Five Times

The first time Percy met his soulmate, he was 6 years old. Her name was Alisha, and he knew the moment he walked into that kindergarten classroom and saw her wild black curly hair that she was the one he wanted to spend his life with.

"I love you." He said.

"Gross." She replied.

He spent the rest of the day following her. He laid down next to her at nap time. He gave her his apple juice when the teacher passed out snacks. While they were finger painting, he drew a picture of her, then gave it to her. Alisha remained unimpressed.

"I love her." He told his mom later that day, while he was sitting at the kitchen table.

"Is that so?" She asked, barely concealing the amusement in her voice.

Little Percy suddenly slammed down his glass of milk (blue milk in a blue glass, of course,) and stared at his mother indignantly. He had been well-behaved all day, but Alisha's constant rejection, paired with his mother's skepticism had worn down on his nerves. "I do love her!" He shouted, crossing his pudgy toddler arms in resentment. "I want to marry her!"

Sally Jackson raised an eyebrow. "You want to marry her." She repeated, pulling up a chair opposite to her petulant child. Percy nodded. Sally took a deep breath. Of course Percy had inherited his father's flair for melodramatic romances. "What do you like about her?" She asked carefully.

Percy hesitated. "I like… her hair. It's shiny and it smells good." Gods help us. She thought. He wants to marry her because her hair smells good. No wonder his father has so many girlfriends.

"Her eyes." Percy said suddenly. "They're big and brown… I like 'em."

Sally studied her son. His eyes always reminded her of his fathers- constantly shifting, and yet there was something so steady and constant in them, exactly like the ocean. Today, they were particularly reminiscent of Poseidon's, because she saw in them the exact same love and devotion she read in Poseidon's when she told him she was pregnant.

"Boy," She said, shaking her head. "It never rains with you Greeks, it pours."

Alisha and Percy fell into a routine. Every morning, Percy would present Alisha with some kind of treat, a crumbling chocolate chip cookie, a smushed brownie, a quickly-melting ice cream sandwich. She would accept the offerings, (usually accompanied by Percy's professions of undying love, he was surprisingly poetic for a 7 year old.) and then proceed to simultaneously eat them and unsympathetically reject him.

Lunch. Recess. Crafts. Every single second of Percy's kindergarten existence revolved around Alisha, who in turn returned Percy's affection's with the same amount of enthusiasm one gives a 3 month old corpse in the middle of August.

Undeterred, Percy soon fell into a similar rhythm with his mother. Every afternoon, once Percy got off the bus, Sally presented the child with an after-school snack. Once she had performed this task, her entire existence was ignored in favor of ranting about Alisha. Sally was now more informed about Alisha's life than she was her own child's. (When asked about his day, Percy would reply with one word sentences: 'Good. Play-Doh. Math,' then began an in-depth description about Alisha's new pink shoes.)

Now Sally Jackson had been gifted with an extraordinary amount of patience, but after being subjected to 9 months of uninterrupted monolouging by a kindergartner in love, there were no words that could possibly describe how relieved she was to be standing in the elementary parking lot waiting to pick Percy up from the last day of school.

Some time away from Alisha, she decided, would hopefully make Percy forget his childish infatuation. And if he hadn't gotten over it by the start of the next summer, it still gave her some pick up a couple of extra shifts, and save up enough money for some noise-canceling headphones.

The first couple of days were much, much worse than Sally had ever expected. Percy laid on his floor, alternatively moaning about how bored he was, how hot it was, and how much he missed his friends. (Sally was actually delighted by the last one; though it was mostly focused around his crush, he mentioned a couple of other class mates too, which meant he hadn't spent the entire year talking to solely Alisha, just most of it.)

By the second week of summer, Sally was desperate. She was facing another 3 months of this, and possibly more, and she started to think a solution would never appear.

But appear it did, and in the form of the death of Tabitha Grennage.