I'm answering your plea Nala- you're welcome. I can only post on this one because I'm only one person that's a couple of minutes away from girlguide camp. Enjoy!
XI
December 10th-11th
He swung back upright, powered by hunger. What day was it even? He'd been sleeping- he remembered that. Shadow travel was a pain sometimes. He looked at his alarm clock, and saw the date; it was late on the 10th. Okay, he'd slept through one day, it could have been worst.
That's when he eyed the 1 ½ binder. Shoot, that project was due tomorrow! Oh man…
He willingly picked it up for the first time in weeks (although it was pretty much against his will too) and opened it to the right spot. He reread the instructions.
[i]Transmitting emotions to the reader is part of any good writing. Convey the following emotions based on one of your memories. Each emotion must have a text between 1 paragraph and 1 page long. Write double spaced, spelling and grammar will not be taken into consideration but extra credit may be given and give each text a title. You will have to read your text to the class and they will rate how you transferred the emotion on a scale of 1-5. Presentations are due on December 11th at the last period.
-Happiness
-Anger
-Sorrow[/i]
Colour commentating flashed in Nico's head with each passing sentence and he stared blankly at a spare sheet of paper.
He got up and went back to the living room. Annabeth was back at sketching, and there seemed to be no sign of Percy and Thalia.
"Annabeth? I need help." He said feeling like a baby. She looked up.
"Sure, come here." She said putting her sketch pad on the coffee table. The paper was graphic, tons of little blue squares all over the place. Nico sat down and showed her the assignment and she started reading.
"Where did Percy and Thalia go?" He asked as she read.
"They were fighting again, so I told them to get out of here before they broke anything and they took it literally." She said. Nico noticed the ring on the fingers holding the paper. It was silver, and looked like it'd been cut down the center with an axe, only connected by a diamond. It was a split shank ring or some other name that sounded like a disorder of the digestive system.
He only knew about it because the children of Hermes had decided to post Nico as a decoy while they penetrated the Aphrodite cabin. Nico had had to pick his favourite between teal and aqua (what the heck was the difference?), comment on the pros and cons of Gucci and Coco Chanel (were those their actual names?), and pick which color went well on an ashy blonde (was there even a difference between ashy, sandy and strawberry blond? Weren't those just fancy words to say 'blond'? Nico was so confused. Colours were so much easier in kindergarten).
"Nice ring." Nico said.
"Thank you," Annabeth said. "He did really well."
She didn't take her eyes off the assignment until she started reading. Annabeth passed her tongue over her upper lip.
"Okay, let's start with happiness." She said, "Something that you had fun doing. Something that made you happy, or proud."
"It's all demigod stuff, Annabeth." Nico said thinking back.
Finding out he was a demigod had been cool, but then Bianca had joined the hunters.
Or when his dad had been proud of him on Olympus after the Titan war; that hadn't been a bad day either.
But to soften the mystical, magical, godly part of it was pretty much the whole thing right now.
Dumping Percy and Annabeth in the canoe lake? That had been hilarious, and they totally had it coming. Or the year after when cabin 11 had organized a flash mob and done it all over again, leaving Percy and Annabeth at the bottom of the lake and the rest of them to party. That had been hell of a party…
Or when he'd helped the Hermes cabin rig camouflaged catapults throw water balloons around the amphitheatre during a lecture on summer's hottest day.
Or the last day of camp when the Stoll brothers (or at least the older one) was 18 (meaning now there was college and apartment and blah, blah, blah, not camp), and had decided to go out with a bang?
They'd rigged water to sprinkle down like rain onto the dinning pavilion, and fountains to shoot water across the property, confetti cannons to shoot bits of paper that were revealed to be the residues of the 432 letters that Mr D had sent to Ms. Stoll since they'd gotten to camp considering disciplinary issues or 'please take notice that your son is currently a bush. Do not try to contact him for bushes cannot talk.'
To top it off, Travis had arranged for fireworks to boom throughout the night, and spray-painted one of the camp vans in bright, red 'LATER SUCKAS!'
"Those jerks!" Sarah said. "How could they not let me in on this?" They were in the dinning pavilion like most of camp. As last day special, Mr D had gone all out because he was getting rid of Percy, Annabeth, Katie, Travis, Connor, Butch, Leo, Lou Ellen, and all that wave of demigods. He'd cut camp short of a week already to make it happen sooner, he'd allowed them to sit at random tables, to skip schedule, and he hadn't turned one person into a shrub yet.
Sarah's eyes sparkled like gemstones and the crinkled smile hung on her lips. Her brown hair was flattening out, losing the fluff-factor. People were laughing, freaking out, trying to locate Travis and Connor in an angry-mob attempt, and splashing each other with the water accumulated in cups, held out hands, or open mouths (child of Hermes).
