All rights go to Rick Riordan. I own nothing.
Drew was a bitch.
It was a simple fact, like The sky is blue or Annabeth and Percy. A true statement that would never break down.
She smiled at herself in the mirror, but you can only lie to yourself for so long. The smile melted into an ugly scowl. She was fake and plastic. Fake like her nails and her hair and her lies. Was there anything truthful about her?
She screamed in frustration. Only inside, of course, when it was meant to be true. She yelled and shrieked to everybody else, but inside it was one long, loud, piercing scream that never died down and ached to her ears. It was constant, so she tuned it out like radio static. She coated her pain with stretched smiles and sickeningly sweet insults.
No one liked her. That was true, too. Not her father; he had yelled and smashed and pulled her hair and kicked her to her bare bedroom with blossoming bruises. He had been handsome once, apparently. That was the truth. Handsome and nice. But drinking had made him cold. And that drinking was from Mom. Sometimes Drew hated her mother, and, inside her mind, somehow formed the fake idea of a perfect family where her mom stayed and her dad never cracked. But it was all lies.
She was ugly. True or false? Ugly inside and out from the start, although later, you could barely tell from her mask.
At first, though, she was all wrong. Stupid, with crooked teeth. And fat and weak. Far from perfect, although that's all she wanted to be. All she wanted was to be perfect so she could be loved. Was that possible – for someone to love her?
"Fat." "Pig." "Pimples." She would come home crying every day and cut herself to damage her imperfections. To bleed out the impurity. Not like it worked. She found a rusty needle in her bed one day and stabbed herself over and over, somehow hoping it would make her pretty. Because beauty comes from pain, right? Wrong.
She stopped eating. It made her stomach twist painfully and her cheeks grow gaunt, but it was satisfying to feel so in control of herself. She could decide not to eat and she was "strong" enough not to. She threw up every day, and not from sickness, either. It was oddly fulfilling, just not to her health. She became a skeleton. And yet she was still "fat". She'd never be skinny enough for them, but she never realized the sick game they played was one she'd never win.
She laughed bitterly into the mirror when she saw the yellows of her eyes. It was something she couldn't mask with make-up stolen from the drugstore. Her sagging skin was unnaturally pale and her eyes looked grotesque - yellow and empty brown, lined with almost repulsively bright pink. Her nails were ragged and chewed on and the bruises that dotted her arms had hastily smeared concealer to try to disguise them. It didn't work. Because the truth shone through in blues and purples and yellows and rough edges.
She wanted to run, but she had nowhere to go. Who wanted the beat-up girl with her scarily bony figure and her bad attitude?
Her glares and rude comments were a flimsy defense, but they where something. They gave her strength, like starving herself did.
"Are you okay?"
"Of course I am. God, what's wrong with you?"
"You're bruised."
"Nice to know you have eyes, Captain Idiot. Go cry in a corner, won't you?"
It stopped the questioning, pitiful gazes and the bullies lurking with their sharp tongues and words like razors. It made her seem like she didn't care, even if she was slowly killing herself.
She stopped crying; she told herself it was something else to make her stronger. It was more painful than sarcasm and even the stinging hunger, so she convinced herself that it was an even stronger remedy. Because nobody ever told her that she had to be truthful. No one trustworthy, anyways.
She was still cutting herself.
Her father died one day. Maybe he killed himself. Drew didn't know, and she didn't care. She dragged his lifeless body out into the closet with what little strength she had and slammed the door, as though to put him behind her. That felt good. It was the sick, undeniable truth.
The neighborhood didn't question why Drew never went to school anymore. It was a bad place, anyways. Nobody even gave the missing people a second thought.
The thugs came into the house at three in the morning. They were massive and dressed in all black with threatening guns and glaring eyes. They checked most of the house until they came across Drew. They pinned her down and were about to do unspeakable things to her when a thought dripped into her head like the blood that soaked it. With a sudden burst of adrenaline, she twisted away, and, with eyes flashing, opened the closet to reveal the half-decayed body of her father. His empty eyes were trained on the thieves. She walked purposefully to the body and pulled a bloody knife out of its chest before turning around to face the intruders with a crazy smile.
