I'm sorry that this chapter is kind of short.

Disclaimer: I do not own Percy Jackson. Rick Riordan does.

Chapter Ten

(Percy's POV)

After taking a short, yet refreshing shower, I somewhat felt better. The water always reenergizes me, and wakes me up. Although, the bad part is that the soap stung any fresh scars on my body. It gave off small stings of pain, but the pain sometimes felt nice. After a couple minutes, I had to stop, otherwise Gabe will yell at me for using too much water. It's not like he showers anyways, it's not like he actually pays the hydro bills, so why he yells at me, still remains a mystery. Then again, I don't understand the minds of those type of creatures.

As I headed towards my room, my feet subconsciously walked to Tyson's room. I took a deep breath and opened the door. It was fairly small, but he was a kid, he didn't need a large room. The walls had under-the-sea themed wallpaper, with little sea creatures swimming across its surface. There were also some sculptures of sea creatures dangling from the ceiling, and it was actually really cool. I was somewhat jealous of it, but, hey, I could always come here and see them anyways. On some days, Tyson and I would just lie on our backs, just staring at the little figures on the ceiling. We'll let our imaginations take over, tell unique stories, and just let out our inner child. Well, I let out the child in me, Tyson was a child. It were days like those that reminded me of what I could never have back again.

His bed even had water themed sheets and there was even his favourite stuffed animal of a hippocampus on his bed. A hippocampus was a mythological creature, so I highly doubt much stores sell them as a toy, but my dad has-sorry, had- resources. His whole room was littered with little toys, clothing, and water related things, located just about anywhere there was space. He was just obsessed with water, like my dad and I. When he and my dad was proclaimed "dead," my mom and I didn't have the heart to clean up his room, or to move anything. Doing so would mean that they aren't coming back, and still, after several years, we still hope, no matter how much I despise it. The feeling of hope, for me, is involuntary. No matter how hard you try, you always, for some reason, hope. I looked around the room once more, and I could almost see a little ghost figure of Tyson, playing in his room.

"Goodnight Tyson." I whispered into his room. I could almost hear ghost Tyson say goodnight. To me, this wasn't creepy at all. As a matter of fact, this is a regular occurrence.

I walked back to my room, and shut the door, effectively shutting out at least some of the noise emitted from the creatures downstairs. My room is about the same size as Tyson's. It has a bed, closet, desk, drawer, bookcase, window, etc. It was fairly plain, with beige walls and a wooden floor. I went immediately to my desk and started working on my homework. First up, math. Twenty-six questions were bad enough, but considering the fact that most of the questions had four to six parts to it, just made it worse. Add my dyslexia and ADHD to this equation, and you get a usual 30 minutes homework time, turned into 2 hours, and that's on a good day. On the plus side, however, this is slopes, and it doesn't involve that much work, since we just started. There's only a couple equations that Mrs. Dodds taught us, so today's homework shouldn't be that hard. Two hours and fifteen minutes later, I finally finished math. This duration of time wasn't that bad, considering the fact that the things downstairs kept distracting me. How the neighbours don't hear it is beyond my understanding.

Now, onto English, probably the subject where my dyslexia acts up the most. Thankfully, there were only fifteen questions in the back, and some of them were basically asking for definitions or famous examples. On the downside however, some questions tell us to write our own type of particular poem. There are only two like that. One says to write our own haiku, and the other wants an acrostic poem, where we use our first name, as the word. Oh gods. I am not creative at all, so this will be a challenge. After another agonizing one hour and thirty minutes, I finally finished. It was around 10:45 right now, so I packed up my stuff, and got ready for bed. After I closed the lights, and made sure that my bedroom door was locked, I crawled into bed. Although, as I did so, I felt a dull throb of pain. Everywhere I turned, I felt some ache. Great, just great, this is just what I need, more pain. I eventually just stopped caring, and slept on some of my bruises, probably not helping it heal, at all. Oh well, it's not like I'll not get more to replace it once it's gone. I swear, I have some bruises on top of bruises, and some scars on top of scars. Today, I felt so tired, that not even the racket caused by the creatures downstairs, stopped me from falling asleep. Although, with sleep, comes dreams.

I dreamt that I was in Central Park, with my family, having a picnic. Cliché? Maybe a little bit. I distantly remembered that this event literally happened, several years ago. We just finished a satisfying lunch consisting of ham and egg sandwiches, blue lemonade, and blue cookies. If you haven't gathered this information already, we were really obsessed with the colour blue.

"So," my mom asked. "What do you want to do now?"

"Play!" Tyson exclaimed.

"We just ate, Ty." My dad explained, using our nickname for him. "Just wait for another 30 minutes or so." Tyson pouted and we all had to look away. Once we saw Tyson's pouting face, we would cave in, and do whatever he wanted.

I looked up towards the sky. "That looks like a turtle." I pointed out, randomly.

"What?" Tyson questioned.

"You see that cloud?" I pointed towards the sky, where the cloud was. "It looks like a turtle."

He cocked his head to the side. "Really? I see a face with stuff coming out of its nose." I laughed.

"I see a submarine." My mom said.

"All I see are blobs." My dad added, with a hint of confusion. We all laughed for a good two minutes.

"Care to be more specific?" My mom questioned, in between giggles. "Try to add more detail."

"Well," he started. "I see big blobs, small blobs, medium blobs, and more and more blobs."

My mom playfully shook her head, after another good round of laughter. "What are we going to do with you?" She mumbled, but purposely made it loud enough for all of us to hear.

"Hey!" My dad protested. Tyson and I both chuckled.

"I see a ship." My mom said, ignoring my dad's pleads.

"Pony!" Tyson screamed, pointing upwards. I laughed a bit.

"I see a mouse." My dad added.

"See?" My mom stated. "We're getting somewhere." My dad just pouted.

"I see a hand reaching out to grab the mouse." I pointed out.

"Meany." My dad declared. My family laughed. Sometimes my dad acted more childish than Tyson, and that's saying something. So that's all we did for the next hour or so. Cloud-gaze, eat some more cookies, laugh, and just generally have a good time. That is, until the clouds went away, and all we had left was a clear blue sky.

"Now what?" I asked. Tyson's face lit up.

"Play!" He exclaimed once more. He then got up, and ran towards the play set. My dad got up with fake difficulty.

"I'm too old for this." He groaned. My mom playfully hit him.

"No. You're not." She said. They then started holding hands. I fake gagged. I mean, it is seriously awkward having your parents act all lovey-dovey around you.

"Can you please not do that around your children? Please?" I pleaded. They just shook their heads.

"No can do, Perseus." My dad said, using my full name. I scowled. I didn't like my full name. I was about to retort, if not for Tyson.

"You coming?" He asked. I gave my dad a look that says, "this is not over," but headed towards Tyson, nevertheless.

My eyes fluttered open only to see bright red numbers blinking up at me. It read 3: 47. Even though it was practically the middle of the night, I can still hear Gabe and his "friends" still playing poker. This is a regular occurrence. They even sometimes pull all-nighters, because their game was "too intense." I immediately groaned, and then turned around on my bed, trying to fall asleep once more.

I hope you liked it. I got bruises on top of bruises once. Thank Gym and dodge-ball for that. On the plus side, however, I don't have to do Gym, anymore! I want a hippocampus plush. Sadly, I doubt they exist. Also, cloud-gazing actually is fun. I like it at least.