There's a million fun ways to spend a Monday afternoon; staying inside playing video games, practicing swimming in the backyard, and visiting my mom at her candy shop Sweet on America with my friends Grover and Nico are just a few ideas that come to mind. But staying after school to be tutored? Definitely not an enticing way to spend my time.

It wasn't my idea to get help with schoolwork, even though I really needed it. My stepfather Paul Blofis (also my English teacher, weird, I know) convinced me to sign up for it. After a sub-par freshman year of purely Cs and Ds in my classes, sophomore year only got harder. After my first quarter of 10th grade, I had managed to get four Ds and two Fs, an all time low for me.

Paul pulled me aside one day after classes and told me about the extra one-on-one help available after school, urging me to do it for my hardworking mom, if not for myself. That was enough to persuade me to do it. She'd sacrificed a lot for me, working all the time to provide for me, so I figured the least I could do would be to pass my classes. So here I am at the front of the school library, feeling dumber than a sack of potatoes as I look at all the kids sitting around with their own personal tutors.

After standing around for about thirty seconds or so, unsure what to do, a lanky guy wearing glasses and a tacky name tag labeled 'Malcolm' walks up to me. "Percy right?" he asks.

"Yeah, that's me," I answer bleakly.

"Newcomer I see," Malcolm says, a hand on his chin. "Well you'll be assisted by a new tutor who just so happened to have signed up around the same time as you. She'll help you out since she has no student to work with." He points to the table my tutor is at and I feel a nervous, unexplainable tingle in my stomach as I walk over to her in the far corner.

She's got a head-turning California girl complexion; blonde curls, sun kissed skin, and a slender build. From what I can see of her face, she wears no makeup, and her clothes are pretty simple: an olive green t-shirt with an owl printed on the front, faded blue jeans, and worn out converse high tops. Then she looks up from the book in her hand, and the whole California girl thing is ruined, though not necessarily in a bad way. Her eyes, rather than sky blue, or sea green like mine, eye colors you'd expect from a girl like her, are instead a stormy grey, intense and intimidating, making her even more attractive.

"Hey… I'm Percy," I say to her, offering my hand as she catches sight of me.

"Annabeth Chase," she says, shaking my hand curtly. "I know who you are, Percy." She has a smile on her face, but I don't think it's a genuine one. It is, instead, the type of smile I'm used to getting from people; a pitiful look that fails to hide dismay. She probably knows about at least one of the stupid things I'd done last year, like dying the school pool dark blue or getting kicked out of Miss. Dodd's Algebra class more times than I can count. Trust me, I've done a lot of stupid things in my life. I answer in a safer, less self-deprecating way.

"You must know me for being swim captain," I say.

"Ummm…yeah," she answers, not looking at me as she rummages through her bag, pulling out her pencil pouch. "So let's get started on working. We can stay here till nighttime but I'd rather get home as soon as possible to study." She studies in her free time? This isn't gonna be fun.

To say Annabeth made my work easy to do would be a lie. We took over two hours to finish up all my work, and it was, in my humble opinion, a form of mild mental torture. Annabeth wouldn't give me the answers straight away, instead only giving me the most subtle of hints as to what the correct answers were. When I begged her to tell me what to write down, she only shook her head adamantly, saying I "won't learn without putting in effort."

It didn't help that she always gave me this disappointed look every time I screwed something up, and it only made me feel worse. For some reason, I wanted to impress her, but she was too damn smart and I was too dense. In the end, I did get most of the answers correct by myself, but it had exhausted my head pretty badly. The worst part is, it's only Monday; I still had to be tutored for three more days this week.

Things got more difficult for the next couple of the weeks. Annabeth always made me figure out what to do with minimal guidance, saying that she "refuses to be an easy tutor." I felt really out of my league around her, a gorgeous and ridiculously intelligent girl. After a couple days, she seemed less bothered by the blunders in my work, as if she had grown expectant of me having errors.

Then one day I got back my latest Latin test, with a C plus. A C PLUS. That's almost a B! I couldn't believe it, but then I got back a couple more tests, one from Math and another from Chemistry, both Cs. Not the most amazing I could've gotten, but passing all the same. Annabeth really was helping me. Although I didn't think much of it at the time, I realized there had been a few instances during each of these tests that I chided myself similarly to how Annabeth would have done during our tutoring sessions.

I really wanted to show her my improved tests, but when I get to the library for the latest tutoring session, I realize she isn't sitting there in the corner as usual, which doesn't seem like her; she'd always struck me as a prompt person. As I take a seat at the desk, I put my head down on my copy of Julius Caesar to rest a bit and look at the other kids around the library.

I don't know when I nodded off, but the next thing I know, I'm being nudged in the side. "Percy wake up…" Annabeth hisses in a loud whisper.

"Huh?" I say, a bit too loudly. Several people turn to glance at the two of us.

"Sorry I was late," she says, taking her seat across from me. "By the way, you drool when you sleep."

I want to say something sarcastic to her, but then I see her eyes and any sarcastic quips are gone. She seems gloomy, her stormy eyes bloodshot, her irises darker than usual. "What's wrong?" I ask her.

