Annabeth usually rolls her eyes at the melodrama of a high-pitched sigh, the kind that sounds like a Victorian woman asking for her smelling salts. But as she enters Piper's car, she indulges herself in a particularly dramatic one.

She waits for the "you alright?", the sympathetic eyes, but they never come. Piper snakes an arm around Annabeth's torso and rests her head on her shoulder. The choppy flyaways from her long braid tickle Annabeth's arms, the bright, herbaceous scent of her shampoo clearing Annabeth's senses.

Early morning meetings are a tradition that started in their younger days in lonely homes, an opportunity to be alone together. As little kids, Annabeth and Piper had spent them hidden under the playground slide, but nowadays they enjoy the privacy of Piper's car. This morning, they're parked at the school over an hour before homeroom, the sun's light just a soft gleam at the horizon. It's chilly out and the seats are leather and heated, so Annabeth burrows herself into her jacket and presses her body against the warmth. Piper turns on the car radio and the quiet, crackly sound covers the hum of her car's motor.

"So," says Piper, "tell me everything. What's going on?"

"I don't know," says Annabeth, and this is mostly true. She tries to think of where to begin. Advice comes in the form of Julie Andrews' voice echoing in her head (Let's start at the very beginning! A very good place to start!), but regardless of how good a place it is to start, she's not really sure where the beginning is. There's the talk with Dad and Helen. The Pedro's Debacle. Rachel. Drew.

Athena.

Percy.

"I don't know," Annabeth repeats, and she finds herself saying, "I guess Drew's just being a jerk."

Piper glances her way, fingers playing with the radio dial. "Anything in particular?"

A pause. "I got stuck in the hallway with her Saturday morning," she says, replaying the day in her head. "We were teasing each other for a bit. Like we always do. And then she brought up Ath - my mom."

Plucky harpsichord fills the car and Piper stops turning the dial.

She continues. "And it was weird. Because - of course she knows. She probably laughs about it at the dinner table every night. But it felt so wrong. She mentioned Athena and I just froze."

She freezes again, now, with the memory.

"Of course it's wrong," says Piper. She grabs Annabeth's hand. "If anyone - "

"But she was right," says Annabeth, her voice fading away as she says the last word.

"Listen to me, for once - "

"I'm always listening to you - "

"For once, darn it. If anyone understands, it should be her. She knows she went too far and she's shown that she doesn't care. And you know what? You're not responsible for what she said."

"You don't even know what she said!"

"And you don't have to tell me. I know it hurt you. I know it was uncalled for. That's all that matters, isn't it?"

The plucky harpsichord stops its playing. There's a little silence in the car that makes Annabeth involuntarily turn away.

"Annabeth," says Piper, turning Annabeth's chin back towards her with a finger, "I know you want to be better than this, and that's okay. But you're just a hormonal teenager sometimes, and that's okay, too."

Annabeth frowns but doesn't respond.

And it's strange. By all metrics this is a dreadful conversation, but there's something reassuringly familiar in complaining about family to Piper. It's like - although things were bad when they met and they're not much better now, it's comforting to know that constancy exists somewhere, even if it's with lukewarm coffee in a too-fancy car that Tristan McLean gifted to buy Piper off last year.

"There's - other things," begins Annabeth, because even if her emotions tell her to shut her mouth and ignore everything, her wisdom knows that either she pukes it all out now or she actually throws up in band rehearsal today. She waits for Piper to slowly push it out of her, anyway, because that's the way they always are.

But Piper doesn't say anything, just clicks off the radio. She's lost in thought, staring at the flyaways from her braid in the rearview mirror.

"Are you alright?" Annabeth asks. Her concern makes the tone of her voice sharp, harsh against the dull purr of the car's engine.

But Piper shakes her head. "Don't change the topic. I'm okay, okay?"

"Just okay?"

"I'm fine."

"Just fine?"

She leans her head back, closes her eyes. "Drop it."

Annabeth obeys.

"What were you going to say?" asks Piper, after a pause.

"Helen," says Annabeth, and she means to say more but then doesn't.

"Is she being nosy again?"

Annabeth sighs. "I guess so. She brought Dad into it, too. When I got back from rehearsal on Saturday, they'd already eaten without me and then they sat me down and said we needed to talk and then she and Dad said a whole bunch about how I need to manage my time better and have priorities and they kept implying that I'm spending too much time with band things. And I don't even really know what they want me to do. I just - she thinks she knows but she doesn't. And I don't know, either."

