess I was already tiptoeing towards losing it after Helen this morning,” She admits in a mumble. The station is loud, and Grover squints his eyes at her as he tilts his head toward her in an attempt to hear her better. It was unfair to talk so quietly in a noisy environment, yes, but sue her for feeling embarrassed at having to explain her thoughts and whatnot. “It takes a lot to stand there and act like her words don’t bother me, you know?”
“I get it. I’m proud of you for taking on that approach, though.” Grover smiles. Annabeth sighs.
Their train pulls in a few moments later, and everyone waiting at the platform rushes to file in through the doors. It’s a busy morning; consequently, the seats fill up quickly. Annabeth spots three perfectly open seats and heads for them, with Grover weaving between people to follow behind her.
She sits down and someone else takes the spot to her left simultaneously, and what follows is the clatter of an object that is very much comparable to a skateboard.
Annabeth dreads turning her head at the thought of who could possibly be sitting next to her before she bravely does exactly that.
She makes instant eye contact with the person beside her. Her eye twitches as she recognizes the now all too familiar face she is looking at.
“What are you doing here,” says Annabeth.
The lack of a questioning lilt to her voice makes it come out something more like demanding rather than an inquiry, which is exactly what she is going for.
“Uh, going to school? Like a normal kid at seven in the morning on a weekday after the end of summer break?” The boy responds warily, eyeing her as if she would verbally attack him again or something for occupying the seat next to her.
Annabeth wasn’t—really, she couldn't care less about the fact she will have to sit next to him for the duration of the train ride—but she may actually consider it at that look.
Grover watches the exchange silently, eyes darting back and forth between the two of them.
“Where.”
The boy gives her an odd look that scrunches up his face, an expression that is between baffled and something like creeped out. “What’s it to you? ”
“‘Just want to make sure you aren’t going to the same school we are,” She states, annoyed once more at his slow uptake.
“…Yancy Academy?”
If Annabeth could press a button to instantly call down lightning to smite her at that very moment, she would be slamming it. Repeatedly. In fact, the button would be broken and she would be nothing more than atomic particles on top of the subway train seat.
Unfortunately for her, there is no such thing in existence, and she must face the consequences of her actions. Certainly no bad deed goes unpunished. She turns away from him and looks dead straight ahead instead. Fascinating advertisements they have got on subways, Annabeth observes blandly.
A moment passes as the boy waits for a response until he realizes he isn’t receiving one, and then he puts the pieces together.
“Wait, are you two going there, too?”
Annabeth winces. “No.”
“Yup!” Grover grins.
As soon as they had arrived at their destination’s station and all the passengers disembarked, the boy and his skateboard walked off, disappearing seamlessly into the crowd.
A part of Annabeth is thankful that he is no longer around, while another wishes he stuck around for a little more; she begins to scan around, wondering if she could find him—
Nope, Annabeth cuts through her own train of thought, absolutely not. She would not go and start thinking about the rude skater who had dangerously crashed into her and Grover.
Besides, at a relatively large school like Yancy Academy, and ignoring the fact he seemed to live in the same area as her back in the Upper East Side, what were the chances that Annabeth would ever see him again? Slim to none, probably. She could go on with her day peacefully and embarrassment-free.
“Good riddance,” Annabeth comments out loud, referring to the boy’s absence.
She ends up on the receiving end of a look from Grover that she finds herself strangely unable to puzzle out. She concludes it unsettling that she doesn’t know what it means.
Grover peeks over her shoulder to look at her dorm key, a keycard with Hall Six Room 12 written on it.
“Who do you think your roommate will be?” he asks, lightly tossing his own keycard in the air as they make their way over to the dormitories.
Annabeth huffs at the question. “Hopefully someone who isn’t annoying and knows how to pick up after themself. I do not want a repeat of last year.”
She nearly shudders at the thought of her previous roommate, Chiara Benvenuti, who she would always argue over chores with and lose to every single time. She had even asked several times to get her roommate changed, but there was nothing her dorm parent could do about it. Annabeth wishes that could have gotten a single dorm instead of a double.
“At least you ended up in Hall Six again,” Grover smiles. “Mr. Quintus seems like a pretty cool dorm parent– better than Mr. Leneus.”
She snorts at that. “For sure.”
Soon enough, they reach the split in the hallway for the boys’ and girls’ dormitories.
“See you later at orientation,” Grover says with a wave. Annabeth waves back, nodding.
With her suitcase in tow, Annabeth makes her way through the hallway, counting each door until she reaches hers. It takes a moment for her to decipher the brass plaque on the wall beside her dorm room, but she makes out the name Clarisse La Rue and releases a small sigh of relief at rooming with someone she at least knew already. To Annabeth’s knowledge, she had garnered Clarrise’s respect during a history project the year before.
As she inserts her key into the door’s card reader, she prays things will go smoothly.
Opening the door, her gaze sweeps over the room only to find that she had been beaten to her shared room.
