A/N: So. Um. I don't even know what to say about this. Well...it's my new story. Obviously. And it's basically about Rachel, a very angsty Rachel, trying to become perfect but all the while sinking deeper into something she can't handle alone. Yes, there will be one-sided Prachel, but Percy ends up with Annabeth, so it's not too bad. No, it will not be all angst: Percy is in this, so of course there will be happy moments.
However...this might be an extremely triggering story if you suffer from depression, self-harm, or an eating disorder. Mostly the triggers will be for self-harm, though. Don't worry, I know it's slightly graphic in this chapter, but in the others I'll try not to be graphic. It's not graphic in a gory way, though: it's more graphic in the emotions she's feeling as she cuts.
So...yeah. If you feel that this story will trigger you, PLEASE DO NOT READ IT! I know how triggering some things can be (I self-harm), so please do not put yourself at risk at all by reading this story! I don't mean it to be triggering or make anybody want to self-harm, because I really don't believe it's the best way of coping, and it can certainly be dangerous.
So...that's all.
Oh, wait:
Disclaimer: Me no own Percy Jackson and the Olympians, or any of it's characters. They belong to the wonderful Rick Riordan.
/*\*/*\
Perfect; adjective. Conforming exactly to the description or definition of an ideal type; entirely without any flaws, defects, or shortcomings.
Rachel slammed her dictionary shut as hard as she could, earning herself glares from the other inhabitants of the library. She ignored them and slumped back against her chair with a heavy internal sigh.
Perfection, she thought with more than a little longing. Why does it have to be so...unattainable?
This was the same thought that had haunted her mind for months; almost a year, now, she realized with a start. That wasn't good. It was almost the anniversary of it, and that could only mean one thing: memories.
Rachel swallowed around the lump in her throat and slid the dictionary back onto the shelf before standing and heading for the front of the building. She hadn't intended to wander into the education section, but she had wanted to look up a few words she had stumbled across while reading A Tale of Two Cities and find their definitions, since the dictionary at home was intimidatingly large and heavy and Rachel was pretty sure it also gave Latin translations. She also hadn't intended to flip to the P section in the dictionary, and find 'perfect' right there, about a page before 'perpendicular'...
Rachel's sneaker caught on the leg of a chair and she staggered forward, pulling the chair with her for about a foot.
"Watch where you're going, lady," Rachel heard being hissed at her. The red-haired girl nearly jumped out of her skin. She spun to find that the voice who had addressed her belonged to a blond girl wearing a fierce scowl. In her hands was a thick, pastel green paperback volume with a picture of the parthenon on the front.
"I-I'm sorry," Rachel stammered out. "My shoe-" But the blond girl had already returned to her book with a roll of her eyes. Rachel gave a small huff.
"Don't mind Annabeth - she's always grumpy if somebody interrupts her reading time." A boy with jet black hair gave the blonde a good-natured tweak on the nose. Rachel felt a slight smile twitch at her lips in spite of herself.
"I can understand that," she murmured. The boy gave her a grin before stage-whispering,
"Personally, reading is like murder to me." When he saw her questioning and slightly horrified gaze, he elaborated. "I'm dyslexic."
"Oh." Rachel felt a surge of guilt. "I'm...sorry?"
"Don't be. It got me out of learning cursive in elementary school." The boy smirked and then stuck out his hand, right under Annabeth's nose, for Rachel to shake. Annabeth gave a whine of protest. "I'm Percy, by the way. And you?"
"Rachel." Rachel quickly gave Percy's hand a shake so he would drop his arm and not make Annabeth angrier. The blonde did not look like somebody you wanted to irritate.
And then Rachel saw the clock hanging on the far wall, little red hands ticking along on it. Her eyes widened and she had just enough self-restraint to keep from swearing.
"I have to go," she told Percy and Annabeth quickly. "Like, right now. Nice meeting you."
"You too-" Percy began, but the red-haired girl was already racing out of the library like her life depended on it, the messenger bag that was slung across her chest bouncing against her hip.
