The phenomenon that transpires every June once again caused the summer to pass in a blur. I suddenly found myself after weeks of sleeping in, eating junk food, and holing up in my bedroom playing video games, thrust outside into the blinding sunlight to walk to school.
I rubbed my eyes constantly thinking fondly of my nice comfy bed in my air-conditioned bedroom back on 42nd street. Nevertheless I soon found myself trudging up the stairs to Goode Academy. All around me, my classmates were being hailed by their friends. The girls running and screaming while jumping like rabbits overdosed on caffeine. Guys waved and strutted to greet their pose. Me, well I just ducked out of everybody's way and continued on.
Like all high schools, mine was populated with cliques. There was the jocks, the cheerleaders, the stoners, the geeks, the bank nerds, the pot heads, the hipsters, the gangsters, the people who think they are gangsters, and then there are the nobody's. That's me, I'm a nobody. But no worries, there are others, there's Hector who has extremely thick glasses, a hearing aid, and just got upgraded to headgear after a jock punched his braces out last year. He's kind of short, skinny, wimpy kid that bullies can't help but gravitate towards. He's actually pretty funny when you know him. There's Juan who speaks primarily in Spanish. He only goes to English if he has to talk to a teacher, or on those rare occasions, someone of the female species. Then there's Steve…. He doesn't talk much, like at all…. I think of all 6 years I've known him, I might have heard him speak once… and lastly there is the guy that boggles me as to why he ended up as a nobody.
Percy Jackson is captain of the swim team. He's hilariously sarcastic and surprisingly nice. When I met him, I was the new kid in town, the ultimate nobody. He's the first person to talk to me and I've considered him my best friend ever since. (Also according to the ladies, he's "hot stuff" as they say.) but he really shouldn't be a nobody. Sure he has dyslexia and ADHD, but half the jocks can't string two words together. But I wasn't going to ponder this now. I had my first day of senior year to face, and I intended to at least survive until lunch.
Our school was set in a pretty basic design. There were two floors with three wings and a common place in the middle. In the common area, there was the main staircase and the cafeteria. On either side of the cafeteria were the common areas. When you walk through the front door you are in the front commons and if you keep walking past the kitchens you end up in the back commons. The commons were laid out with a bunch of tables and chairs for students to eat lunch or hang out before school started in the morning.
I found the rest of the nobody's in the far back right corner of the back commons huddled away from the craziness euphoria that seemed to have infected the rest of the school. In fact my friends looked down right gloomy. Hector sat with a thick book, not talking to anyone. Juan was typing up his summer essay in a last ditch effort to finish it before the bell rang. (Why he left it to now truly boggles my mind) Steve just sat moodily at the edge of the table with his head phones in, staring at the wall. Percy was slumped over, head buried in his arms, looking suspiciously like he had fell asleep while eating his double blue blueberry muffin… again. I, being the wonderful person I was, smacked him on the head while I passed, which of course made him jump and uncap him pen.
"Whoa, dude watch out, I don't want to get ink on this shirt, it's new..." I said tossing my bag unceremoniously on the ground and pulling up a chair across from Percy.
He glanced from me to his pen a couple times before the confusion left his eyes. He capped his pen and slipped it into his pocket while giving the biggest yawn I have ever seen in my life.
"Hey Zach…. Sorry I didn't see you…" he said sleepily
"No worries. How was camp?" I asked. Every summer Percy went away to this awesome camp upstate. I guess you could say Percy was a camp kid. Sometimes you see it in boy scouts, always ready to rough it outside. But the camp Percy went to sounded different. He told me about all these wonderful things, there was boating, fishing, archery, basketball, fencing, swimming, capture the flag, horseback riding, and wood shop. It sounded awesome! Every year I asked where it was, and the answer was always 'upstate', whatever that means.
"Oh it was great!" said Percy, lighting up. Whenever the subject turned to camp, Percy became more alert and talkative. "I took a test to be a life guard and got to spend the entire summer at the lake. Also Annabeth and I fixed up this old char- I mean go kart, and we got to test drive it out on this open field!"
"Sounds awesome! … so Annabeth, she is real right? Not some figment of your imagination? Because honestly Perce, you always talk about her, but we have yet to meet this girl." I replied. Ah Annabeth, the girl wonder who stole Percy's heart back when he was twelve. Yes he's told us all about her flowing golden locks, and her stormy grey eyes. We know all about how she's the smartest person he knows and how she fiddles with her necklace when she's agitated. To say the least, Percy likes talking about his so called "girlfriend." Conveniently she lives in San Francisco and is only allowed to come up north during the summer…very convenient indeed….