“Well, look who finally showed up,” says a girl lazily spinning back and forth in a desk chair. One of the first things Annabeth notices is that she is wearing a bright orange T-shirt that looks like it had been jaggedly cut to look more like a tank top.
“Hi, Clarisse,” Annabeth greets, crossing the threshold of their dorm room with her luggage. She drops her backpack on the ground next to the empty desk that is now hers. She gets a better look at their room now and sees that Clarisse seems to actually be a tidy person and had her side all set up already. “How did you get unpacked already?”
The other girl shrugs. “‘Had some friends help me out.”
Annabeth gives her a brief nod before she goes to get herself situated. She lays her suitcase on the standard dorm mattress of her new bed and unzips her suitcase, pulling out her clothing to organize into her closet. Clarisse goes back to whatever it was she had been doing before she arrived and doesn’t offer to help, not that Annabeth expected she would nor wanted her to.
She finishes setting up all her belongings in just an hour, right in time to leave for orientation, and it makes her feel pretty accomplished.
Maybe things were looking up after all.
She was wrong, and it all circled back to one specific event--or rather, one specific person.
Annabeth easily spots Grover’s dark curls out of the seemingly infinite rows of classmates inside of the auditorium. She can see him cheerfully chatting away to someone besides him, and a smile grows on her face at the observation that he has probably made a friend already. As she works her way through the crowd of people to get over to Grover, it dawns on her who exactly he is speaking to.
Blond hair, a smile that practically emanated trouble, and those terribly blue-green eyes that reminded her of the sea.
Just when she had begun to think her day was starting to get better, Annabeth thinks miserably.
The boy notices her as she gets closer, nudging Grover to point her out to him. Her best friend looks up and waves her over enthusiastically, but Annabeth feels like she’s trudging through mud with every step she takes as she approaches the two of them.
“Annabeth, guess who I got for my roommate this year!” Grover says happily.
Dread creeps over her, because no way is Grover’s roommate who she thinks it is, right? She looks over at the boy beside her best friend and observes the less than happy look on his face. She nearly gasps out loud.
She curses the universe for not only ruining her day, but effectively ruining her entire school year. Hell, maybe even as far as the next 364 days, who knows. Annabeth sure doesn’t, because she would have never expected this of all things.
Annabeth faces Grover to give him a sarcastic thoughtful look, curling her right index finger over her mouth and crossing her left arm over her torso perpendicular to her right arm. “Hmm, could it be Tyson again?”
Grover, taking no offense at her dramatics, laughs. “Nope. Make a better guess!”
“Let’s see… Sherman Yang from P.E.?”
“Not quite.”
“Lee Fletcher from English?”
“Not him, either.”
Annabeth finally drops the act, jabbing a thumb towards the blond that stood with a scowl directed at her. “This guy?”
“Ding, ding, ding!” Grover chimes in imitation of some gameshow.
Annabeth wishes that she was on a gameshow. Maybe then she could have found compensation for her suffering in winning a million bajillion dollars, and everything she went through the last few hours was just a prank by gamehosts. Instead, she is stuck here at Yancy with no doubt in her mind that she is going to have to get along with Grover’s new friend, whether she likes it or not. She just sighs, resigning herself to her fate.
“So, Annabeth,” Grover begins, “this is Percy! Percy, Annabeth. He’s in our grade, has lived in the Upper East Side all his life, skateboards for fun, and now we’re roommates for the year!”
Annabeth grimaces.
“I think we all are going to become great friends,” he finishes.
With a noncommittal hum, all she says is, “We’ll see about that.”
The skateboarder—no, Percy—narrows his eyes at Annabeth with similar skepticism to her own.
He opens his mouth to say something, but is interrupted as the lights in the auditorium are abruptly turned off. All the students in the room quickly quiet and sit down in their seats—Grover sits between them with her on his right and Percy to his left—and a spotlight flickers on to settle on Yancy Academy’s principal at the stage podium.
“Good morning, students,” says Mr. D with a dull drawl, “it is a pleasure to receive you all today. Thank you for your dedication to Yancy Academy and returning for another year at our beloved institution. As you all take the next few days to get yourselves comfortable, please take the upcoming school year into consideration. You should all be aware that you will receive your schedules shortly, and the first day of academics will begin on the thirtieth."
Should anyone encounter any issues, please take it up with the appropriate staff: Argus, the director of Yancy’s security, for any campus issues or concerns; Hestia, the grade’s psychologist and counselor for any emotional conflicts; your advisors for any matters regarding your courses and whatnot; your dorm parents for immediate emergencies; and your teachers for academics.”
After a moment of consideration, he adds, “Oh, and Chiron the associate principal is happy to help out, too.” Then he steps down from the lectern.
A chorus of applause echoes throughout the room as Chiron steps up to the stage. The man adjusts the microphone according to his height and clears his throat.
“Thank you, Principal Dionysus, for that lovely welcoming speech. But most importantly, thank you all for being here today. It is about to be a brand new school year–an opportunity for all sorts of new beginnings, experiences, and discoveries. Yancy Academy prides itself on its standing compared to other schools, so please continue to work hard to continue to put in the effort and passion your studies requires of you. And, yes, please do not hesitate to reach out to me for anything.”