Once outside, Rachel had to shield her eyes from the late afternoon sun that peered at her from between two skyscrapers. Taxis rushed past on the streets and a man with a briefcase almost trampled Rachel in his hurry to the coffee shop beside The Book Cellar Library. She steadied herself and then began waving her hands wildly in an attempt to flag a taxi. Luckily, she was an experienced New Yorker, and therefore it only took her a minute for one to stop. She swung the door open and slid into the seat, trying her best not to inhale the scent (a mix of cigarette smoke and musk cologne).
"Columbus Circle," she told the cab driver before he could ask. "Make it fast and there's an extra ten in it for you."
Though she couldn't see his eyes, she imagined they lit up with greed like she had seen happen a thousand times before. A moment later they were speeding through New York City.
Rachel rubbed the bridge of her nose and attempted to calm her panicking heart.
They won't be too mad, she thought helplessly. I'll just tell them that there was a traffic jam between the library and home, or that it took me ages to flag a taxi.
No matter how hard she tried to comfort herself, it didn't work, as was proved when she nearly had a heart attack when the taxi screeched to a stop and the cabbie demanded his pay. With trembling fingers, she took out her wallet and flung a wad of fives at him. She knew she was probably over-paying, but she was late enough as it was without having to sit there and count out exactly 30 dollars.
Without a thanks or a goodbye, Rachel flung open the door and jumped out of the started back up and sped away as she hurried up the concrete steps outside of the Dare home. Her sneakers pounded hard as all thoughts left her mind save those of getting inside and into her bedroom.
If Rachel had been a tad bit more observant, or at least less panicked, she would have noticed the various expensive-looking cars parked outside of the building, or she would have heard the voices of several people coming from the living room (or as her mother called it, the "parlor") that was adjoining to the foyer.
But Rachel didn't notice either of those things, so she pulled off her sneakers and dropped them in the corner, and then made a mad dash through the living room to get to the staircase that would take her to her bedroom.
She never got to the staircase. Because she froze halfway through the living room as she became aware of several pairs of eyes boring into her.
"Mom," Rachel breathed, horror filling her, followed by sickening dread. "Dad. Why didn't you tell me we were expecting guests?
/*\*/*\
"Do you have to be like that to every person who interrupts your reading?" Percy gave Annabeth a long-suffering pout. His friend thought for a moment before shrugging and responding,
"Like what?"
"Like 'I'm-going-to-rip-your-head-off-if-you-don't-screw-off'," Percy explained. She snorted and gave a roll of her gray eyes. Percy found himself watching her intently, marveling at just how deep those eyes of hers were.
"I do not look like that," she insisted. He forced himself to stop staring, and snorted.
"Please. You totally do. And you scared off that girl." Percy gestured to the door, where that girl with the very red hair had gone off to.
"She was looking at the clock - probably just had somewhere else to be, Seaweed Brain," Annabeth shot back.
"Seriously? What is with that nickname?" Percy asked in exasperation. "Yes, I'm a decent swimmer, but what does seaweed-"
Annabeth chuckled. "ADHD, much, Percy?"
"Um, yeah. I kind of am."
Annabeth sighed and shook her head before returning her attention to her book. Percy's gaze wandered back to the door, his thoughts once again on that red-haired girl. Rachel, she had said her name was. She seemed nice. And somewhat familiar. He absent-mindedly wondered if he had met before. Maybe at school? No, she didn't seem like the kind of girl you'd meet at a New York City school for "troubled kids", like Yancy Academy was. Then again, Annabeth didn't exactly seem like the kind of girl you'd meet at Yancy, either, but that was where Percy had met her, staring at the building and "admiring the architecture".
A smile twitched at Percy's mouth. Annabeth was a strange one, but she was still one of the best people he had ever met.
/*\*/*\
"Do you have no respect for us?" Rachel's father ranted in a voice so loud that the chandelier in their foyer (which was so large that it could barely be classified as a foyer) trembled. His arms were crossed behind his back and he marched back in forth in a manner that reminded Rachel of a military general (which, coincidentally, her paternal grandfather had been). A scowl seemed to be permanently etched into his face.
