Silena Beauregard

"...walk into school first tomorrow."

An alarmed expression crept onto Percy's face. "But… the fangirls! Nico, how could you?" Percy tried the good old puppy dog eyes.

"Please, Perce. You've done that one too many times. Perhaps Thalia might cave, but I won't," Nico smiled innocently.

"Hey!" Thalia protested. "I'm not some little girl whose heart melts at anything vaguely adorable."

While they began arguing, the rest of us just sat there and watched, eventually placing bets on who would punch the other first. Initially, I'd expected Percy, Nico and Thalia to be aloof, possibly even bratty, but they'd turned out to be pretty darn cool, I had to say. I actually thought I had seen them before. From where, I couldn't remember.

Finally, Percy yelled, "Okay! You two shut up! I'll take the dare!"

We looked at each other guiltily, and thankfully no one tried to collect any money.

"Now - Ethan."

"Dare."

"I dare you not to take revenge for this."

"What?"

"This." Percy socked Ethan in the gut and I winced in sympathy. "Ow! Ouch, ouch, ouch! That hurt, man!" He clutched his stomach and moaned, "I'm going to throw up." Then he turned on Percy, fuming.

"Uh uh." Percy wagged his finger at him. "No wreaking of vengeance, remember?"

Ethan growled under his breath but shut up. "Silena."

"Truth," I told him matter-of-factly. "Trust me, I've seen some of the things you made my poor sisters do. I am not going without makeup for a month. No way, no day." I wasn't as fashion-obsessed as some of my sisters (we must have inherited it from our actress mother), but still, a year? That was pushing it way too far.

"Okay then." Ethan got an evil look in his eyes and I thought, Uh-oh. "Do you like Beckendorf?"

"Sure!" I dodged the question. "He's my friend, of course I like him, you dolt."

"I meant do you like like him."

I could feel the heat rising to my cheeks, but I ignored it. "What? Hell no!" Ethan raised an eyebrow at me and I resolutely kept my eyes away from Beckendorf.

Gods, that was embarrassing. "Luke! Dare you to throw your shoe at Kara - no, Thalia."

"Why me?" Luke groaned, but he began unknotting a shoelace anyway.

When the dead knots had been cut away (seriously, why can't you just tie and untie like a normal person, Luke?), he threw the shoe. It hit the grass a couple of seconds later and I looked at him pointedly.

"What?" he smiled overenthusiastically. "I missed."

"Go and look for your shoe," Kara said, rolling her eyes with a certain affection. "You probably flung it into orbit or something. I'll play for you," she added as an afterthought.

"Michael?"

"Truth."

"All right, then. Do you have such bad driving skills that you actually managed to crash your sun chariot while playing Ancient Greek Racers?"

.

Percy Jackson

"Really? Because I happen to know that Will will not crash a chariot. I rather doubt that." Beckendorf smirked. "I played Ancient Greek Racers with him as well, and on a sunny day I'd be feeling smug when I tell you he beat me."

"I'm pretty sure it was rigged. But whatever." By that time, Luke had come back with shoe in hand. "I think that's enough for one night, people!" Silena chirped. "School opens tomorrow and we all need our beauty sleep, don't we? It's already almost eleven! Especially all the aspiring revenge takers out there!"

"Shut up, Barbie," Ethan scowled.

"Goodbye, then." We said our goodbyes and went to get our stuff. In the blink of an eye, maybe because we were back home, I switched from up-all-night mode to dying-of-exhaustion mode.

"Well, that was some nice spaghetti and pudding," Nico yawned. "And now I think I'll go to bed. Goodnight, dear cousins, and please do get bitten by the bedbugs."

"Goodnight, zombie," I called after him and Thalia corrected, "Goodnight, my little emo friend."

Bang.

What was that? I went downstairs to find, in the kitchen, a certain emo zombie stuffing himself with pomegranates.

I rubbed my eyes and said tiredly, "Please tell me this is just a bad dream."

"This is just a bad dream," Nico repeated.

"Never mind, just go on," I shook my head and went back upstairs to my inviting bed.

In the morning, I nearly missed the alarm clock and ended up scrambling to stuff my pancakes into my mouth as Thalia tapped her foot on the marble floors. Music or impatience - who would know?

Nico was just sitting on the couch, scrolling through fan mail. I admit I was slightly creeped out by his shirt, which read The Ghost King and had a picture of a skeleton grinning creepily and feasting on a rotting, bloody corpse. Luckily for me, he was wearing a leather jacket over it. But let's not go into the boring details. This story is boring enough already. So anyway, when we arrived at school they made me go in first. I had my sunglasses on and didn't really garner much attention at first, so I started to relax. Ah, how bad could this be?

But one should never underestimate one's hardcore fans. As soon as I turned away from the administration office's front desk and took my sunglasses off…

This preppy blonde in a miniskirt and stilettos started screeching, "OMIGOD! IT'S PERCY JACKSON!"

All eyes turned to look at me and I cringed but waved meekly. I tensed - but not fast enough.

Within mere seconds, I was surrounded by a crowd of screaming girls who smeared lip gloss all over me and demanded autographs, pictures and roses all at the same time. Thalia and Nico chose exactly the wrong moment to walk in, and soon enough all of us had been mobbed.

As Nico was picking out bits of paper from her hair, a redhead we hadn't noticed earlier handed him a sheet of paper, then gave a similar one to Thalia. "Your schedules," she said, offering a friendly grin. "Those fans of yours are really wild, you know that? Rachel Elizabeth Dare, by the way. Call me Rachel, call me Red if you hate me."

"Yeah, thanks," Nico smiled weakly. "Nico di Angelo."

"Percy Jackson," I held out a hand, which Rachel shook.

"Thalia Grace."

"So how about I'll be your guide for today? You can hang with my friends and me during lunch and all that if you want."

"Sure!" Thalia nodded. "You aren't fangirling, anyway. I take that as a good sign?"

"If you say so," Rachel laughed.

There it was - one of our few actual friends.