A few people had started dancing in the rain, including Katie and Travis, Percy and Annabeth and Leo and Connor ('mock the couples, mock the couples!' Connor had screamed- Leo was conveniently close enough and short and funny).
"Wanna dance?" Sarah asked. Nico held out his hand and she took it.
"You bet." Nico said. They danced as long as the rest of the campers, going from ridiculous waltz imitations that made Nico's side hurt from laughing, to slow dancing, to screwed-up tango, and Sarah trying to call back on the ballet courses she'd been forced by her mother to attend (and kicked out from) when she was five. It didn't work, but they were both laughing like hell.
The Apollo cabin had broken out their best guitarist who was playing a slow song. Sarah had her head on Nico's shoulder and her arms around his neck. He rested his chin on her head and the moment was just that good. The flash-mob had broken to a flash-dance, which only a place with children of Hermes can do, really.
Over Sarah's head, Nico saw Chiron smiling at his campers and Mr D starring at his watch, waiting for the big hand to land on the 12 and the little hand to land on the 4. 4 hours left. Nico wished it was a million hours of just him and Sarah.
"The day you guys left camp." Nico said.
"Hey!"
"No- not because you left! Because of the- you know- what the Stolls did." Nico said.
"Oh yeah…" Annabeth's eyes shinned in her own memories of that. "That was fun. How about you write that one last out of your three? You get the bad out, and then you've got the good."
Nico nodded although he didn't see how it made a difference.
"What about anger?" Annabeth asked.
When Percy had told him that Bianca had died.
When Bianca had joined the hunters.
When Midas had betrayed him and tried to kill him, Percy, Annabeth, Rachel and Daedalus.
Every day after Bianca had died for a while.
When Toby Machiavelli had flirted with Sarah the summer before Sarah had gotten sick. When Sarah had told him she'd had cancer and it was her out of all the people a disease could latch onto.
"I don't know." Nico said. Annabeth laced her fingers.
"I think you do, you just don't know what to pick." Annabeth said. She was nice about it, but Nico knew it was true.
"Yeah, maybe I don't."
"Alright; just think about this. Bianca's social security number and any paperwork about her was destroyed when she joined the hunt, and she's not on your file, so as big as that is in your life, you can't mention her in case your teacher checks." Annabeth said.
"How do you know all this?" Nico asked. Annabeth ignored him. Knowing Annabeth, maybe it was better if Nico never found out.
"What else were you thinking?"
"I don't know. Midas and the whole 'ghost king' thing." Nico said. "But I guess that I couldn't smooth that out without totally changing it."
"Probably not." Annabeth admitted. "What else is on your list?"
Nico stayed quiet.
"Toby Machiavelli, son of Apollo. Flirted with Sarah before. Totally annoying, nearly killed him." Nico said.
"Yeah, I remember him. Do you want to write about Toby?"
"No," Nico said without thinking. His brain started working like it'd gotten a slap from his conscience. "I mean- yes. Yes, of course, what else?"
Annabeth raised an eyebrow and extracted the information from him via sheer glare.
"I mean no." Nico said. "He was annoying, and I was mad at him, and I wanted to smack him and make Sarah never see him again, but… It wasn't that strong of a feeling."
"So what was?"
"When Bianca died. When Sarah got sick." Annabeth nodded.
"It would be difficult to change the version of Bianca's death, but not impossible if you really want to talk about it. And Sarah would be perfectly passible as one." Nico nodded.
"I think I want to talk about Bianca," he said.
"Mmm-kay… Well, it could happen. Maybe she could be… A cousin or something."
"Percy and Thalia are my cousins. Bianca can't be. It was more than that." Nico said.
"Okay. She could be… Best friend?"
Nico felt like he'd gotten a punch to a stomach. That basically was what Bianca had been. For a long, long time. She'd been a million things and then she'd been nothing but the sister who'd joined the hunt. Then she'd been the dead sister he wanted back with all his heart.
"Okay." Nico said.
"Start wherever you want."
Nico chewed on the end of his pencil for a bit, and when he got the feeling in his mouth that the eraser was flaking off turned to Annabeth.
"Help me."
"I can't," Annabeth said. "These are your emotions. I don't know how you felt when Bianca died. This is all you, Nico."
"Is that why I hate it so much?" Nico asked. Annabeth looked at him deeply.
"I don't know Nico," she said. Nico turned back to his binder. He had to give something in, right? He just put his pencil to the paper and wrote down whatever. Annabeth didn't read over his shoulder or anything. She sketched out a building that looked like a temple and sky scraper mix. It looked right out of a science-fiction novel and Nico thought that it should appear at the corner of the street right away.
"Okay," Nico said. He almost felt sorry to be the reason that her pencil stopped flying across the paper.
