A/N: Okay, so this is my first PJO fanfic. I have four and a half chapters written for this already. I might possibly update it again tomorrow; but if not, I will next Wednesday, or Tuesday. If I get enough reviews, I might update tomorrow. I really don't know if this is worth publishing or not. I think it is. But tell me what you think, too. I personally, don't like this chapter as much as others. Oh and if I must, I will go back and change the next chapters before updating again.

Okay, I know it has Nico in it in the very first chapter, but don't judge it yet, okay? He's just the one I chose to bring her there; I don't know if it'll be Nico/OC yet. That could work itself in. But I'm not sure I wanna do it because everyone says they never turn out good. And besides, I'm halfway through the fifth chapter and she doesn't even know about the I'm-A-Demigod thing yet. She will, though.

And about the title. It's a song, yes. Okay, wait, I won't explain it yet because It'll ruin the plot.

Hope you like it. Read & review!

How to Save a Life

Chapter 1: I start a 'Your Mom!' fight

Ah, school. No place I like better. Well, okay. That's a lie. There are a million places I like better. But schools the best place I can get to right now. And that's saying a lot, that I like school best, coming from me, a kid with ADHD and dyslexia who makes strait D's and gets laughed at for most of the day. We get out early on Friday's, though. What a shame.

You see, school is more of a protection to me, rather than an educational source. It's a safe haven for me and my sister. Cristy's not really my sister; she's my adoptive sister. Well, wait, let me go back.

Apparently, the orphanage in Spencer County, Kentucky found me on their doorstep one night with a note that told my name and birthday. Yeah, that's really very cliché, I know. But that's what they told me. I kinda didn't believe them. But could I really help what they told me happened when I was, like, five months old? No, no I couldn't. I don't know if that's what actually happened, or if they are hiding something. The orphanage itself wasn't bad. Nor was it great. The family that ran it gave us food, shelter, your basic needs, but not much more than that.

So then, two years later, the Clark's adopted me, Rebecca and Adam. I was 2. They were the awesome-est people ever. They loved me like their own. Let's just put it as they were really good and kool parents. I even called them Mama and Daddy.

Then when I was six, they had Cristy. They had tried, like, six times to have a kid before but couldn't. That was their motivation for adopting me. They'd tried again and Cristy was born. I love her like a sister- she ismy sister, in the same sense Rebecca and Adam were my mom and dad. I love the snot outta her.

So why am I talking past tense with Rebecca and Adam? 'Cause they died. How? I dunno for sure. I got off the bus after second grade and found Cristy crying in her crib. Her room was in the middle of my room and their room. In that room, I found both their dead bodies, something an eight year old should never, ever experience. It traumatized me that did. I started screaming, making two year old Cristy scream harder. There were multiple deep scratch wounds, like they were mauled by like, a bear or something. Adam went to work around thirty minutes after I get on the bus for school, so whoever-or whatever-must have done it right after I left.

Why didn't they get Cristy too? She was right there all day in the next room over. Why Rebecca and Adam? What did they ever do? Did they do it 'cause of me? Did they want me instead? Seems like it now.

They shipped me and Cristy off to an orphanage in New York (we'd moved to New York a few months earlier.). There, I cried for days, but the good thing was, in that total craptastic orphanage, other than not developing PTSD, I made a best friend. Loren Ages (he hated his name) was two years older than me, and he was awesome. For three years, he was my best friend ever. Then he disappeared. I waited for a long, long time. He never came back.

That was the trigger for my depression, I think. Everything changed when he left, or died or whatever. I got all depressed and unsocial. First I got really mad. Mad at Loren for leaving me, mad at the idiot Mrs. Belle who ran the orphanage for not even filing a missing person report or Amber alert (she probably didn't care enough, or notice), mad at myself for making him run away, and mad at the world for my suck-y life.

Andthat was also the year a family, the Grayson's, adopted me and Cristy. It helped a lot with the depression thing.

They were abusive, not sexually, just physically. I escaped them once to those social service people (I'm not good at vocabulary) and reported them. Now, the man, Greg, was in jail even though the women, Morgan, did most of it. She tricked them. And she took that event and learned from it.

