Why, hello, hello! So, Favors of Shadow has ended (for new readers, check it out. Although, I must admit, I tend to be more on the confusing side and some chapters are wayyyyy better than others). But, no worries! You still have Nico, after all! And Nico is the bomb. For reals.

The Life of Beautiful People

Chapter One

I cannot even begin to relay to you the completeness of my misery, for it is so great it cannot be relayed through a computer screen. Yeah, I know. You would not believe how the mighty, for mighty I am, have fallen. Beautiful people did not go to school.

And I, Nico di Angelo, am a beautiful person.

Not that anyone cares. "Go to school," says Annabeth. "Get an education." In case you couldn't tell, that was, mentally, done in my best Annabeth impression. Heroes don't need an education. We don't need to know geometry. We need to know how to make a kabob out of big, furry/scaly/slimy/smelly monsters and not get chopped up into little pieces while we do it. I don't care what she says, she can't force me to care about math. Numbers aren't going to come alive if I don't figure out a problem and try to skewer me with their horns. Or eat me. Or behead me.

And who would want me beheaded? Actually, don't answer that. The list would be a long one. But, my point is, I like to think my head is my best feature. Mostly because it's connected to the rest of me. And since I'm so roguishly handsome, anything connected to me is awesome. Including my head.

Not that monsters care about that. They care about that almost as much as Annabeth cares that beautiful people don't go to school. And that would be roughly the equivalent of not at all.

"Stop being a wimp," she said, shoving my pitiful bag into the back of the giant Delphi Strawberries van that could have a double life at one of those big white ones you kidnap people in. "This is a good thing. School is wonderful. You'll love it."

...

Since when has any demigod (who isn't a daughter of Athena) enjoyed school? Or any person, for that matter? It was ridiculous.

I looked at Percy for help. I could have charmed myself out of this one, of course, but Percy was her boyfriend. And charming people is a lot of work.

Of course, since Percy doesn't care about beautiful people either, he just shrugged and gave me a raspberry jellybean. "It's easier just to agree with her," he admitted, shoveling a handful into his mouth and talking through it as only a teenage boy could. "She usually ends up being right anyway."

"You disappoint me, cousin."

"You can say that. But I more or less saved the world five times." He grinned, his tongue the same blue as the beans in the little bag he had shoved in the pocket of his pants.

"I helped!" I insisted. I was distressed. And while my roguish handsomeness can pull that off, I prefer being apathetic in the dark corner of my cabin. "For, like, the last two times."

He patted me sympathetically on the shoulder with his jellybean covered hand.

I tried my hardest to glare a hole into it.

I did not succeed.

So, as I eased myself on to the pleather seats in the van, I was not in the best mood. The fact that I hit my head as I did it didn't really help my outlook. Some day, I would write a book about how stupid it is to send beautiful people to school, just to help my fellow man. It will be a best seller, and then I can shove it in a certain blond half-bloods face. That would show her.

While I sat in the passengers seat, I was too busy plotting that I didn't notice the girl knocking on my window. When I did notice, all I saw was blond, so I rolled down my window and gave Annabeth (supposedly) a witty remark. "Buzz off."

However, it wasn't Annabeth, as I realized when whoever it was whacked me hard on the forehead like you see in those V-8 commercials. Oh no! My roguishness! I scowled indignantly, but they didn't care. "You're in my seat, moron."

"Obviously it isn't, because I'm sitting in it, so go shove yourself in a corner and be gone from my presence. I understand that it's hard for you to pull away from staring at me, but please do your best and leave me alone." And thus I returned to my plotting.

The girl was not happy. I could hear her foot tapping on the gravel. "Look, idiot. We're both in the same boat, and I can understand that. But sharing the same van with someone like you irks me. So make this as easy for the two of us as possible and get in the back where I don't have to spend the entire trip staring at the back of your head."

I narrowed my eyes at her. "I don't see what's so bad about it. Alright, it's not as awesome as the front of my head, but it's still not an eyesore. Besides, I don't like you either. So why don't you just accept fate and sit in the back where you can read your books or whatever and leave me in peace?"

Storm gray eyes glared at me like flint. Wow, a simile. See, I didn't need to go to school in the first place.

But the girl, whoever she was, huffed and, tossing her blond hair over her shoulder, opened the back door of the van and hopped inside (without hitting her head, I noted.)

Argus settled into the drivers seat, and I swear he would have been smirking is his facial expression wasn't hidden by his collection of blue eyes.

The girl patted her bangs into place stiffly and pulled a book the size of my handsome head out of a bulky backpack that had so much stuff in it, the seams looked like they were halfway to splitting. "You're backpack needs to go on a diet," I told her.

