Something missing. Something big. Something…that she just couldn't put her finger on. It was right there, at the tip of her tongue or at the back of her mind and she just couldn't quite grasp it. Every time she thought that she was close enough to grab it, it slipped away. If she could just remember something…anything! A fleeting moment or a feeling or even just an idea of what she had been doing for the past year then she might not have felt so lost. But there was nothing but a big black hole where her memories should have been.

"Thalia?"

"Mhm?" She looked up, realising a second too late that she had been so immersed within her own thoughts that she had been neglecting the matter at hand.

"You okay?"

"I'm fine." She smiled and tried to look as if she meant it. She was tired of everyone tiptoeing around her, treating her as if she were made of glass.

"You sure?"

"I'm sure."

What was her name again? Anna or Abbie or Aimee, something like that. She had long blonde hair, and impossibly blue eyes. She was very pretty; the kind of girl Thalia would have felt intimidated by in high school. She launched back into a description of the boy she was seeing. Or wanted to be seeing or was trying to be seeing. Thalia wasn't sure exactly what the situation was, and she had not been paying close enough attention in order to catch up. Oh, well. She wasn't sure that she cared. She felt…out of place. She didn't know these girls. No, she did, she just didn't remember knowing them. Anna or Abbie or Aimee was talking animatedly, and Thalia watched her. She tried to forge some kind of feeling of connection to this girl who had (re)introduced herself as Thalia's best friend, but instead she felt…nothing.

A prolonged moment of silence and Thalia glanced around, wondering if she had missed something. The other girls (there were four of them. All very pretty, all with names Thalia couldn't quite remember) were alternating between staring appreciatively at something she couldn't see, and fixing each other with knowing glances.

"Hel-lo" the girl to Thalia's left, a brunette with legs for days, murmured, eyes following the unseen force that was commanding their attention.

"I would. I so would." Another blonde was grinning and twirling a strand of hair around her finger.

"Behave." Anna or Abbie or Aimee rolled her eyes.

Out of sheer curiosity Thalia turned to see what she was missing. Her gaze landed on a boy, of course. Pale, dark hair, tattoos, and nothing else worth noting. He was striding down the street in their general direction, gaze fixated on the floor.

"Do you guys know him?" Almost as if he had heard her, the boy looked up and straight at her. He was nice to look at, she thought. She stared back at him for a long moment before she lost interest and turned back to the girls.

"I wish," said Brown Hair, then she sighed. "If only all vampires looked like him."

"Vampires?" Thalia echoed, a hint of disbelief coloured her voice. She turned in her seat to look again, but the boy was gone.

"Yeah! You couldn't tell?"

"How can you tell?"

"It's the skin," the others murmur in agreement, "that pale, sickly, I'm-dead kind of look."

"And that's…" Thalia paused, glancing around the group, "good?"

"Sure. Vampires are very in right now."