Percy glared at me, which is actually terrifying. He's a nice guy, but I wouldn't cross him if you paid me. He was only joking and smirked at me before rummaging through his backpack that was still chock full of worksheets and papers from last year. Finally he completed his quest, pulling out a picture that was unbelievably not crushed, unlike the rest of the papers in his black hole of a back pack. He handed the picture to me, grinning like a mad man.
The picture showed a very pretty girl that was about our age. She had long blond hair that was tied up in a ponytail. Just like Percy described, she had big stormy grey eyes that were overflowing with wisdom and knowledge. She was laughing happily and had her arm slung around Percy who was grinning like a fool. The stood on the shore of the lake where Percy was life guarding. He was in uniform, or not as his uniform comprised of swim trunks and a whistle. The girl, Annabeth I suppose, was wearing a bright orange t-shirt. Although the print was tiny, I could just make out the words "Camp Half Blood" with what looked like a Pegasus on her shirt.
"Ok fine, she's real…" I said grudgingly handing back the picture to Percy. "Camp Half Blood, eh? Is that the name of the camp you go to? Seems kind of morbid, don't you think?" I asked, raising an eyebrow.
"It's not morbid!" said Percy indignantly "it's just the name! There's no meaning behind it or anything. No that's the name the founders gave it, yeah that's it." He glanced at me like he was expecting me to question his answer, but I decided not to push it. Sometimes when we asked about his camp he came up with these weird long winded explanations that usually went back to the founders. Instead I decided to switch gears.
"So why do you always react by uncapping your pen when you get startled?" I asked
"I WAS NOT STARTLED!" said Percy obviously in denial. I gave him my 'Oh really?' look and he broke. "Ok, ok It's just a habit that I have…" he said quietly, fidgeting and twirling the pen in his fingers.
"Ok well why do you keep it in your pocket? I know you have a pencil case… somewhere…" I asked glancing at the trash pile that was Percy's backpack.
"It's for… emergencies? Yep it's for emergencies." Percy said nodding in agreement that what he said did in fact make sense.
"Ok, remember that next time you ask me to borrow a pencil in class" I said smirking as I heaved my bag onto my back. The bell had rung and everyone was slowly making their way to their A block class. The schedule was set up so we had for 90 minute classes called A,B,C ,and D with a ten minute break after A block and a 25 minute lunch period that's assigned to you in C block. My A block was Architecture and design. I was pretty excited because I had wanted to take this elective since I was a freshman, but it just never seemed to work into my schedule.
Once the bell rang, Percy seemed to become over powered with the desire to sleep that he slumped over into the position he was in when I found him in the morning. Laughing, I smacked his shoulder, which he batted away easily like he knew exactly what I was going to do a second before I did it. Nevertheless, he grabbed his bag and begrudgingly headed towards class with me. Percy wasn't what you would call academically motivated. Sure he passed, most of the time, but he usually just stuck to taking electives instead of core classes like math or science. Anyways, he was in my architecture class which surprised me slightly. I didn't know he had any interest in architecture, when I asked him about this last year when we were planning or schedule, he just said that Annabeth liked architecture so he wanted to learn more about it. Whatever the real reason was we both headed towards the east wing.
The class of 15 filed into the classroom. It was one of the new modern classrooms that were equipped with a desktop computers for each student. The computers were raised like in an auditorium so that the back row was higher up then the front row, kind of like a college lecture hall. Percy and I found two empty computers in the back of the classroom and I took out my binder while Percy leaned back in his chair and stared at the ceiling.
The teacher, Mr. V, was an old, mean fellow with a disgusting goatee that went grey at the tip. As he took attendance, I saw him glare at Percy, who was still staring at the ceiling, the pinnacle of boredom and it wasn't even eight in the morning yet. Teachers never seemed to like Percy, no matter if he did anything to piss them off or not. He had to call out Percy's name three times before he finally heard it in his school induced coma.
"Mr. Jackson would you kindly put all four legs of the chair on the ground?" asked Mr. V with a dangerous edge in his voice. Without breaking eye contact with the old man, Percy slammed his feet down, glaring daggers. I sighed; this was going to be a long semester.
Just then, a guidance counselor knocked on the door. Mr. V broke his glare at Percy who grinned triumphantly at me. I just shook my head in amazement. How he stood up to adults like that was rally…something… I started fiddling with my pencil while the teacher was gone. The two adults conversed outside for a few minutes before Mr. V came back in, this time followed by a new student. New students were nothing new, Goode generally got about 40 a year so I wasn't too bothered by it, that is until I saw Percy's back stiffen suddenly. I glanced up lazily, and found myself staring into the stormy grey eyes from the girl in Percy's picture.
"Alright class, I'd like to introduce Annabeth Chase. Please, do try to make a good impression…" said Mr. V warily.