Jason was glad that he didn't have a class in that godforsaken Building B. Looking at the map was confusing enough but actually trying to use it to navigate through the school sounded miserable.

He went through the rest of his day, all of the classes were boring and just reviewed what the school year was going to entail. After English he had Math with Leo and Frank, then Anatomy and Physiology with Leo and Hazel, and then he was off to lunch.

He found Percy, Leo, Piper, and Frank sitting at a table in the courtyard and he quickly walked over to join them.

"Hey dude," Leo greeted Jason with a fist bump before Jason slid into the seat next to him.

Percy's eyes were trained on the entrance to the courtyard. Jason looked between Percy and where he was staring before sticking his hand in Percy's face.

"Uh dude?"

Percy quickly turned to look at Jason. "Oh! Sorry man. Just waiting for Annabeth. She doesn't get here until lunch since she only really needs a few more credits to pass."

Jason frowned. "You can do that?"

"Annabeth can," Frank explained. He had what looked like a peanut butter and jelly sandwich in his hand. "She's a dual enrollment student. So she takes classes at the college in the morning and then comes here after."

Wow. Jason was impressed. Annabeth sounded smart and, if anything, she probably could've graduated early. Looking over at the eager Percy Jackson, though, he could probably guess why she hadn't done that.

Eventually Annabeth came and he spent the next half hour eating and talking with the group of kids. Hazel even had taken the bathroom pass during her class, since she had a separate class, and visited them for a couple of minutes.

Then the bell rang and he was off to physics with Leo and Piper (where he managed to get Piper's phone number before the bell rang ending that class), and then American Government with Frank (where he and Frank just spoke about the upcoming football season).

Then he only had two classes left: Italian 2 and Basketball.

Why he had decided to switch from Spanish to Italian, he didn't know. Italian 1 back in San Francisco his junior year had been a nightmare since he had already taken Spanish 1 and kept mixing up the Italian and Spanish words and speaking with the wrong accent or pronunciation.

Oh well, too late to turn back now.

He managed his way to Building E, the foreign language building, just fine but actually navigating the hallways was tough. Clearly, there was a whole hallway that was added years after the building's first initial construction so the room numbers were messed up. He kept walking up and down the hallways looking for room E103.

He knew he was going to be alone for this class. Everyone else had taken their language during their sophomore and junior years. The only non-senior was Hazel. She was a sophomore but she was taking French. Jason was fine, though, with being alone for a class. It wasn't like it was extremely hard for him to socialize with people.

After walking up and down the main hallway, he finally resorted to ask a girl passing by where the freaking classroom was.

Apparently, it was a classroom only accessible from the outside of the building. Jason was seriously starting to hate the way Goode was set up.

He walked out of the building and circled around to the side, where the girl had instructed him to go. On the side of the building were two doorways, one of them had double doors with a faded "103" just right of the doorframe.

"This is bullshit," Jason mumbled before grabbing a hold of the metal door handle of the door on the right and yanking it open.

The room was a nasty yellowish color and it seemed that the teacher knew that two because the room was also almost completely covered with posters of Italian-related things, including several maps, pictures of a variety of Italian food, and simple slogans he had learned in Italian 1.

He walked in just as the bell rang but with a quick glance at the old geezer sitting in a desk at the back left corner of the room Jason quickly figured out he really didn't need to be in a hurry. The old man clearly didn't care. And the whole classroom was buzzing with conversations, signifying that yeah, this class was super easy.

He scanned the room for empty seats though he was pretty sure all that would be left were seats in the front.

Except there was one in the back right of the room. Right next to one Nico di Angelo.

Ignoring the other couple of empty seats, he moved straight for the seat to Nico's left. The boy watched him as he approached and frowned but didn't say anything. Jason slipped into the seat next to Nico and plopped his blue backpack onto the ground.

"Dude," Jason said, flashing Nico a smile. "I thought I'd be surrounded by a bunch of juniors," he replied. "Now I don't have to be the only senior!"

Nico looked at Jason from the corner of his eye before turning to look at him with a frown. "I'm not a senior. I'm only a junior," he replied.

