I have a good friend who is from NYC so I've tried to incorporate how he speaks into the dialogue. Also, there's a time jump. I'm trying to get to more of the plot so from here things should start picking up in the story.

Percy pulled his hood up and hunched over against the cold fall wind. He had decided to sleep in a bit longer than usual. He didn't get out of bed until his mom came and knocked on the door, warning him that he was going to be late if he didn't get up now. The street corner in front of him was deserted; his friends had decided to head to school ahead of him. This didn't really surprise him though; Annabeth was an extremely punctual person, who considered being on time late.

He put in his earbuds and pulled up some music to listen to as he kept walking.

"Shit!" He exclaimed when he saw the time and then began to run to school.

Percy slid into his first period class right when the bell rang for it to begin. His math teacher Ms. Dodds looked at him like as if he was something one of her cats threw up. At this point though, he was kind of used to it and just slid into his seat in the back of the class.

Percy still wasn't exactly sure how he managed to get into the calculus class at his high school. There must have been some mix-up, and Ms. Dodds knew it too, which is probably why she kept looking at him like that every time he breathed too loudly. His performance in the class wasn't that bad compared to how the other students were doing, but he was also averaging a whole letter grade lower than Annabeth on their quizzes. She had yet to get lower than a 90% on one. Percy was elated when he got above that.

Recently they had been studying together for this class. Annabeth called it studying, but Percy called it tutoring because that's really what it was more like. He would ask her all the questions that he had; stupid ones included and then she would do one of three things:

1. Answer the question

2. Laugh and then answer the question

3. Laugh and roll her eyes at him

At first he found the rolling her eyes at him to be a little rude, but later realized that was just how Annabeth was. He knew that she didn't mean to be rude but wasn't sure that other people got that about her. She seemed to be more standoffish at times, even with her closer friends than the others were in their friend group. Not angry like how Nico could be, but more like her mind was a million miles away. Sometimes Percy really wondered where her mind wandered off to.

The rest of the day passed with nothing notable happening. Percy was grateful for that. He hated drawing attention to himself, which is why he usually opted for sitting in the back of the classroom for his class while watching the array of color from the leaves catch the sunlight. He also liked to watch when busy businessmen would walk to fast while eating and spill their lunches all over themselves.

Percy walked down the hall to Mr. Brunner's room for classics club. Originally he didn't want to join it for a variety of reasons but the main one was his dyslexia. He didn't like to talk about it, so he just told people that he was better at math instead. Most people took that as an explanation, but he had his own thoughts about it. He didn't think that people were naturally inclined to any particular subject- it all just depended on how they were taught to them and how much work they wanted to put into it. He didn't like reading, it was hard for him, and so he ended up not putting a lot of work into it.

Not that he didn't try. His mom has written several successful novels and has tried to get him to love reading and writing more. When he was younger she would sit him down almost every day and read with him. It helped with their relationship, but Percy would try because he loves his mom, not because he loves to read.

He opened the door and saw that everyone else was already gathered around a group of desks in the front of the room. Mr. Brunner was absent though. He noticed that as the school year progressed, he was leaving them up to their own devices more and more. He entrusted Annabeth with making sure that the door was locked behind them when they left. Not that he wasn't active with the club, but he usually didn't stay the full time, and sometimes he didn't stay very long at all.

"Hey Percy!" Grover said, "We've got an interesting new piece of text that Annabeth found." Annabeth looked up from the stack of papers that she was sorting through and smiled softly.

"These are especially interesting, since the original paper that was written about them is actually from our high school. "Annabeth said. Leo picked up a piece of paper and looked at it closely.

"These things must be mad old. Look at how the ink has faded." He said. Jason came up behind him and adjusted his glasses.

"Yikes. Are you sure we should be messing around with something this old?" He asked while looking at Annabeth.

"I'm sure it's fine as long as you're not a fucking idiot." She said without looking at either Jason or Leo. Percy snickered. Annabeth looked up at him again.

"The thing that's actually interesting is the fact that the guy who wrote preface of the paper was actually expelled right after homecoming and then he died." The room became very quiet after that, giving Annabeth the spotlight.

"His case was never resolved. Some thought it was a murder, others think it was an accident. Most people thought it was a suicide, so that's what his death ended up being ruled as."

'When did this happen?" Piper asked.

"2001." Annabeth responded.

"That's right after 9/11." Percy said. "They were probably too caught up with cleaning up the mess from the attack to look for some high schooler."

Annabeth shrugged "Probably. The point is though, that there are rumors about his death in the classics papers that were published while he was here and the year after he left."

"Are clues only in the papers that were published? Or are there other places that we can look?" Rachel asked.

"There are probably clues in the material that they were writing about as well." Annabeth said. She picked up a piece of paper that was off to the side from the large stack.

"The first thing that they wrote about is the story of Orpheus and how it related to modern society."