She knows she's crazy.
Even before everyone started teasing her, she knew that maybe, she wasn't like the rest of them. The other kids.
Cecily Rioman. Kristen Jones. Claire Neeman.
You'd think that the clique of popular kids was just a joke, right? Something you see only in teen movies and books? Nope.
Sometimes, it seems like the whole world is against her.
They tease her. Those three girls. They send her things as a joke, and she can't detect it until later, and those three girls laugh about it.
She's an outcast among the outcasts, too.
See, she writes. She has ADHD, she has dyslexia, but she can write, and very well, too. She takes a notebook around with her and jots down ideas to run through a word processor, into a spell check, later.
And she doesn't talk to anyone. She's quiet. She's not your usual girl. Her eyes are glazed over, unfocused, distracted. They flicker around, staring at everything. She fades into the background, and she doesn't mind.
She argues once in a while. Not much.
It's not why she thinks she could be crazy, though.
There's this boy in the class, see.
A boy only she can see, it seems. He has black ruffled hair and he's tall, with olive skin. Usually wearing Converse sneakers, black jeans and a black t-shirt. About twelve years old.
Much like the girl.
She hardly notices him. She's unfocused. She sees him, though, looking her way, and they both look awkwardly to the side. And he disappears quickly. She looks. Away. Looks again. The boy is gone.
She's crazy.
And there's a glow around everyone - kind of like this aura - that she's sure only she can see. At least, she hasn't read about it in books. And her one friend has not told her about it. She's scared to tell people. Because, oh, what if she is crazy, and she's put in a hospital?
It's when she sees those blink out while watching the news that she's scared. She wakes up screaming in her bed, terrified to go back to sleep.
And the year passes with the boy showing up a couple times a month. She goes around, unfocused, dreamy, yet unsmiling except for a bright grin once in a while with her head ducked, like she's trying to keep it to herself. She bites her lip shyly as she does this.
And then she passes the final exams and the last day of school hits.
The boy is there, standing in the middle of the crowd. Not really smiling. And people are looking at him, frowning. Like he's some kind of madman. Like the boy is an outcast from the outcasts. As the girl walks, glazed brown eyes still drifting, but somewhat focused on the boy, she sees people talking to him: "Who are you?" "What are you doing here?"
The girl is not crazy.
She is not hallucinating.
She reaches the boy, and blinks a few times, and by her fourth blink, the glaze is gone.
"Hello," the boy says.
"Hi," the girl says shyly.
"What's your name?"
"Carly. Carly James." The girl bites her lip, ducking her head to the side, like she tends to do when talking to people - maybe that's why she's not good with being in this city - maybe New York will be better, after all.
However, the boy takes no notice of this, quite unlike most other people (who thinks that she's being quite rude). Instead: "Nico di Angelo." With a smile - not mocking, she can sense this easily. She's smart. Everyone mocks her for being dumb.
She's not.
"You - you look like me." A pause from the girl. "A lot like me," comments the boy.
The boy is quite a bit taller than the girl, and she's paler - much, much more pale - but otherwise, they have the same nose, same face structure. Same everything. And the eyes - oh, the eyes match, all right. Deep brown with a slightly crazy look in them.
The girl is silent. She has never been a girl of many words.
"I'm your brother."
"I thought so," the girl says, smiling for the first time in - what - a week? More?
The boy tilts his head to one side questioningly. "You just know, don't you."
A bigger smile. "Yes. Much like that."
"I can see the auras, too. Life auras, they're called," the boy says, starting to smile. "Your mother's waiting. We're going to New York."
Smile.
It's something she rarely does.
And Carly James follows Nico di Angelo to her mother's car.
That's how it starts.
A/N: So tell me what you think! It's just an idea that popped into my mind and sprouted a PJO prompt, and then this came out of it - Nico having a sister, and his sister thinking she's going funny in the head because she can see life auras and stuff.
And yeah, Nico's kind of creepy. He's cute. And he's creepy. And that's just Nico. ;D