Rachel cringed and began to speak, but once again was cut off.
"We told you to be home by 3:00, and you did not arrive home until nearly 4!" Mr. Dare exclaimed. "And when you finally did decide to grace us with your presence, you ran right into the living room-"
"Parlor," Rachel's mother inserted.
"-looking as if you had been rolling around in some gutter in Brooklyn!"
Rachel began to protest, but a quick glance down at herself made her realize that he had a bit of a point. It had rained the previous day, so the frayed hems of her already ratty, colored-all-over jeans were soaked brown with mud and grime. She was wearing an orange t-shirt that she had received after donating to the ASPCA the year before. Reaching up, she confirmed that her hair was, indeed, a complete rat's nest.
"It rained yesterday," she croaked out meekly, but Mr. Dare was already continuing.
"Imagine what the Rockefellers thought! And right as we were bragging about our polite, accomplished daughter, too." He pinched the bridge of his nose, eyes squeezed shut. Rachel felt a flutter in her chest - they were bragging about her? - that was quickly cancelled out when he added, "apparently not as accomplished as we believed."
"Dad, I-" Rachel began, tears springing into her eyes, but he cut her off one last time.
"Rachel...just...go." He waved a hand towards the living room and the staircase, and Rachel was only too happy to bolt away before they pushed her any closer to the point of breaking down crying.
She finally reached her bedroom and, slamming her door as hard as possible, she collapsed on her floor. She pressed her back up to her bed and buried her face in her hands. Her shoulders shook as she opened her mouth in a silent sob that she muffled with her knees.
All of her frustration, all of her pent up indignity at being shouted at for something as silly as not looking like the perfect Barbie doll daughter her parents wished she was when guests were over, boiled to the surface and spilled over in hot, salty tears.
But it wasn't enough. She needed more release than childish weeping.
Rachel shakily hauled herself to her feet and staggered over to her desk. She pulled out the drawer and rifled through until her hand grasped her red Swiss army knife. She clutched it in her fist and turned it over, as she turned over the idea in her mind. She had heard of this before. She had seen scars on the people who did things like this. She wasn't like them. She had promised herself that she wouldn't be like them.
"Oh, screw it," Rachel snarled under her breath. She pinched the knife attachment and tugged it out. The blade gleamed in the faint light spilling into the room from her bedroom window. The edge was sharp, since she hardly ever used it, but made a point of keeping it in good condition. She was glad for that, now. A rusty blade would have done her no good.
Slowly, she brought the knife down to her arm, but then hesitated. It was almost Summer. Far too easy to see a scar on her arm in the Summertime. And that blade looked so large, so lethal...
She snapped it back into place and dropped it back into the desk drawer with disgust. But she still needed release. Her heart was still pounding wildly in her chest, her fists still clenched at her sides.
Rachel glanced over at her cork board, and a grim smile formed on her lips. She snatched a push pin from the little box of them and didn't hesitate to drag it across the skin on her hip. At first she flinched at the pain, but she was startled to find that it didn't hurt nearly as much as she imagined.
So she dragged it across her skin again, applying more pressure this time. It left a thin little red mark.
She repeated this action over and over again, all over her hip and her stomach. Slowly, she felt relief seep through her. She looked at the push pin with something like awe.
"Perfect." The words slipped through her lips in a hiss that sounded so completely unlike her own voice that it startled her. "I will be perfect. One way or another."
/*\*/*\
A/N: I think that is the single most depressing thing I have ever written.
Once more I would like to stress that just because I write about self-harm like it's a decent way of coping doesn't mean that it is. I'm only writing things the way Rachel sees them, for the time being, though eventually I'll do a chapter on Percy's opinion of self-harm, and that'll be much more honest about the truth of self-harm.
So...that's all. Hope you enjoyed! Pwease tell me in a review, if you did ;)