Jason's eyes grew wide. "Seriously? But we have English together and that's a senior class!"

Nico shrugged his shoulders. "I've always been pretty good at English. Before I moved here, I was already a year ahead at my old school so this school just let me keep doing that."

"Huh," Jason said, unable to stop from looking impressed. "And why pick Italian as your language?"

Nico's face dropped to one of disbelief as he stared at Jason with dull, unbelieving eyes. "Are you serious? My name is Nico di Angelo. I'm from Italy."

"So you speak it fluently?" he asked and Nico nodded in response, shrugging his shoulders in an uncaring gesture. Jason narrowed his eyes at him. "You are such a cheater."

The tip of Nico's lip curled up in a smile before he shrugged his shoulders again. He looked at Jason curiously until suddenly, the look dropped from his face. He left no trace of his small smile as he turned away to glance down at the textbook on his desk.

"Uh dude?" Jason asked, leaning towards Nico's desk. "You okay?"

"I'm fine," Nico mumbled with a bored tone, looking back up at Jason.

"Well alright dude," Jason said, sitting back in his desk. "I just hope you know if we do any projects in here, you are so my partner."

"I don't think you'll want me as any kind of partner," Nico responded with a roll of eyes.

"Nico man. You befriended my sister. That already gives you like 50 brownie points. She's hard to get along with sometimes," Jason insisted.

Nico just scoffed and looked away from Jason, obviously disinterested.

Several moments of awkward silence stretched between the two and Jason was beginning to feel uncomfortable. Was there something that Jason had done? Why did Nico give off these vibes that he didn't like him? Jason was slightly upset that Nico obviously disinterested in him. Like, seriously? Jason was trying to be nice to him. Was he doing something wrong?

"Thanks for earlier."

Jason nearly jumped at Nico's sudden statement. "What?"

"In 1st period. Percy can be… kind of dense sometimes. So thanks for… you know," Nico still wasn't looking at Jason and he shifted slightly in his seat and Jason could tell he didn't do this kind of thing often.

Honestly, Jason had hoped that Nico hadn't noticed that he had only blurted out what he said to shut Percy up. It meant that Jason obviously noticed Nico's discomfort and Jason was unsure of how Nico would react to that.

But before Jason could respond, Nico continued. "I don't need your help though. I've been dealing with Percy for over a year. I can handle a few of his incorrect assumptions about me."

Yup. There is was.

"Alright. No more protecting you from idiotic comments. Got it," Jason mumbled.

Apparently, during their discussion, the geezer had made his way up to the front of the classroom because now he was demanding the class's attention so their discussion was brought to a halt.

As packets of paper were passed out and the geezer described what he was expecting for the school year, Jason mulled over what Nico had told him.

Incorrect assumptions? If they were incorrect, why would Nico have cared what Percy had said?

Once the class was over, Jason suggested that they both head over to the gym together since they both had Basketball next and Nico agreed with a grunt.

Their walk was silent from Building E to the gymnasium but Jason was thankful that he had a guide because if he had to resort to that map to find the place, he'd probably punch a wall.

When they got to the gym, Nico made a beeline towards Piper and Hazel who were sitting on the bleachers talking to one another.

"Nico!" Hazel greeted with a smile as he sat on the row behind her. Jason stopped in front of them, sitting on the row in front of where Hazel sat and turned, straddling his legs on the bench so that he could look at the girls.

Jason greeted both of the girls with a smile and they exchanged hellos.

"Grace!" suddenly yelled a voice, stopping Jason from plunging into the girl's conversation. He turned his head to see Leo walking into the gym, Percy right next to him. "YOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" Leo screamed, his voice echoing in the large gym as he threw his hands up.

"YOOOOOOO!" Percy added, also throwing his hands up.

Jason couldn't resist smirking and throwing his hands up, responding with his own "YOOOOOOOOOOO!"

"Oh my god," he heard Piper say amused as she laughed a little.

"Hey! Shut up over there!" came a voice from down the bleachers. Jason leaned so that he could try to find out who said it.

Percy and Leo were halfway across the gym and they quickly find the source of the voice.