That's why I still live in her horrible excuse for a home, love school, now, have no realistic way of escaping, and Cristy's growing up terribly.

School's a protection for us, protects us from Morgan. She can't hurt, hurt us in public.

She takes us to school daily, waits 30 minutes so she'll know if we try to run away, knows I won't dare run during school because they called the cops on the last kid who did that, picks us up everyday, and gets there early, so don't say we have time to run. Morgan's smart.

I've tried every way to get away except, like, two. And I can't do those because they involve leaving Cristy alone.

Cristy's all I have left in the world; I'm all she has. I have to do everything I can to protect that little girl. I have to be her motherly figure. She needs love in her life, and I'm the only one capable of that.

(/)(\)(/)(\)

Jenna Dumbkin is the head cheerleader of Eastwood Middle School. Okay, her real name's Jenna Dunkin, but I call her that because she's so überly stupid it's not even funny. Dumbkin has long, flow-y, chocolate-brown ringlets and wide dark blue eyes that were right now glaring at me for reasons unknown. She and her totally fake tan were a 10 on that stupid Hotness Scale boys have. I personally would give her, like, a 4.

Well, she sits right in front of me during first period Reading and is shaking me into focus. I mean really shaking me, like grabbing my arm holding up my head and starts violently shaking me. I could have done without the shaking; my head falling alerted me of my surroundings quickly. "Pay attention, retard!" Jenna says in that annoying whisper-yell thing. I looked around the room, ignoring her comment. The teacher was standing by some guy I'd never seen before and staring expectantly at me.

The teacher, Mrs. Webster, seemed around eighty years old with light brown hair that was almost completely grey stretched back into a tight bun on the base of her neck. She has bifocals and is always squinting, making her wrinkled face look like a constipated pit bull. And she had on this weird navy blue dress with little red flowers all over it that looked like it was made in the 1920s. Heck, it probably was.

"What!" I said in annoyance. She did that smirk and bratty nod combo toward the teacher that said 'you are such an idiot!' It made me want to punch her in the face and brake her nose really bad so it stays crooked and see how the guys like her then.

"God, I hate cheerleader!" I said under my breath. But I guess it was a little too loud because a few guys were snickering and even that new kid way up front had a little half-smirk.

"What!" I said to Mrs. Webster in the exact same tone as before.

Jenna glared at me, and the teacher glared at me and said, "Say your name, Clark!"

"Why? You just did." She glared harder. She has horrible glares. Really, they are. They totally suck. Cristy can glare better than she.

"Okay, okay," I said, "I assume it's for Dude-who's-name-I-don't-know, so…Hi!," I waved, "I'm Auden Clark! And now, I'm gonna go." I said half of that in fake cheeriness. I went back to staring out the window, watching the gentle May breeze blow the three tall oak trees by the school. School's out soon. We have until the 3rd of next month. Did I say how much I freakin' hate school? I do. But I like it, too. Compared to Morgan's house, which I loathe with a fiery passion from the depths of my heart I didn't even know I had until eight months ago, I absolutely love school. This proves there are cases where you can love and hate something. So ha, world, HA!

Ooo, that reminds me of that one time Loren slammed a revolving door on this fat guy's foot and-the teacher screamed my last name again and I yell, "What do you want, woman?"

"I want you to listen for a change! Nico, here, is going to sit behind you because it's the only seat left." She said, stressing the most random words. Well, that's because you hate me and thought moving me to the last row, last seat by the window, and being last to do everything would be awesome punishment for it. Well, I kinda like it, so one point for me, loser!

"And you're telling me this why…?"

"I want you to explain things to him." Aw, can't you? You're closer. And, plus, it's real easy! Tell him it's a Reading class and I think he could figure the rest out, it's self-explanatory.

"…And?"

"And you're gonna do it!" Some guy named Trevor said, "To who?" and some other guy then muttered, "Your mom!" They started this big Your Mom fight now. You see, recently the guys in my class have gotten obsessed with your mom jokes. And, Mrs. Webster totally sucks at getting kids to shut up. Soon, most of the class was talking or yelling to somebody.

The teacher started yelling, I replied, "Okay." to no one, and Nico Whoever came to sit behind me. I don't guess anyone was paying attention to him; they were all in random conversation because they knew the teacher wouldn't get them calmed down for somewhere around fifteen minutes.

