Brick by Boring Brick

~Paramore

She lives in a fairytale, somewhere too far for us to find.

Forgotten the taste and smell

Of the world that she's left behind.

Drew dimly remembered her life before Camp Halfblood, remembered the bullies and teasing and all around horrible-ness before she was claimed. If you'd looked at former pictures of Drew, you'd never have guessed she was a daughter of Aphrodite. Braces, scruffy hair, glasses, average weight and kinda short, with skin that always was too pale in the winter and too tanned in the summer.

And then she was claimed during the summer, and POOF! She'd walked back into school, into 5th grade, with everyone ogling her. Lush black hair reaching her elbows, perfect teeth, beautiful almond eyes, and creamy skin, model-thin, and tall, Drew was completely changed.

In her ways, too.

Once she'd climbed her way up to the most popular girl in school, she'd changed from the shy recluse of a girl into someone oozing with confidence and pride. Changed from nice and kind to a jerk offering false sympathy. She had drunk from the cup of popularity and beauty, and its taste had wiped out her memories of being the bullied, and she'd changed into a bully herself.

She gloated at the envious looks her former friends' gave her, and contented herself with being top dog. Life was sweet.

It's all about the exposure, the lens I told her

The angles were all wrong now

She's ripping wings off of butterflies.

Keep your feet on the ground…

When your head's in the clouds…

Her dad drove her to Camp Halfblood soon after, and she was shown how someone could be popular, pretty, and polite, too, but she didn't know she was mean, didn't know she was a bully. Rather, she saw how people skirted around her and her ambition and fury burst through. She was going to claw to the top, with her pretty li'l pink-painted fingernails and her gorgeously applied mascara and just the RIIIGHT amount of eye-shadow and her artillery: charmspeaking.

It worked, and soon she'd built herself an empire, using charmspeak to destroy the possible candidates that could topple her. But she was always second place to one person:

Silena Beauregard.

Everyone said she was pretty, she was nice, but she WASN'T! She was a traitor, and she was dead, for the gods' sakes. Why was Drew losing to her? And she was determined to win. She'd ban Silena's name from her cabin, she'd make everyone else point how nice she was, and made lackeys and lieutenants, tormentors and sluts from previously nice people.

And she loved her new life, loved how everybody treated her like a princess, catering to her every demand.

So go get your shovel, and

We'll dig a deep hole, hole,

To bury the castle, bury the castle!

And then she came. Piper McLean. With her beautiful kaleidoscopic eyes, and lush chestnut hair, and dainty, lithe stature and perfect-colored skin, Piper McLean waltzed in her life, took Jason with his golden hair and sky blue eyes, and left on a quest, turned her lackeys and servants against her, THREATENED HER (the little witch) and usurped her throne of a year in the making, in the span of TWO WEEKS.

Two weeks!

Nobody cared about Drew anymore. Piper, Piper, Piper, Piper was all anybody cared about. She was wonderful and stylish and smart and clever and—everything good under the Sun! Plus, Piper was a fighter ("She killed two Earthborn!") and powerful ("Did you hear? She charmspeaked Jason from the dead!") and was a daughter of a MOVIE STAR! Not just any old star, but Tristan McLean! How could Drew compare with that? Her dad was a nobody in the crowd of nobodies. Especially when Piper herself was just another pretty face. "I'm DIFFERENT," she told everyone. How? She stole, she lied, and she kept secrets. How?

One day, he found her crying,

Coiled up on the dirty ground,

Her prince finally came to save her,

And the rest you can, figure out.

When Jason came, she was smitten. His hair was as gold as the sun, and his eyes were bluer than the sky. And when he'd shown those powers—wow. All she was missing was a boyfriend, and then she'd have her happily ever after. She'd tried to impress him, and she thought she was making an impression…

But it was a TRICK,

And the clock STRUCK twelve…

…until she heard Piper say, smugly, "And don't even think about Jason Grace. He may not know it, but he's MINE." Jason loved Piper. That was all. Drew was a gnat. An annoyance. She felt as everything she had worked so, so hard to obtain was falling to pieces around her. Everywhere she looked were the scraps of her empire, and Piper was the cause. It was all that little good-for-nothing's fault.

You built up a world of magic,

Because your real life was tragic.

She'd constructed this dominion, this control, because of her own life at the bottom. She'd wanted a taste of the top; she didn't want to drown in it. But here she was, floundering, caught in her own web, and trapped. Her pride wasn't letting her surrender entirely to Piper, and her cowardliness wasn't letting her challenge Piper.

We'll build your house brick by boring brick

Or the wolf's gonna blow it down.

Her house was made of straw; her entire empire relied on bossiness and charmspeaking and persuasion and lies and tearing others down to make her look better. All it had taken was a breath, and it would come crashing down. She should've known.

But Piper's dominion wasn't looking much better. Hers was made of sticks: nicer-looking, stronger-looking, but all in all it was just waiting for a breath.

Well, hon, let's see how hard YOU'LL fall. Let's see how YOU feel, you pretty little sweetheart, when you slip from the ladder. I'll catch you... maybe. I've got better things to do than save little Miss Perfects from their crumbling towers.

"Jason will save me!" Yeah, totally. Then who's this REYNA chick he's been mumbling about? Sorry hon, but you're not unbreakable. All it takes is a breath...

So go get your shovel, and

We'll dig a deep hole, hole,

To bury the castle, bury the castle~

BA-DA-BA BA-DA-BA-BA-DA!