ACT TWO

"To the person in the bell jar, blank and stopped as a dead baby, the world itself is the bad dream." —Sylvia Plath

chapter twelve: tangible horrors

For Annabeth, high school marks a quickly-approaching change from a monotonous life to an invigorating one. She's excited to finally take photography seriously, to build a real portfolio and learn how to improve the quality of her work. And there's something about the idea of high school that feels so much more momentous, so much more vivid than middle school did.

Percy's told her that he feels the same way, except he mostly wants to be older so he can make more money at work. Annabeth understands; it must be annoying to make less than you would otherwise just because you're under sixteen.

Mileview High School's building is far more impressive than their middle school—it's way bigger, all arcing windows and stone doorways. As Annabeth walks up to it for the first time, she's seized by the fleeting desire to take out her camera and study the architecture. Dozens of students pour in around her as she walks through the open doors, chattering and laughing amongst themselves. Annabeth cranes her neck, searching for the others. Piper's meant to meet her by the entrance; she'll feel better about being somewhere completely alien to her with her best friends by her side.

"Annabeth!" someone yells. She whips her head around to see Piper and Percy standing by a row of lockers, looking excited but a little overwhelmed. Percy smiles at Annabeth as she approaches. With a faded blue shirt and battered sneakers, he looks more Percy-like than ever. It's comforting, to be honest.

"Hey," she grins. "You guys ready?"

Piper groans. "No. How is summer already over? I hate how school came out of nowhere."

"I'm ready for it, honestly," Percy admits. "It's gonna be nice not having to regularly work full days, even if it is because we've got school every day."

"I can't believe none of us have any classes together," Annabeth complains. "I'm not gonna know who to talk to."

"Try socialising," Piper teases. "Open yourself up to new friendships like, you know, an actual human does."

She fixes her with a glare. "Shut it, McLean." Piper and Percy laugh, and even Annabeth has to crack a smile. This feels okay, she thinks—the familiarity of the three of them together sets her at a kind of slow, simple ease. At once, her nerves begin to abate.

She's not sure why she didn't expect it, but high school is fast-paced. After she gets acquainted with her homeroom, each hour-long period dissolves like quicksand. Math is alright, and so is Chemistry. They both come naturally to her, like most academic subjects. Helen always tells her she's lucky that way; some people have to work twice as hard.

Photography, though, becomes her favourite class as soon as she walks through the door. It's her only elective, so maybe that was inevitable. The shiny equipment that lines the room instantly intrigues her and she knows she'll love the course as soon as their teacher hands out the syllabus.

She's reading through the list of the various kinds of photography they'll be learning about when the blond guy next to her says, "I can't believe I signed up for this."

"What? Why's that?" Annabeth asks, disbelieving.

Her shock must come through in her voice because the guy laughs, putting down his sheet. "'Cause I know nothing about it! I just thought it looked cool." When he speaks, the scar on his lip quirks.

Annabeth offers him a hesitant smile. "Don't worry, I'm sure you'll pick it up. As long as you've got something of a creative streak, you'll do fine."

"I guess so," he answers, sounding reassured. He scrubs hand over the back of his neck and sighs, staring glumly at the blackboard. Miss Ellis—their teacher—has scrawled a list of the array of equipment they'll need on it in chalk. "Fuck, I didn't realise we had to buy a camera," he mutters, noting down the equipment she's listed. Annabeth is about to respond but she cuts herself off when Miss Ellis starts talking. This doesn't seem to deter the guy next to her, though. He whispers, "So, what's your name? I'm Jason."

"It's Annabeth," she hisses back. "Now shut up. I'm trying to listen."

As the class progresses, her and Jason soon become fast friends. Despite his claim that he knows nothing about photography, it's easy to bounce ideas off him for the pinhole project they're starting. He even comes up with some pretty good ideas of his own that Annabeth would never have initially thought of.

The bell goes. They leave the class together, talking intently. "You're kidding. I don't believe you've never seen Star Wars," Annabeth tells him incredulously. "It's like, culture."

"Says the girl who says she doesn't listen to Beyonce."

Annabeth gapes. "Because I have taste, thank you very much!"

Jason laughs. "Alright, Annie. We'll agree to disagree."

"You're worse than Leo," Annabeth groans.

Annabeth waits by Jason's locker for him to grab his Biology textbook. "Why? Who's Leo?"

"A friend who also insists on calling me that goddamn nickname every goddamn chance he gets."

He grins, closing his locker. "I think it's a great nickname. See you later, Annie."

"I hate you."

Jason waves over his shoulder as he heads off to his next class. "You can't hate your new friend!" he calls.

Annabeth sighs, heading off in the opposite direction to her Latin class. Piper falls into step beside her, nudging her in greeting. "Oh, you met Jason," she says. "He's in my music class."

"So you know he's insufferable."

"Insufferable?" Piper asks. "All I know is that he's better on a fucking piano than I am. Oh, you're Grade Four? I'm Grade Seven," she mimics. "He's an idiot. A good-looking idiot, though."

Annabeth laughs. "Why am I not surprised you've already found someone to crush on?"