She looked at me and decided I was simply too awesome to reply to, so she saved whatever remark she had for another day. And believe me, there would be plenty of them. Because, as she glared, something dawned on me. She was in the van. Going to school. My soon-to-be school. The one that I would be occupying for the next year assuming I didn't get kicked out. Oh no. This was not going to work.

"You're going to Avery?" I asked, horrified.

She grinned, showing perfect white teeth as she flipped another page in her well-worn book. "Took you long enough."

"This is bad."

"Tell me about it." Then she ignored me and went back to her book. I didn't both translating the title from whatever my dyslexia converted it to. It was big and thick and something I would never, ever touch in my entire life. I avoided knowledge like the plague.

So, really, going to school was a great idea! Hopefully, you picked up on my dripping sarcasm. If not, you need to go to school way more than I do.

"What's your name?" I asked.

"Hmmm?" she said, barely glancing up from her head-sized novel.

"You're name. What do people call you? Ogre?"

She threw a pencil as my head.

"Tess," she muttered a minute later.

"Huh?"

"Tess," she scowled. "My name is Tess."

"I assume you already know my name, considering that I helped save the world twice." I smirked.

"I heard that conversation." Tess rolled her eyes. "Sorry to disappoint, but I don't really pay attention to idiots. So no, I don't know your name. Enlighten me."

I frowned. "You're, like, a constant downer, huh?"

"I hear that enough from my dad and my aunt. I don't need it from the son of the god of death. Talk about irony."

"I know irony. It's almost as good as sarcasm."

"Sarcasm is a defense mechanism, you know."

"Well, I'm put in constant life-threatening situations. A sense of humor lightens the load." I slumped in my chair, plugging my headphones into my iPod and shoving the ear-buds into my ears. Basically, we ignored each other for most of the ride.
At least until Mozart started playing from her cellphone and she answered it reluctantly.

Us demigods tend to shy from cellphones. Something about projecting our voices all over of the world wasn't really appealing when you're running for your life. Imagine a Las Vegas-esque neon light blinking on and off above our heads. Hey, dude! Eat me! I'm low-fat!

"Hello?...Oh, hi mom."

My curiosity was peaked. I paused my music but pretended I was still listening to it. A proven eavesdropping technique.

"No, mom. I'm good. I don't need you checking up on me every 20 minutes. It's dangerous anyway...Yes, everything in my life is dangerous. I can't really help that...Why not? Because I was kind of born this way...Do you want me to rip out half of my DNA? Yeah, that'll work. You tell me when they develop a way to do that...Of course that was sarcasm!" Tess groaned. She mouthed the word idiot to no one, and I realized it was her favorite word. "Mom, Cason is already at Avery. I can't leave him...You're the one that was all 'Come on Tess! This will be good for you. A chance to express your pent up anger and depression.' What happened to that, mom?" She practically screamed, putting her hand over the receiver as if it would actually do anything. "Every second I sit here talking to you it's dangerous, both for my mental and physical health. I'm hanging up on you before you aggravate me so much I chuck the phone out the window." She flipped the phone shut and went on reading like nothing happened.

Of course, I had to say something, right?

"You need a pick-me-up." I grinned.

"You wanna buy me an ice-cream cone, di Angelo?" Tess scowled at the page.

I sat back in my chair, smiling even though she muttered angrily into her book. She knew my name after all. Everyone did. I was roguishly handsome, after all.

A word about what little I know about wherever I was going to. That would be Avery Institute for the Artistically Advanced. The building was big. Really big. Imagine a small town. You could fit two into that brick building. It was gargantuan. It was also (shocker) an institute for the artistically advanced. Go figure. Have you ever seen the movie Fame? It was like that, only not for old people.

Basically, I would be surrounded by dancers and singers and actors and painters for a year. Whoopee. Artistic types make me moody. Except for maybe the dancers. I could get used to the dancers.

Of course, if Chiron had tried to get me into a leotard, he would have woken up with half of his tail cut off and all of his cd's demolished. So they would have to squeeze me into another category if they didn't want me wreaking havoc on the entire camp.

As if I weren't already peeved that Annabeth had officially decided that my life wasn't suckish enough and sent me to Avery. Now, I had to actually do something. This is not the life for a beautiful person. Besides, Avery was basically boarding school for crazy artist-types. One of which I was not.

Not that I had never been to boarding school. Most people like me have. Of course, my experience was limited to a fort-like school in the middle of nowhere with a Manticore on the staff. Not really the first place I would pick for my kids, if I ever live long enough to have some. And the food there was terrible.

But Avery is the first (and hopefully last) school for the artistically advanced that I would ever have to go to. I would be okay with never even setting foot on another school for the rest of my life. But hey, maybe, whenever something dangerous happened and I got kicked out, it would be big enough to get me on the news.

