I don't think that it's worth getting into traveling back to the past to recall the story he and I shared. It's not like it would bring him back, and thinking about it would only cause nostalgia – the bad kind. There should be other things on my mind, other things to worry about. Nostalgia was a waste of time and it didn't have any results anyway.

Although that never stopped me from doing it.

It wasn't a special story. Certainly not the kind you'd find in a book or a movie. We were just two friends who happened to go our separate ways with no intentions of doing so. Of course, there's always someone guilty of causing the rift between two people, and I guess that's why I kept going back to those thoughts.

We met when we were eleven and just entering middle school. I had decided to stay in New York and live with my dad after my parents split up. He was the first person in my grade to talk to me, but I couldn't stand him, at least not in the beginning. For an eleven-year-old, I had a pretty big ego. He seemed like a pretty dumb kid, at least in my mind. Of course, he definitely proved me wrong, but that's beside the point.

Percy Jackson was naïve, slow to understand, and sucked at school. I was the complete opposite. Where Percy excelled at failing classes, I exceeded at being top of the class. The poor kid even asked me to tutor him from time to time, an idea I wasn't too keen of in the beginning. Wow, looking back on it I must have been horrible to Percy. It must have taken courage for him to admit to himself that he needed to do something to pass and all I could do was consider him dead weight.

I learned a lot from Percy. That's what made me reconsider my emotions and my judgment for him. See, my mother raised me to believe that only the wisest are fit for survival, and the wise look out for none other but themselves. Percy had a different philosophy. He didn't believe in selfishness, he put others before himself, and god was that boy loyal to people he cared about.

In turned out that Percy had ADHD and dyslexia, which took him a while to admit to me, but I was surprised that he never bothered to mention them even as an excuse.

Soon he and I became best friends and my view of life did a total one-eighty. I never considered myself an unhappy kid – even after my parents' divorce. I was raised not to whine and to be grateful for what I had, but when I was with Percy, it felt like I had experienced true happiness for the first time.

I had even introduced Percy to some lifelong friends of mine. He instantly got along with Grover which made the three of us inseparable. Thalia argued with him a lot but you could tell the two got along just fine. It was friendly banter anyway. I was most nervous about Luke's approval of him – Sure Thalia's family just as much as Luke is, but Luke had the better judgment of character, plus he was the eldest of our group. It was a relief to see that Percy and him got along (at least at first). During seventh grade Percy had befriended this kid named Nico who didn't seem to interested in joining our little group, but in the end he still hung on for the ride.

Those years in middle school were probably the best of my life. The summers between them were even better. I don't recall a single day I spent without Percy. I remember the time he and I spent our last summer of middle school hunting for jobs so that we could both buy ourselves enough gear to start our own band. And the summer before that when I was teaching Percy how to sing. And the one before where I taught him about music with the piano.

That's another thing Percy taught me to love: music. My mother enrolled me into music lessons when I was a small child since she thought I was "adept" for someone my age. It turns out I was singing opera and playing Mozart at the age of eight. Of course this "talent" wasn't from sheer talent if not for from strict hours of gluing my face to music sheets, vocal exercises, and a piano. It was never a trait I deemed important enough to show off, I mean what could I say? "Look at me I can press make pretty sounds." For some reason I thought I'd show Percy a little bit of it, to which he begged me to teach him.

Now Percy never learned anything about music theory under my tutelage. His excuse was that "something so complicated didn't matter as long as I could play it right", so he didn't even bother to learn. Of course I did teach him the basics, but my god did he have a talent for it. He could definitely sing, and when he first started putting interest in the piano he had started to learn songs he liked until he could play and sing them mindlessly without a flaw. Very little do you see someone with a knack for music when they have no interest in learning the knack for music.

He didn't really care about playing classical. At first all he would play was Green Day, which was pretty weird since their music is very guitar heavy. His favorites were some Panic! At the Disco songs, some Paramore, and even some Coldplay. Once in a while we'd have a few duets. I suppose that's where the idea of starting a band came from.

That summer no one was willing to hire some thirteen year olds for a part time job, but Percy managed to get us a small job with his mom. His mom wanted to be a writer, but the poor woman had to manage by working in a candy store in Grand Central Station. She was the sweetest person I had ever met and often made me wish that my mom was more like her. Sally Jackson was more than happy to have the two of us help her out. The pay wasn't much, but by the end of the summer I managed to buy an acoustic guitar while Percy had the idea of wanting to learn to play bass, even though he couldn't afford an amp to come along with it.

I ended up giving that guitar to him once we hit high school.

Our first year of high school was when our relationship began to deteriorate. If could just say what caused the drift, I had known how to stop it. Except I didn't. It was my fault that Percy and I had stopped talking.

