Hi, so this was originally a story I came up with on a whim trying to make band class interesting. It worked. I got the girl that kept talking about the party she was throwing for Abraham Lincoln's birthday to listen, so it must have either sounded really horrifying a eight in the morning or she got sick of talking about Abraham Lincoln's birthday. I dunno. Anyways, I should be working on my Nico at Hogwarts fic, but I felt like doing this instead.

I don't own Percy Jackson or any characters used in the story.

Piper had been sick, she was told. So sick that she had to go back to California, back to living with her dad. Back to going to school. Back to just being the daughter of Tristan McLean. She had been told that she was sick. Sick was a loose term. When the doctor Annabeth had forced her to see said that she was sick, he hadn't meant that she had the flu or pneumonia. He meant that something had caused something to go awry in her head. And to Piper, that was nonsensical bullshit.

Normal high school was boring. She was bored. Her grades were no good. She didn't have friends there. It almost felt like she had never been to Camp, like she had never been claimed as the daughter of a goddess. She was back to being Piper McLean, the daughter of the famous actor that practically everyone had a crush on some point in time of their lives.

She hadn't seen Jason. She hadn't seen anyone. Not Annabeth. Not Hazel or Frank. Not Rachel. No one. She was stuck in California all alone.

Then she decided that she was sick of it.

Middle-Of-Nowhere, Oklahoma wasn't all that great. It wasn't bad either. There weren't any flashing cameras following her anymore. There wasn't anyone following her. Sure, it was boring, but it was away from there. Away from California—where her dad lived and where she knew an army of people like her lived. She worked at the local diner. She got herself a sorry excuse of a house.

This house was actually more of a shack that had three rooms. A main room where she kept a twin-size mattress, the kitchen, and the bathroom. It wasn't much, but it was a place to stay. It was a place to live away from the bedlam of her father's Hollywood life.

Her life was simple. Go to the diner for work. Work at the diner for nine hours. Go back to the shack from the diner. Shower. Eat some Lucky Charms or Doritos, whatever was available. Stare at Katroptris for a couple hours in the dark. Go to bed and not actually sleep for more than two hours. Restart the entire schedule all over.

It was boring. It was the most soulless existence that Piper had ever endured, but it was better than being stuck in California.

She could have gone back to Camp. She could have, and she probably should have. But she knew this was the last place that her dad would look for her, since he never wanted to come back to Oklahoma. That was why she chose here of all places. Her dad wouldn't go looking for her here, and none of her friends from Camp would think to check Middle-Of-Nowhere, Oklahoma.

Everything was going fine until she saw the shadow across from the diner. She convinced herself that she had not seen a stranger—that she had simply seen a trash bag floating in the wind. She had not seen a battered man across the street. She had not seen a battered man across the street, no sir. No man there. What man? There wasn't a man.

So she continued to take orders and serve greasy diner food that made her sick. She continued to smile, even though it was the last thing that she really wanted to do. Because everyone in the entire world wanted to smile to people they barely knew. Everyone obviously wanted to take the orders of idiots acting like children. Piper didn't complain though. It would be useless to complain about anything. She was in Oklahoma, where she was just Piper McLean. She wasn't the daughter of Tristan McLean, and she sure wasn't the daughter of Aphrodite. Not here. She was fine with that. She was fine with being Just Piper.

The diner closed, so Piper decided to actually go to Wal-Mart for once to get something other than cold cereal and two-percent milk. She decided to buy some fruit. Fruit was important, and it was always nice to have some fruit on hand. Yeah, she did buy some more Lucky Charms, but no one stopped her to tell her that she needed to stop buying Lucky Charms so often.

She panicked when she saw the front door of her shack-house wide open. She had been sure that she had closed and locked it. Okay, maybe not lock it. No one in their right mind would take her lousy secondhand mattress and that was pretty much all she had in it, other than cereal and two-percent milk. So there wasn't a reason to lock the front door. There was still something that told Piper that entering the shack would be foolish. Probably just her common sense trying to communicate.

Don't go in. Don't go in. Don't go IN! DON'T GO IN! DON'T GO IN, YOU IDIOT! Of course, Piper ignored the voice in the back of her head. She didn't have time to be afraid. She had two-percent milk that needed to be put in the refrigerator.

None of the lights were on. That was pretty normal. None of the lights were ever on when Piper returned from working (or in this case working then shopping). So she turned the kitchen light on.

There was the ragged man from across the street, smiling an unnatural grin. A grin that made him look ill, as if his head was about to split because of how wide he was grinning. It made Piper nervous for obvious reasons. First of all, there was a ragged stranger in her kitchen. Second of all, he was carrying a meat cleaver that sure as Hades wasn't hers.

"You left without saying goodbye." The familiar voice set Piper on edge. It couldn't be. "I came to say goodbye, Pipes. Why'd you leave without saying goodbye? Just like you mother."

"I-"

"Just like you mother!"

"Dad-"

"Remember Piper." Hiding from Hollywood was easier said than planned. And it was easier planned than done.

Middle-Of-Nowhere Police were baffled as to why they found that one waitress's (whatever her name was) head in a box outside the station.

There we go. That was the story. Any good? Probably sounded like an exhausted person tried to write a murder story. I'm sorry if it sucked.