She glares daggers at me, as if trying to pick me apart just by making eye contact with me. Hell it almost worked; sure she was intimidating most of the time, but it was nothing compared to how scary she was angry. I couldn't figure for the life of me what was so wrong with asking somebody why they seemed so upset, but I could tell something was bothering her pretty bad. I decide to take the risk and repeat my question. "Annabeth, what's wrong?"

She glares a bit more, then exhales in in exasperation. "If you must know, it's just...my mom called me after last period. Nothing too serious."

"You're a terrible liar," I tell her, instantly regretting it. I brace myself, expecting her to do no less than breathe fire in rage. To my surprise, she answers me, but in a quieter, unsure voice.

"You wouldn't understand," she says. "Not really."

"Annabeth, you can trust me," I tell her. For some stupid reason, I remain persistent.

"What am I supposed to say?" she snaps angrily. "Am I supposed to tell you, a complete stranger to me, that my mom doesn't give a damn about me? That she left me when I couldn't even speak and now she expects phone calls to make up for years of absence? That my dad is too blind to understand me? That I'm tired of people trying to tell me who to be? Ugh, I'm sorry Percy, but I find it hard to believe that you'd relate to any of that!" She's crying angry tears now. I can tell she didn't want to tell me any of this, but it just spilled out.

Uncomfortable and uncertain how to comfort her, especially with people glancing nervously at us, I put my hand on hers and try to calm her down, speaking in a low tone to prevent anyone from overhearing us. "You can't say I can't relate to you if you don't know that for a fact Annabeth."

"What could you know about anything I deal with?" she asks me.

"Because my dad left me as a kid," I say, without a second thought. "He was some hotshot navy guy, he knocked up my mom, then he ditched when she got pregnant. Then my mom married an abusive sex-driven asshole just so she could have an income to support me, and she only recently realized how toxic that was." I feel my fist clench at the very thought of Smelly Gabe, with his tobacco breath and daily 6-pack of beer. Just the memory of him made my blood boil.

"And now she's finally happy with my current step-dad, but she has to worry about me being a failure cause I can't get a fucking C in any of my classes. So, you can say that you have problems, but so do other people Annabeth," I finish, not sure how I managed not to raise my voice. I look at her, and I see her looking down at the desk, embarrassed.

"I'm sorry Percy. I had no idea," she says. She hesitates, then speaks again after about a minute or so in silence. "My mom left my dad and I when I was a few months old. She said having a family wasn't in her plans, said it would hinder her future, and that being with my dad was a mistake. She never said anything for years, then a couple of years ago she contacted me and said she wanted me to join her at her tech company after high school, but I refused. She's trying to win me over, but I'm so tired of it. I don't wanna be a tech mogul like her, I don't wanna be a historian like my dad and bitchy stepmom want me to be," she says with a roll of her eyes.

"What do you want to be?" I ask her.

"I just wanna be an architect," she says, "I just wanna be able to make things of my own." Another couple of minutes pass by without a word; the students in the library have stopped looking at us, no longer trying to overhear our conversation. I suddenly realize my hand hasn't left hers; I move it away, and we both blush awkwardly.

"Didn't know we had that much in common," she says, rubbing her neck.

Something cracks and I can't help but laugh. "You mean that we both have jacked up parents with commitment problems?" I suggest offhandedly.

To my surprise, she smiles back, a really breathtaking smile. "You are such a dork," she says with an adorable giggle. In a matter of seconds, the tension is broken like a knife cutting through butter.

After that, Annabeth and I became really close. It seemed as if we spent more time at the library every day after that. She was a genuinely fun person to be around when she didn't take herself so seriously. I really began to enjoy our time together after school, to the point where I almost didn't want to go home some days. I began to hopelessly crush on her soon after, but I didn't dare do anything about it.

I could think about her all day, those gorgeous grey eyes and cute, sarcastic smile, those- "Yo Perce, you zoned out again?" my friend Grover says around a mouthful of enchilada. Him and my friends Nico, Frank, Leo, and Jason are all looking at me around the cafeteria table. It was the third time today that I'd zoned out.

"What's her name?" Jason asks.

"Huh? How'd you know it was a girl?" I ask him, feeling my face get hot.

"Seriously Percy, last time you were so unfocused like this was when you had a crush on Rachel Dare," Leo says.

"And we don't need to remind you how that turned out," Frank adds.

"Oh god, please don't," I groan in embarrassment.

"Piper told you that writing a love letter of all things was a bad idea," Jason says. "And she has a good sense of these things."

"Never doing that again," I say under my breath. I consider telling them about Annabeth; there was no convincing way of telling them about meeting her besides the truth, that I was being tutored. They didn't know I was doing that bad in school.

"Earth to Perce…" Nico says.

"Fine, but you can't say anything okay?" I tell them. Everyone around the table nods, so I decide to go through with it. "Her name is Annabeth, she's my...tutor."

"Woah woah… Annabeth Chase?" Grover says, grinning. Everyone else starts to smile too.

"Dude, she's kinda outta your league," Nico says unnecessarily, completely brushing over the fact that I was being tutored.

