10.
"Percy?" she called, poking my shoulder gently. I turned to face her. She had eyebags. "What did you mean when you called me big?"
"I meant you're big, Annabeth. I'm not even a star in your constellation, I'm a star in your freaking universe," I said. She nodded, though she didn't seem satisfied.
"How are you?" I asked, once her attention was on Mr Dionysus.
"Alive," she murmured, "in a matter of speaking."
"Same," I grinned, and she managed a small smile. I turned back to the front, right as Mr Dionysus handed me my paragraph back. "It's my second favourite," he told me, smiling slightly.
"Percy?" Annabeth called again, and I looked at her. "Did you really call my party a shin-dig?"
The next time I saw Annabeth, she was sitting next to me at lunch again. Then she told the nerds to fuck off. "Do you ever feel like you want to be remembered? Like you want your life to mean something?" she asked softly.
"Never," I said seriously, and she managed a smile.
"I do too. Like, I want to be remembered. Fuck, no. I want to ruin lives. I want to ruin lives with the heart-wrenching torture of best friends parting ways. I want to drag the soul out of a body. I want someone to keep remembering me. I know I won't be forever. Nobody's going to remember Gandhi forever, if forever exists. But I want to be remembered for as long as a lifetime after mine, you know?"
"Sort of." Where was she going with this?
"I want to ruin your life, Jackson. I want the bittersweet knowledge that you're going to remember me long after I'm not here. I want to ruin the life of someone I love," she whispered.
"So just un-love me."
She laughed. It was the first laugh out her mouth in days. "I don't love you, Jackson."
"Understandable."
"But I do feel something," she said. "Enough to know I could never ruin your life, much as I have my life goals and all that crap."
"I don't understand."
"I might just love you, Jackson. But it's the un-truth. It's like a freaking paradox in my mind and I can't stop thinking about you and I can't stop needing you in my life and I can't stop thinking if I tell you this, I will eventually ruin your life."
"Too late, isn't it?" I smiled.
"I will not ruin your life, Percy," she murmured in my ear. I pressed my paragraph into her hand, ignoring the looks form students around us.
"My dear Annabeth Chase, you wouldn't just ruin my life; you would utterly demolish my livelihood. And it will be the Greatest Expectation my mind will ever face."