"Okay, next up." Annabeth looked down at it and she suddenly looked touchy. Like she was trying to figure out how to pick up a grenade.
"Sorrow." Nico said for her.
"Yes," Annabeth said. "Sorrow."
They sort of just looked at each other.
"Should I just hand in a list?" Nico asked her. Annabeth shook her head.
"What are you going to write about?" She asked.
"Lists are easy and convenient."
"Nico…"
"People make lists for like, groceries and records, and there's the world famous to-do list; I think that the concept should pop up in class too."
"Nico." Annabeth snapped, to prove she was a woman with a point (which is counted as a force of nature). "Seriously. It's due tomorrow. You don't have time to mess around with it, you already have for gods-know how long. What are you going to write about?"
"I don't know," Nico shrugged.
"You don't know?"
"I don't know."
"Look, Nico, I'm not an idiot. You know exactly what you can write about. You're just not going to tell me because you're a closed up sort of person. And that's okay. But you're going to have to write it eventually. You're going to have to admit you're sad. You're going to have to admit that you're not as inanimate as a corpse. Sarah blew some life into you, and that comes with emotions and you're dealing with those. You're just going to run in circles if you don't. I can't help you until you realise that. Not with this homework." Annabeth said. Nico sunk back in the couch and brought up his legs. He let his head drop.
"Right now." Nico said quietly.
"What do you mean 'right now'?" Nico asked.
"For sorrow." He said. "Right now. I feel useless and horrible and pained and struggling."
"About Sarah?"
"About everything." Nico said.
"What do you mean?" Annabeth said, trying to coax Nico for information. He might have answered, he might have not. Either way the door opened to Thalia and Percy arguing.
"That was more than just a splash!"
"That was not a static shock either! There's this huge hole right there- don't pretend you don't see it!"
"It's already snowing outside, why would I need to be drenched in freaking water?"
Annabeth rolled her eyes.
"What happened?" She asked patiently. They both yelled either 'she zapped me!' or 'he splashed me!'
Nico honestly couldn't care less about what the heck they were doing to each other; they were only good that way as entertainment.
He wasn't in the mood for that so disappeared again to his room. He dropped the binder to his bed. He stood there watching it, in a moment of stupid and pointlessness, before opening it.
Sorrow.
Seriously; Nico was really considering the list.
Nico drummed his pencil on the table nervously. Last period English; he hated it. He'd hated it even more when Miss Padma had introduced to them her incredible idea.
"Instead of me taking in all your assignments; you're going to read them to the class and we're going to see how much of a reaction you get from others!"
No. Bad idea. Very bad. Tartarus material.
Nico wished classrooms were democratic because he was sure others felt the same way.
There wasn't even that one kid that figures 'ah, let's get it over with' during oral presentations in Nico's class, so they always just stared at each other awkwardly and crossed fingers and toes as Miss Padma named off random people. This one girl did braids too.
The presentations had been long and boring. People talked about their dead dogs, losing a teacher, a grandparent, several hamsters, one girl had lost her mother…
And now, with 13 minutes left before the bell rang, Nico's nerves weren't right. Maybe he could escape the day, talk to Miss Padma, argue his way out of it, maybe fake his own death and move to Chicago overnight.
"Alright!" Miss Padma said in a cheery tone. "Next up we'll have… Bryce Carlton."
There were a few 'yes'!' and Bryce got all pouty. Nico had no sympathy for Bryce, and felt way too revealed about escaping it himself to feel sorry for the guy. He was a total jerk and bullied a lot, with a new cheerleader each week (you'd think he'd run out of cheerleaders, but no).
Nico sat through a boring presentation. Well, everyone else laughed, but Nico's head wasn't there. Happiness; first kiss. Anger; got dumped. Sorrow; having to waste his time and look 'sorrow' up in the dictionary.
Nico felt like hitting this guy.
The bell rung, everyone sprinted out as Miss Padma yelled 'remember- everyone goes tomorrow!'
Nico swung his backpack over his shoulder and went to talk to Miss Padma.
"Umm, Miss Padma?" He asked.
"Yes Coco, what can I do for you today? What's going on in Di Angelo's life?"
You don't want to know and I don't want to tell you.
"Umm, do I have to present in front of everyone?"
"You most certainly do, Peanutville." She said. Where the heck did she come up with these things?
"It's, umm, I don't want to." Nico said.
"Nico, I don't want to work, I don't want to pick up milk from the grocery store, I don't want to walk the dog. It's a part of life, kiddo, you're going to have to do like everyone else, I can't permit myself to spare you." Nico knew she had no chance of knowing, but her casual tone set him on edge.
"You don't understand." He spat out.
"I understand you want detention if you're talking to me that way!" She said. "Watch your tone."
"Yes Miss."
And he left just as quickly before she could ask any questions.