Leo stops walking and pats his hands onto his chest. "Make me Solace!" The clear smirk on his face showed how completely unserious this whole thing was.

Suddenly, Leo was dodging a basketball being thrown at him before running to catch up with Percy laughing loudly.

Leo gave Jason a fist bump when he made it to the bleachers, walking up to sit next to Piper. Percy sat next to Jason, copying his same stance but facing the other way.

"Dude. Clarisse is in this class," Leo whispered, leaning over Piper so that everyone could hear him.

Percy shrugged. "I heard she signed up so she could actually play basketball, even though she's not on the school's team."

"Who's Clarisse?" Jason asked, leaning back to lean on his hand.

"Kind of a bully for bullies," Piper said. "She claims that no one can pick on other kids except her but she never does anything."

"She didn't use to be like that though," Percy said with a laugh. "She tried to stick my head in a toilet during the first day of my freshman year. But then she met Chris and she changed a lot."

Jason was pretty certain that this "Chris" character would be Clarisse's boyfriend.

Annabeth and Frank joined them a little while later, Annabeth rolling her eyes when Piper told her about the greeting Jason, Leo, and Percy had exchanged just minutes before.

"Seaweed Brain," she mumbled before leaning forward to give Percy a quick peck on his lips.

"I blame Leo," Piper said. "He's a bad influence."

"Hey!" Leo said, a fake look of insulted on his exaggerated features as he placed his hand on his chest. "I take offense to that!"

"No you don't," Hazel said with a laugh. "You're so proud of that. It's obvious in your little smirk there."

"Flaunt what you've got ladies," he said, adding a wink for emphasis and causing everyone to burst into laughter.

It was a free period. Everyone was given their assigned lockers for the locker room and were allowed to spend the rest of the period doing what they wanted. Unsurprisingly, the basketball players played basketball along with two others who weren't basketball players, Clarisse and some other guy, played with them.

The eight of them hung out on the bleachers, everyone but Nico talking which Jason couldn't help but feel guilty over. Nico didn't seem to feel like he belonged and, despite the fact that Nico had practically told him to back off, Jason felt like he needed to make sure Nico didn't feel left out even if Percy seemed to be trying to do the same thing, doing his best to bring Nico into the conversation with no success.

Jason had to say the highlight of the class was when Leo fell down the bleachers and onto the gym floor and having to curl into a ball to avoid the oncoming game of basketball.

He was in tears he had been laughing so hard.

After school, Jason was eager to get home and see his sister. He wondered what she could possibly be doing while he was at school but she had been pretty good at avoiding the topic when he had brought it up earlier so he decided to drop it.

"Wow," Thalia said as he walked through the door of their hotel home. She was settled on one of the couches, Cheetos from a family sized bag and watching the Discovery Channel. "I thought everyone would've tried to drag you to that dumb pizza place Percy is so obsessed with."

Jason laughed. "They tried. And should you really be eating Cheetos on Dad's nice couches? What if you stain because of your careless orange fingers?"

Thalia gave Jason an annoyed look. "Please. He won't be here enough to ever notice. And I know how to eat Cheetos out of a damn bag."

Jason laughed, throwing the backpack onto the couch next to Thalia. "Your friends are… fun," Jason said as he walked over to the fridge, pulling out some grapes and popping them into his mouth.

"I thought you'd like them," Thalia said. "And speaking of friends, Reyna called to tell me how pissed she was you didn't Skype her last night."

"Oh shit!" Jason groaned, slapping his face before running his entire hand down it. "I totally forgot. She's going to kill me."

"Well you better go call her Romeo," she said.

"For the last time, it's not like that!" he nearly yelled as he shoved the grapes back into the fridge and made a beeline for his room. "And Romeo and Juliet is a terrible example to describe a relationship!"

"So you're admitting to being in a relationship with Reyna?" Thalia asked.

"I swear to god, Thalia!" Jason said, finally entering his room. "I'd tell you if something was going on! Jeez!"

Then he shut the door, the sound of his sister's laughter sounding muffled as he made his way to his computer.