So I turned around and said, "Hi." to Nico.

He said, "Hi." back.

I swung my legs over the top of the chair/desk thing (it's a chair with a desktop attached-very easy to break.) and started absentmindedly swinging them. There's plenty of room to do so because there's only four seats in this row, Mrs. Webster had the seats all equal in the front of the rows, and Nico had his desk scooted back against the wall. I used to have that desk. I loved it against the wall like that. You could see what everyone was doing. And you can see if you're being attacked. No one can sneak up from behind and stab you in the back. Yes, yes I am paranoid. I have trusting issues, and self-trusting issues. Hey, what does the prefix para even mean? There's paranoid, paranoia, paranormal, paragraph, paraphrase, paralyze, parasail…It sounds like it means, like, beyond or something. Like beyond normal. Or something to do with being attached. Like attached to a sail.

Okay, well, and then I got moved up a seat because Mrs. Webster got annoyed that the seats went like Kate, Jenna, nobody, me. So she moved the nobody seat to the back so it wouldn't look weird. I swear I do believe she has OCD.

"Well, Mrs. Webster (that's this horrible teacher) said for me to explain stuff for you. I have no clue what she meant by 'things'. Uhh…this class has been proven a Reading class and not Auden's Torture Room (ATR), as much as it may seem. Well, the rest is simple. First she makes us read (which I fake), then she makes us read crap orally, and then she goes over the forms of whatever the crap she makes us read is about. And then she had that dumb, 'And what have we learned today, children?' thing."

"Ummm…Okay." Nico said. Okay, so, I just knew the kids were going to dub him as Goth Boy. Everything he wore was black: T-Shirt (it said something I didn't feel like reading. Nor did I really care about.), jeans, Converses. Hey, look, we have the same shoes on. His hair was black and messy: not dyed. Good, I don't like those kids who dye their hair black for whatever reason. And even his freakin' eyes were black. They looked sad, but had a weird look, too…like serial killer's eyes. Like John Brown's eyes, if you know what I mean. And the only reason I remember that dude's name was because it's and easy name and in those pictures of him they showed us in American History, he looked freakin' sadistic! He's the guy who killed all the slave owners n the name of God, right? And I am not comparing Nico to him, okay. Thought I'd clear that up. I bet he has mean death glares.

I turned around and put my head down, legs swinging. I remembered the first day of this school. It was just two weeks after the rest of the kids started school and three days after I got to Morgan's house. They dubbed me Sunshine Girl at first. I think that was because I was wearing a bright yellow t-shirt, randomly said how much I like being outside during PE when we were outside playing with Frisbees, and because I randomly started humming You Are My Sunshine 'cause something reminded me of Rebecca and that was our song.

The thing about that song was that was the first song I learned, not Happy Birthday to You, not Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. Rebecca sang me to sleep with it every night. It was our song.

Then they redubbed me Depressed Chick the week after that.

I got bored and started listening in on random people's conversations.

Some guy said, "You did what? To who? For how many pieces of gum?" Okay! I don't want to know what it is he's talking about.

Some other boy screamed, "No, James, I won't make out with you!"

The other guy, James, yelled, "Shut up, Dude!" Ugh, boys here are such immature idiots.

"Awww! It's so cute!" Ew, boring.

Some girl with a real girly voice was saying, "…monkey was frickin' pink! And it chased Freddie into those real tall cactuses. Then your dad walks in and starts conversing with a dime about the size of…" Don't really care…and it's cacti.

Travis was saying, "This book is gay."

Then Mrs. Webster says, "That book is an inanimate object. It does not have sexual preferences. Therefore, it cannot be gay."

A guy that sounded like that James kid from before said, "Oh, wow."

Okay this is boring.

A) I could wait for my thoughts to lead to something depressing

B) Talk to Nico, 'cause he's the only one who isn't talking.

C) Hope for class to start soon.

Yeah, I chose B.

I turned around and Nico was glaring at the wall.

"What's up with you?"

He turned his glare on me (suspicion correct) and said, "Why do you care!"

"Hey, now, dude!" I hate it when people yell at me. Or accuse me. It gets me mad.