Annabeth's not sure she formed a single cohesive thought in all of her ramblings, but Piper responds anyways. "But it's not like you're sacrificing your grades to be in band. And you like music. If anything, having an outlet would help you to better manage yourself."

"Exactly. And I kept trying to ask what they wanted, and they wouldn't say. They don't trust me. I just need them to trust me."

"I know," says Piper. There's nothing else she can say.

"Can we talk about something else?" Annabeth asks, watching a couple cars begin to trickle into the parking lot. "Is everything okay with you and your parents?"

But Piper shakes her head again. "I - Annabeth, I really just don't want to talk about it."

"Not yet?"

Piper opens her mouth, then closes it. "No," she says, finally. "Tell me about you and Percy."

The truth is that Annabeth's been especially quiet about Percy to Piper. Because even if thinking about her mother hurts, at least she knows why it hurts. Percy is uncharted territory in her mind, confusing in a way that makes her heart hurt along with her head. Annabeth usually finds solace in untangling complicated problems, in scribbling down her feelings until the lines of pen on the pages of her journal smoothes out her mind, but this problem is too sensitive to put in ink. She feels out of control with Percy - out of control of him, of their relationship, of herself.

She knows Piper wouldn't press her to talk about anything, that she could just push off the conversation for later the same way Piper's doing now. But something about Piper's demeanor tells her that her friend desperately needs a distraction, so she plunges on.

"Percy's being weird," she says. "I don't know if he's angry or upset or if he just doesn't care."

"Maybe it's just Percy being Percy," says Piper.

"I guess so." What is Percy like? She tries to think about Percy the way she always has, the boy with unbrushed hair and lanky legs and crooked smile, the kind of person that shows up late to rehearsals and plays with too much vibrato and whispers sarcastic jokes about everything Mr. Johnson says until he gets yelled at for talking in rehearsal. The sort of guy who tries to play multiple saxophones at once and scribbles notes on other people's music with a dark, unsharpened, gnawed-on pencil, who closes his eyes when he gets too into the music instead of watching the conductor. He doesn't ever care, and yet he always does. Annabeth feels out of control with him, she thinks, because he's always out of control.

Annabeth likes control. And now both Percy and her parents are pulling it away from her, pulling in completely opposite directions, playing tug-of-war with the rope of her sanity over a pool of her hopes and dreams and fears.

"What happened?" asks Piper, quietly.

"I guess it started Friday," she says. "A bunch of people were going to Pedro's after Saturday's rehearsal to celebrate the end of practices. And Percy invited me to go."

She pauses, and when she starts again, her tone turns petulant. She hates it. "I guess - I was upset because I thought we were in it together, you know? But he had talked to everybody else before me and he was just so flippantly like 'oh, a bunch of people from the pit are going!' like everyone else knew about it before me and I just felt so alone. And I thought - I thought things were finally different with him."

Piper is quiet for a long time, before she says, "we're all alone, aren't we? It's just you and me, all over again."

It's true, Annabeth thinks. The parking lot is filling up now, backpacks and chatter and skateboards and parents wielding coffee that hide the yellow-red sky. There's little groups congregating by the doors, friends swinging arms around their friends' necks, laughter echoing, tinny and distant through the car's doors. And there's her and Piper, half-awake and jittery and nauseous all at the same time, curled into a car at the far side of the lot.

"I have to see him in band today," Annabeth says. "And things are so weird between us."

"I'll be there, too," says Piper. "Things are okay between us, right?"

Annabeth's not sure whether this is a rhetorical question or not, so she says, "yeah. Of course."

Then she continues, "there's more, though. I turned him down, obviously. So he came by on Saturday to sort of apologize, I guess. And I sort of blew up at him, because Drew and I had just talked, and things already weren't great with my parents, and I was just in a bad mood. And then we didn't really talk, after that."

"Do you think he's mad at you because he didn't ask again?"

"No, he asked again. And then I guess Rachel sort of convinced him that I didn't want to go, so he left."

Piper frowns. "Rachel?"

"She's a - a friend of Percy's. She does hair and makeup, I think."

"Oh," says Piper.