They never came back.
When they came for her, she was curled up in the corner with wide, staring eyes. A pile of monster dust lay beside her.
The satyr that saw her let out a scared yelp as she looked up slowly and her haunted gaze met his frightened stare. She lifted the knife in her hand slowly.
She doesn't even remember why, but she let him take her to camp, still clutching her bloody knife. When she got there, no one knew what to make of her. She had a scowl and a knife and an almost ghostly, eerie blank look. They'd never have known where she "belonged" if not for her pride, her anorexia, and her obsession with her looks. She stole make-up from the Aphrodite cabin even when she was with the Hermes campers and caked it across her face as though to hide her pain. But the false barely covers the truth; she knew that from the bruises.
Then she got Aphrodite's blessing.
It enchanted her, the way her body filled out and looked healthy even without being so skinny she could see her bones. The way her hair grew healthy and shiny. How her eyes sparkled (her trademark pink eyeliner had never looked better). But, most of all, it was the power and respect she commanded with only beauty. Her cutting remarks suddenly dealt much more damage when she was on a high pedestal. And the awestruck gazes cast her way weren't bad, either. It felt good. Although it had felt like a twisted joke to be an Aphrodite camper at first, it finally felt like she belonged somewhere after that first week of being what she thought was "truly beautiful."
She could never wash out the feeling of imperfection from her body, no matter how many perfume and bubble showers she took, so she just shoved it aside and pretended her bitter past never happened. People forgot about how broken she was when she arrived quickly enough, anyways. So she trailed guys after her and let her words be her weapons. She still kept the bloody old knife under her mattress, but that was behind her now, right? Or was Camp Half-Blood all lies masking the truth?
She wielded power, after Silena left. She had always secretly hated Silena, with her naturally pretty face and her put-together life. But then, she had turned out to be the spy. It made Drew laugh. Of course, she was evil. Because nobody was ever that perfect. Drew's smile becomes almost grotesque when she thinks over the irony.
The power is soothing as lotion and sweets. (Drew has started eating again, and it feels good, even if she diets all the time.) She uses the power like her words, which can even control people now. It's practically sinister, the tight grip she holds over her cabin, but, oh, it feels better than the first actual meal she'd eaten since she'd begun to starve herself. The terror on their faces – no, Drew isn't loved, but she can force them to pretend, at least. So, Drew is a bitch? Yeah, that's the definite truth. And she knows it. But that doesn't bother her.
At least, it didn't bother her, until Piper came along. Piper, with her natural beauty (like Silena's), and her fake niceness that everyone believes. It's all lies; when will they see the truth? She's even better at faking it than Drew, and that's saying something. They barely even notice her charmspeak. But they'll realize what a liar she is soon, right?
Apparently not, as they're all taken with her. They pity and admire her for her past, which glides as smoothly as lip gloss. She was never hurt like Drew. Her father loves her. He's a movie star. She grew up in fancy boarding schools and a giant fucking mansion. She'd never dealt with all the things Drew had to. She'd never known the terror, or the emptiness, or the scent of death weaving its way through childhood. She'd never have to know how strong you'd need to be to not go insane in a world like that.
She goes on her quest and Drew hopes, with a wicked and fake smile, that she'd die in some horrible way. But she comes back, glowing and healthy and unscarred, and challenges Drew to a duel at knifepoint.
It's like sweet little Dorothy who ate fucking dreams and wishes and innocence threatening the wrinkled old hag of a wicked witch with an AK-47. But Drew backs down, with rage and vengeance squeezing her icy heart.
She takes out her blood-crusted knife for the first time in years and stands over Piper's sleeping form with her full, rosy cheeks and light snores. Drew's eyes gleam with murder. But then she realizes that every story has to end, and Piper's will end gruesomely soon enough. She won't be merciful by killing off Sleeping Beauty while she's not even conscious. She'll let the world take her vengeance out on the little princess sleeping there.
So she takes her dagger, and, well… let's just say Drew won't be telling her story to anyone. No one will know the truth behind Drew Tanaka, the bitch and the witch.
But this story is built up on a castle of lies. So… is the ending true or false? Well, you'll never know for sure, will you?