"Sorry. I just don't want to be here."

"You look mad at the world."

"Guess that's reasonable." Nico said under his breath.

I stared at him for a second, him staring back intently, and then nodded.

Nico's not that talkative. I turn back around…again. Mrs. Webster's almost got everything in hand again. Crap.

She ended her speech with, "And, Trevor, it's to whom, not who."

"Whatever!" Trevor says in exasperation.

"Well, now, class, we are going to skip reading our library books since so much time has been wasted," She stopped to glare around the room, "So we are going to cut to reading aloud from our books." Ah, great. She never changes order of things-except on test days.

She made Kate Fraser start reading. Kate's one of the smartest people in the grade-strait 99-100s. She cried once because she got an 85 on a history report. She had red hair and wears it up in some sort of braid everyday. She has shiny, near sided, green eyes that are normally wide, happy, and naive. She sits in the first seat in this row, right in front of Jenna.

She read, "The winter of '42 was harsh; blizzards raided the area of…" I droned out the rest. This book was about this pioneer farm girl or someone whom I hope gets killed by the 'terrible winter's chill' or 'the coyote that killed Mother's precious ox' to avenge the loss of so many of my brain cells.

And, crap, it's almost my turn to read. I don't wanna, I did yesterday. Mrs. Webster goes now the rows in order (OCD again). I didn't walk in this room this morning planning to embarrass myself again. Hmm…maybe I can…

"Hey, is that a cow!" I said loudly, pointing out the window. We were on the second story, and basically all you could see was the driveway, those three oak trees, and the road with a few houses and this church on the other side of it.

But I had seen something running around the side of the school, out of my vision. It looked weirdly like a giant dog, like that thing that had chased me once when I was living in the orphanage in New York, but smaller and a little lighter. I just called it a cow because that was the second thing I thought of, which is weird because you would think I would think of 'wolf' or something after 'giant dog'.

Half the class then got distracted, either standing up to see out the window to see what the heck I was talking about or rushing over to it (Trevor and that kid that was fighting with him earlier. I think his name is Aaron. They sit in the back of the row beside mine and had gone through the gap between mine and Nico's desk). Or maybe they caught on and wanted to prevent the force-reading of that stupid book.

"There is no cow out there!" Aaron, I think, said.

"No, Auden just saw your mom walk by." Oh, that's mean.

And that's how I distracted the class, leading to the second big Your Mom fight of the morning.

Trevor and Aaron were standing right by me being really loud. I was starting to get annoyed by the loudness, even though it was getting me out of stuff. This is so boring. I wish this was a more interesting class, like music class with Mrs. Sarah.

On part of the insult war went like so:

"You are so weird!"

"Your face is so weird."

"Your mom is weird."

"Yeah, well your dad's weird."

Then Mrs. Webster actually screams, "Shut up!" Wow. I haven't heard her yell like that since Michael and James knocked that bookshelf down during one of their fights. Our class had so many fights they made a brand new discipline code for us. They wrote our name's now on a list and if two teachers wrote our name down we got isolated lunch in the principle's office the next day. And if we got that twice, we'd get after school detention. And Morgan won't let me go to that so I get detention during the school day a lot.

"Now, we are going to have this lesson and your going to like it!" I snickered. That's weird. "You all are going on the discipline list! Everyone!" Whoa, whoa, slow down girl, you're making Kate cry! I snickered again. "And you twice, Auden Clark!" Ooo, I'm scared. What's it gonna do, huh? Nothing! Nothing you can guarantee. "Now, then. Did anyone notice the simile in the paragraph nice little Katie just read? A simile is a form of comparison using like or as. And-"

The bell rings, thank God.

"Wait, wait, and wait. No one moves until you answer: What did you learn today." Ugh, just let us get outta here! I bet your piss-y attitude will go away if you get rid of us.

Trevor says in a bored but questioning voice, "Inanimate objects don't have sexual preferences?"

That girly-girl says, "Charlie Davis broke is ankle in football practice yesterday!"

Whispers spread the room. Oh, noooo! I'm soo sorry for him! Like I care. Who the heck is he, anyway?

"Oh, just get out of my classroom!" Mrs. Webster says in exasperation. Gladly.

With that, we leave.