"Yeah," says Annabeth. "She and Percy were awfully touchy-feely, if you know what I mean."

"Oh," says Piper. Then she says, "so what did she say to him?"

"Percy was in the middle of inviting me, and she was sort of like, 'oh, she doesn't have to go if she doesn't want to!' And then sort of dragged him away."

"In a passive-aggressive way?"

"I - I don't know."

Piper breathes out slowly. "I mean, take everything I say with a grain of salt. Possibly two or even three. Like, maybe she shouldn't have tried to speak for you. But maybe she was just trying to be nice, Annabeth."

"I don't know," says Annabeth, skeptically. "She's just so clingy with Percy whenever I'm around. Deliberately so."

"How do you - " Piper begins, but then she checks herself and showily checks the time on her phone. Waving towards the school's entrance, she says, "I guess we've probably got to go?"

"Okay," says Annabeth, and leaves the car with a sigh like she entered it.

Percy strides into the band room just as Mr. Johnson lifts his baton to rap it against his stand, signalling the start of rehearsal. Annabeth's eyes, half-willingly, follow his shuffling into his seat and watch him plop his tattered music binder onto a stand.

It's finally the same way it's always been. Piper is absentmindedly whooshing warm air through her flute, tapping the keys with chipped nails. Travis Stoll has continued his protest of refusing to bring a spit towel until he gets a solo. Octavian is wetting his reed with an obnoxiously loud slurping sound every thirty seconds. (Annabeth's in the back row and she can still hear it. She's convinced he has an allergy to his reed that causes extreme salivation and probably requires medical attention.)

It should be comforting, but it isn't. Everything is wrong. She can't concentrate as they warm up, even when Mr. Johnson yells at her ("Annabeth, you are very out of tune! Are you flat or sharp?" "Uh - yes, sir!"). She's left staring at her warm-up book as Mr. Johnson calls out measure numbers for their first piece, which forces her to ask her neighbor, a freshman trombone who has a concerning habit of constantly adjusting his spit rag with his hand, about where they're starting ("Thanks - also, could you maybe not rub your spit all over my music?"). And when they get to her duet with Percy, she feels disconnected from everything, the notes flat and bland against the page.

Everything is wrong.

Mr. Johnson sighs as he cuts them off mid-solo. "Guys! It was so much better last week. You can do this, come on. Don't lose focus."

They start up again, and Annabeth desperately tries to feel something, to find the harmony, to search for the connection they'd found so easily before. Her eyes search for Percy's head, unusually stiff as he plays. It's just notes, and more notes, and more notes, falling and landing dead on the floor.

"No!" says Mr. Johnson, shaking his baton after he cuts them off again. "Do you hear this? I know you're tired, okay? We all are. Fight for it. If you're not exhausted by the end of rehearsal, you're not putting everything into it. One more time, and then you're going to have to work on this on your own. I'm not wasting more rehearsal time on this section."

Annabeth fights for it. She pulls and pushes the melody around Percy, trying to hear him, trying to feel his line of music over hers. She feels Percy doing the same, exchanging the tune with her, but the line of his shoulders is tight and she knows that hers is, too. She's disappointed, and sees the same in Mr Johnson's face, in the purse of his lips as he motions for the band to continue.

It's finally the same way it's always been, and it's not.

As rehearsal ends and she packs up her horn, she groans. She can't sort anything out. There's Athena and Frederick and Helen and Drew and Rachel and Piper and Percy and her, and she doesn't understand any of it. For the first time probably ever, she looks forward to her calculus class, because at least derivatives and Riemann sums have an answer.

Occasionally she looks up to see Percy fiddling with the saxophone strap around his neck as he chats with his friends. She glares holes through the back of his head, hoping he'll turn around and smile and at least one thing will be kind of okay. He turns a bit and Annabeth feels herself suck in a breath, but then he suddenly picks up his case and strides out of the hall.

Piper finishes packing away her own things and journeys to Annabeth's side of the band hall before leaning quietly on stand, her flute bag tucked between her legs.

"Ready?" asks Piper.

"No," says Annabeth, swinging her bag over her shoulder. "But let's go, anyways."

A/N: me? updating? really?

gosh, i'm sorry that i'm so terrible at updating this consistently. this chapter is pretty different in tone to the other ones, so i'd love to know what you think!