"Yeah I kinda figured, but thanks for the support guys," I sulk.

"It's not our fault you've got a thing for some girl Luke Castellan was with," Leo says. "Plus she kinda scares me sometimes," he adds quietly.

"Luke Castellan? He graduated last year," I say, dumbfounded.

"Yep, he was a senior and she was a freshman," Frank says. "They split up after a month or two."

"My sister is still friends with both of them, apparently they've still got bad blood," Jason says.

"How did I not know about any of this?" I ask them. Luke was, as far as I know, the most popular senior last year.

"Oh cause they became a thing around the same time you tried to get together with Rachel," Grover says.

"Took a long time to live that down," Nico says with an evil grin as my face begins to burn.

"Maybe that's why she moved to that all girls prep school," Leo says. "She couldn't be around Percy and his unrequited love f—"

"Oh my gods guys shut up!"

Figures a girl like Annabeth would've been with a guy like Luke. If I thought she was out of league before, knowing about her being with Luke made things way worse. Even though I found myself attracted to her, I didn't let my friendship with Annabeth be ruined by a crush. In fact, things were generally the same after I found out about Luke. Every day after school, we would go over my homework while having the most random of conversations. I'd actually come to know a lot about her, from her fear of spiders to her many building concepts and ideas.

As the year progressed, my grades boosted to mostly Bs and B minuses, with the exception of a solid C in geometry, to the surprise of both my mom and Paul. My mom was really proud of me, and it felt great being able to see her so happy.

However, my grades were no longer the biggest of my concerns as the school year was almost over. As the days went by, the desire to tell Annabeth about my feelings for her became more and more tempting. It seemed that every day, I found some small reason to like her more, to the point that she was literally the first and last thought of my day.

Before I knew it, the last day of school had arrived. Finals were over, and I had breezed through my exams thanks to Annabeth's help beforehand, but now the biggest test of all had come; how was I going to tell her I like her? I knew if I didn't get to it soon, I wouldn't be able to do it at all. I had no classes with Annabeth since she took all APs and I took none. Thankfully the last day had no classes and was just four hours reserved for tidying up and saying farewells, so I could use that time to try and find her and talk to her alone.

I had just about given up after looking for her for an hour with no luck, when I felt somebody's hands cover my eyes from behind me. "Guess who?" I hear from a familiar voice.

"Annabeth?" I say, feeling a blush on my cheeks for no apparent reason.

"Correct, Seaweed Brain," she says.

"Seaweed Brain?" I ask, raising an eyebrow at the new nickname.

"Cause you're a swimmer and your head's full of kelp?" she suggests with a grin.

"Nice one Wise Girl," I quip.

"Wise Girl? That's the all you could come up with?" she teases, her grin widening.

"Not all of us can have amazing nicknames like 'Seaweed Brain,'" I say, making her laugh. "Look, I just wanted to…um, thank you for helping me get my grades up." Grades. Really? That's all I could come up with?

"Hey, it's no problem Percy. I mean, it wasn't easy, but I did make a friend out of it," she says.

"Well, um, that's the thing…" It's now or never. "I kinda want to be…more than friends."

"What exactly do you mean?" she says, raising an eyebrow. Shit, is she really going to make me say it?

"Well uh… I feel like we got pretty close… and I've been thinking of you a lot lately… and I was wondering if maybe, we could, you know, try for a relationship…as more than friends," I say, feeling my face burn. That came out way more stuttery than I wanted. I wait for her to respond, but she just stares at me, expression blank.

"I knew this was a bad idea," I say, feeling embarrassed by her silence.

"Why do you say that?" she asks, her expression neutral.

"Because you're out of my league, you're smart, gorgeous, you're…amazing…" I tell her, feeling my face get hotter than it was before, which I didn't think was possible. "You dated Luke Castellan last year, I should've know this was a stupid idea."

She rolls her eyes, as an irritated look crosses her face. "Percy, seriously? Are you kidding? Luke was a dick, he just wanted to date me so he could win a senior dare. He just wanted to sleep with me to say he did it with a freshman."

"So you don't like him?" I ask, dumbfounded.

"Duh, Seaweed Brain," she says, smirking. "I'm done with assholes. I do like this one guy though…"

"Wait, so do you like me back?" I ask her, still unsure. God, I bet planning Ancient Greek battle strategy would be easier than getting my way through the minefield I'd gotten myself in.

"Ewww, no Percy… You're kind of a loser," she says. I feel a sinking in a chest, then I look at her and see her suppressing a smile (and failing miserably at it might I add).

"Oh my god, you're messing with me!" I say.

"I can't just give you the answers. I have to make you think first," she says with a smile that makes me feel weak in the knees.

"You aren't making this easy," I tell her, unable to look away from her mesmerizing grey eyes.

"I will never make anything easy for you Seaweed Brain," she says, moving closer to me, until our faces are inches apart. "Get used to it." With that, she grabs my shirt and locks our lips together.

And it was pretty much the best kiss ever.

Please review and tell mewhat you think of this and if I should write a version from Annabeth's perspective!