Chiron waves kindly with a warm smile as he leaves the stage, and the applause is noticeably louder than the one prior.
It is towards the end of dinner that day that everyone receives their schedules in their student emails.
She skips to the bottom of the email in search of the promise that students would receive physical copies the next day, and finds it in smaller print. Annabeth is very thankful for it because then she won’t have to strain her eyes and mind to interpret her classes after tonight.
“C’mon guys, let’s compare schedules,” Grover says excitedly, phone displaying his.
Annabeth nods and scrolls back up to the list of her classes to show Grover. She hands him her phone and lets him make the comparisons, as it would be quicker than her trying and getting a headache from reading the small text of the email. It was a system they started a year ago, when they first arrived at Yancy Academy together.
“Percy, don’t you want to look, too?” asks Grover. He waves a hand to urge the other to huddle closer so they can all review their schedules together.
“Huh?” The boy, in the middle of spooning himself a bite of pasta, startles a little at the sudden attention. “Oh, um, it’s fine. We can just compare later. I’m not in a rush to look.”
Grover gives him a slightly worried, questioning look that Annabeth catches. She didn’t realize anything had been wrong in Percy’s response, but it is no surprise to her that her best friend had caught it immediately, even with someone he just met.
“You guys go ahead and compare,” Percy assures.
Grover acquiesces and begins to scan his and hers schedules for same classes and lunch waves.
“Okay, English with Ms. Lant, Science with Mr. Greene, Latin with Mr. Brunner… and…” Grover trails off, expression turning disappointed.
She leans closer to their phones to look at their schedules. “What’s wrong? Is that all that we share together?”
“No, we still share two lunches, but I’m surprised that’s it,” he explains with a sad frown, and hands her phone back over to her.
It doesn’t bother Annabeth that much that they don’t share as much as they had the previous year because they can see each other outside of class and hang out on the weekends, but she is still disappointed, too. She had thought they would have more time to spend together.
“There’s still weekends, at least,” Annabeth sighs.
A notification from her dad pings on her phone just as she was about to turn it off, and she opens it to read it better.
Hi, Annabeth. I just got off from work. Did you make it over to Yancy all right? Call me if you aren’t busy.
Her brows furrow as she comprehends the last sentence. She and her dad hardly have any conversations due to each of their own busy schedules, and Annabeth is sure she could count the times she has called her dad in the year she has owned her phone on one hand. She returns to reality right before she hits the call button at the top of their chat, tuning in to Grover and Percy’s rapidfire conversation about their mutual dislike of math.
“—can’t stand when they just mark my answers wrong on tests and don’t even bother to explain what I did wrong–”
“Right? How are we supposed to fix our mistakes when we don’t even know where to begin?”
“It’s their damn job to teach students–not just circle stuff in red ink and write question marks on the side!”
“Percy, you are so right– Oh! Hey, Annabeth, where are you going? Is something wrong?”
Annabeth hadn’t even realized it, but she had picked up her plate and rose from her seat in the blink of an eye.
“I think I’m going to head to bed early tonight. Today has been tiring,” she says, mustering the best reassuring smile she could manage. It evidently fails, as even Percy is giving her a weird look now. Annabeth turns away in an attempt to leave before Grover could bombard her with his concern—which she usually appreciates, but not at the moment. It would be more stifling than anything else—however, she is stopped by a warm, tugging grip on her wrist.
It is Percy who has gently grabbed her, she finds when she looks down for the source of the touch, letting go of her hand that is clasping her phone tighter than need be.
“Are you okay?” he asks, worriedly.
Annabeth almost wants to shout at him, ask him why he would possibly care how she’s feeling when she has been nothing but uncivil and curt with him the entire day that they have known each other for, yell about how she is, in fact, not okay.
But she doesn’t do any of that.
Annabeth puts on a facade of calm not too unlike the one she uses with her step-mother, and takes care to say her words without gritting her teeth.
“Yes, why wouldn’t I be?” She counters, voice even, but she is unable to force herself to peer into his earnest eyes—or let him peer into hers, in the case he finds something he shouldn’t. “Really, I’m just exhausted. I’ll see you guys tomorrow.”
The last thing she sees before she turns away is the melancholic look of understanding on Grover’s face. Annabeth is very aware of the fact that he’s got the situation figured out already, and that he knows she knows. Because Grover recognizes her need for space, he doesn’t stop her as she walks away.
Later, she will probably wish that he did, that she could get concrete proof that someone actually cares about her, but she feels grateful for it now.
Hi, Dad. The train ride was fine. I settled into my dorm.
Annabeth hits send and shuts her phone off, vigorously burying her face into her pillow.
She can feel Clarisse’s stare on her but pays her no mind. Her roommate makes no comment, opting to turn back around to the FPS game on her monitor—which Annabeth knows for sure is banned on campus—and she appreciates it.