Anyway, so dancing was out of the equation. There were a bunch of other things they could have finagled my way into. Here, I'll let you guess.

Please pick one of the following.

A) Drama

B) Music

C) Art

D) Writing

If you guessed C, well, then you don't know me at all, because I can't draw a flower without it looking like an atomic bomb. Writing...hello? Dyslexia? Drama...too dramatic.

So, they found the easiest thing for me to do. Annabeth saddled me with an old guitar and sent me off. But hey, I played Guitar Hero for, like, years in the Lotus Hotel and Casino. It couldn't be much different, right?

While I was pondering where the buttons were on my instrument, Tess lugged out a trumpet, a flute, and a violin form the very back of the van. I gaped at her. "You play all of that?"

"Well, not all of us are simpletons like you. They couldn't lug us both in here if neither of us had any talent whatsoever."

"If I didn't know you better, I would say that was insulting."

"You would be right."

I didn't like Tess very much. The fact that they had out the two of us in the same division wasn't really comforting. But that's beside the point. Let's return to the retardedness of boarding school.

It was okay that we were in the same thing, because the girls weren't even allowed in the guy's dorms anyway, even though they were right next to each other. From what I'd seen, the dorms were nice, each with a nice view of the ocean around us, fully stocked mini-fridge, and a microwave in case we craved that microwavable burrito sitting there, tantalizingly.

The only thing I didn't like about the dorms it the beds; more specifically, the fact that there were two of them. This just did not fly. I did like that just around the corner were the girls dorms (even if Tess were there, the other girls were enough to satisfy me), but that wasn't enough to redeem Annabeth. I flew solo. Unless I was in trouble. Then I had a few skeletons to back me up. And the occasional son of Poseidon. Occasionally.

I was already heading up the steps, thinking of the microwavable burrito that awaited me. Tess hung back, standing at the base of the stairs, looking up at the formidable building that would be our home away from home until we got kicked out. "Indecision in an unattractive feature."

She squinted at me. "Indecision. A four syllable word. And we haven't even entered the school yet." But she still stood at the bottom of the steps.

Normally, this is where the dapper young man (and main character) would offer the girl a hand and an inspiring phrase and everything would be okay, right before riding off into the sunset on a horse. But Tess was hardly a girl. And while I was both dapper and a main character, I was all inspired-out for the day. As it turned out, I wouldn't be riding off into the sunset with Tess anyway.

So instead, I just shrugged and headed up to the office, heaving my guitar case up behind me. She followed anyway. Making a decision was way easier when someone else did it for you.

Our principal looked like an eternally impregnated turkey. He was all flab, with a chunk of skin hanging down under his chin and skinny little legs that looked as if they would break from supporting the mass that was his body. Kind of like setting a bowling ball on a few toothpicks. Only if the bowling ball was wearing a fancy, most likely expensive suit. He straightened his tie as I came in, waiting for my reluctant companion and me.

He grinned. I saluted him loosely, plopping down my bags and leaving scuffmarks on the polished white-tiled floor. Aggravating Tess didn't help my mood. Especially since she aggravated back. "You must be Nico di Angelo. Nice to meet you, nice to meet you!" He shook my hands with a grip that surprisingly strong for a turkey. At least he was enthusiastic.

"Um...you must be some guy I'm supposed to know the name of." I massaged my aching hand.

"Mr. Duport. Nice to meet you," he repeated, before giving Tess his attention. "You must be Mr. Pearson's sister. You'll be proud to know that he is doing a great job! He painted that picture over there on the wall. Impressive, isn't it? It's only his first year too. His instructors were very impressed. Very impressed."

Whoever Mr. Pearson was, I was jealous. It was hard not to be. I had no idea what the picture was supposed to be, but I could tell it was awesome. It wasn't fair that he could do that, and when I put a pencil to paper in somehow came out looking like Hiroshima. I could actually give survivors panic attacks, if I ever met one. Which would probably only be on my next trip to dads, seeing as most of them died.

"I'm glad," Tess said graciously, patting her bangs into place like she did when she was nervous. "Cason's always had trouble fitting in."

"Excuse me?" A blond boy popped up from behind a desk, dropping a huge folder down onto it with a bang. Too many blond people, I decided. Just too many. "I'm fitting in quite well, thank you."

Later, I would learn that Cason Pearson was a junior, in the art program, a star student, and a son of Athena that just happened to Tess's full-blood brother. Now, I was just really confused.

Ah, the life of beautiful people.

Ta-dah! So, basically, I like this chapter. Tell me if you don't. Especially if you don't. And tell me what you think. 'Cause I can't go on thinking I'm as awesome as I do if I'm not. And I'm pretty sure I am.

If you followed that, +100 awesome points. An extra 98 if you review. That's a total of 198 awesome points. I think that's pretty generous, thank you very much.