Grover had been held back a year, but he wasn't too mad about it. He said that he'd rather graduate with Percy and me. Nico was finishing up middle school so that already caused an unbalance in the group. Thalia hung out mostly with Luke but she always tried to dedicate her time to the rest of us. Unfortunately, I started hanging out more with Luke too, but for some reason I began to neglect the others. It was the second stupidest thing I've ever done. Luke to me was a safe zone to me, a freshman girl thrust into a totally different environment. He had become popular as the star football player for the Goode High School Team, along with being a major athlete. It felt like every student looked up to him. He did fairly well in school, had some charisma and was on the good side of all the teachers. He was a star. But that's not why I kept close to him; that would have been hypocritical.

I'll be the first to admit that when I entered high school, I was scared beyond my mind. The teen movies and books did not paint a pretty picture for me. I wasn't ready for the stress, both academically and socially.

I clung to Luke because he seemed like the only safe spot inside a pool of lava. He'd been protective of me all my life and he was willing to do it even then. I was eternally grateful for that and even felt I owed him. So I dedicated my time to him. Pretty soon I had been engulfed into Luke's circle of friends. His routines with them became my own. It got to a point where I was just too "busy" to even talk to my other friends. Honestly? These new friends didn't even hold a candle to Percy, but stupid me was too dumb to realize that.

That whole year I spent avoiding Percy. It could swear up and down to myself that it was unintentional, but it's not enough to get rid of the guilt. Of course I had no excuse, but at the time it really felt like I had no other choice but to spend all my time with Luke. Luke had changed. When he was once sweet and patient, he was no abrasive and harsh. His ego had grown larger than ever and thought himself superior to most people in the school, even his "friends". Of course I decided to play stupid and ignore it. Surely the old Luke was still there, and it still did look like that was the case, especially when it came to me.

Percy tried a lot to hang out with me for the first half of the year. He grabbed any opportunity he could, but most of the time our interactions were short lived. He became a lot colder towards Luke as well, and Luke never stopped short to bad mouth Percy either. Of course, being the crappy friend that I was, I could never defend Percy rightfully. At least Percy had the decency to keep his opinions about Luke to himself.

At some point Percy had probably given up. I couldn't blame him. I still remember the last thing he said to me.

We were in a PE class together and Percy decided to stay on the benches that day. Now Percy at the age of fourteen was skinny and short. I was about an inch or two taller than him, but that never stopped him from participating. Granted, he and I hadn't properly spoken to each other in months, but I still decided to go talk to him.

"What's up Seaweed Brain? You're always up for playing some basketball." I tried my best to sound cheery, as if we were still best friends. Percy looked up at me a little confused at first, probably thinking I was a hypocrite for bothering to talk to him after so long. Yet, he still offered me a small smile, but something was off. Percy had the brightest sea-green eyes in the world, but that day they just weren't shining.

"Guess I'm just not feeling it today." He sounded a little uncomfortable, which made me feel uncomfortable as well. So much for acting as if nothing was going on.

"Oh. Well go to the nurse's office?"

"Yeah, I think I might go."

"Okay."

"Yeah." There was an awkward pause that went on for a little longer than I wanted it to.

"Well, I should get going… see you around, Percy." I was already beginning to head back into the game when he called me out.

"Hey Annabeth?" he hesitated for a second, it was strange seeing him nervous. "Take care, okay?"

All I could do was chuckle and smile. Had I known that those were the last words I'd ever hear from him, had it occurred to me that that would be the last time I'd see him, I would have run up to him and hugged him till he forgave me for everything.

He moved away after that. I had no clue of it ever occurring. It was like the bang of a gun aimed for your heart. My life has never been the same since.

According to Thalia, Percy moved to Seattle. I asked her how she knew and all she said was that his dad and her dad pretty much own this big company and their HQ is there. That wasn't exactly the answer I wanted. Grover wasn't much help either. He knew why Percy left, but all he would tell me was that Percy was going through some stuff in his home and his mom thought it'd be best if he lived with his father for the time being. He also mentioned that Percy didn't really want people to know the details.

What could he have been going through? Ugh, if I had only done something to help him, if I had only known; maybe this could have been avoided. Except I didn't and it's already too late. I was a horrible person and a horrible friend to Percy. I couldn't bother to even act as his friend in a time where he needed someone. Of course Percy wouldn't make a big deal about it. I could already imagine him smiling and shaking his head at me. "Don't worry about it, Wise Girl. I've got it covered. You overthink way too much." That Idiot. I was such an idiot. A goddamned selfish pathetic moron. I hadn't changed at all. I was still selfish, I was still petty, I was exactly the girl my mother wanted me to be. All that time learning from Percy meant nothing in the end. I'd never hear from him again.

And it was like that for two years. Every day afterwards felt like a reminder of my biggest mistake. Every day I thought of him and the time we spent together. Of course I reminded myself of messing it up. I had all the power to change things. I could have done something right, but of course I was too blind to know what I was doing,

It was hell without Percy and it was worse not knowing anything about him for almost two years.

That is, until very recently. My first inkling into Percy's life away came after two years, and it was from YouTube.

Percy had started making song covers on his own YouTube channel.