Piper rolls her eyes. "Please. He's gotta have more than just nice hands to besot me."

"You already sound pretty besotted," she says under her breath.

Piper narrows her eyes. "What was that?"

With a nervous smile, Annabeth gestures to the classroom they're approaching that is, thankfully, her English class. "Oh, I gotta go. See ya."

"Hey, get your ass back here!" Piper demands as Annabeth ducks inside Latin for safety. She sits down, pulling out her textbook.

Lunchtime is strange. There's still the four of them, of course, but then there's others. Voices around Annabeth that she doesn't know, that are all interesting and different and new. Jason stops at their table to talk, pasta pot in hand, before he's dragged away by one of his friends. Still, Annabeth feels like she belongs here. With Percy on her left, whispering crude remarks and inside jokes to her and smiling with his soft eyes, everything is the same as it's ever been.

The next few days of school pass just like that—unremarkably, with the sort of consistence that Annabeth's grateful for. She makes a few new friends, but she can't imagine being as close to them as she is with Percy, Leo and Piper. Theirs is a friendship cultivated over the years, taking over so many of Annabeth's warmest memories that she feels more comfortable around them than she does with anyone else. Still, she guesses that's just the kind of person she is. What use is a friendship if it's not all-encompassing, not something that catches you off guard and grips you entirely?

Helen says that expanding her circle is a good thing. "Keeping only a few close friends is amazing, Annabeth," she says over dinner, "but the more people who've got your back, the better."

After school on Thursday, Annabeth heads into town to get coffee. She's feeling drained, and is ready to hole up at home and recharge by lying on her bed and editing photos. She's got some homework to do, but she decides that can wait until the weekend. Coffee already half-finished, she quietly sings under her breath to the song playing in her earphones as she walks up the path to her estate.

Annabeth doesn't notice it when she opens the gate, doesn't notice it when she closes it behind her. She doesn't notice it when she pulls her phone out to skip the song she's on. It's not until she's a halfway up the neat, grey-brick path that the first tang of the metallic smell hits her nose. Is that blood? she thinks, and looks up from her phone. The first thing she registers is the splash of warm coffee all over her shoes, then the resounding crack of her phone screen against stone. Ice lances through her lungs, stealing the breath from them like frostbite.

Her father lies, sprawled, over the steps to her house. His head is blown in, his brain matter on the green grass. He's still wearing his fucking work clothes, like he was just returning home. Annabeth crashes to her knees beside him, tears already streaming down her face. She screams, then screams again. He's been shot. He's dead. He's dead.

"Dad," Annabeth mumbles, ragged and pained. Her hands flutter uselessly around his face, then grasp his shoulders and shake. "Dad!" she shouts hoarsely. "Wake up. Wake up. Wake up, God. God." There's salt in her mouth, tears streaking her cheeks. She falls across his still body, pressing her forehead to his shoulder. She can't see anything but crimson, debilitated by the tangible horror of Frederick's still-warm corpse.

She yells Helen's name a thousand times before stumbling into the house, only to find a note letting Annabeth know that she's out grocery shopping. She dials 911 with shaking hands as she steps outside again, hating God, hating Him, hating Him.

The police find her in the grips of a panic attack as she kneels over Frederick, shaking him and shaking him as though the action might instil life back into his body. "Miss, we're here now," one of the officers says, tugging her gently to her feet. Annabeth's body isn't her own as the officer guides her away from Frederick and carefully sits her down. "I'm Officer Mariam Jones. You're in shock," the officer informs her as a soft blanket is wrapped around Annabeth's shoulders. "We're going to get to the bottom of this, I promise. Someone will pay for this murder."

The words rattle through Annabeth as she stares at the concrete, rewriting all her thoughts. Murder. Whoever shot her dad was a murderer. Officer Jones keeps talking, but whatever she's saying distorts into far-off radio static. All Annabeth can taste is the salt from her tears, and all she can smell is the coffee she spilt on her shoes.

She's never felt this hollow before.

Before Annabeth knows it, Helen's arms are around her. She says something to a police officer, and then she's talking to Annabeth. "It's okay. It's all going to be okay," she murmurs into Annabeth's hair.

She latches onto her stepmother, holding tight with every last drop of her strength. She's crying again. She didn't realise. "He's dead. Someone killed him," Annabeth gasps through her tears. "This isn't fucking fair. Why did they kill him? Why?" She buries her face in Helen's shoulder, holding so tight she's scared Helen's ribs might break.

"We're going to get through this," Helen murmurs. Annabeth doesn't know how she manages to sound so—so strong. She kisses Annabeth on the head once, then twice, and then she's crying. "My husband," is all she says, brokenly. The two of them stand there outside the crime scene that was once their driveway for an eternity, holding onto each other with the ferocity of the grieving.

Annabeth doesn't go to school the next day. She lies on the couch with Bobby and Matthew, cheeks as damp as they were when she found him. Neither of her brothers saw the body, which she's grateful for—the awful, awful image of it is all that's played on her mind for the last twenty-four hours. She's not sure if she'll ever stop seeing it.

Helen holds herself together by working to tie up all her husband's matters, which entails signing the will that leaves his assets to the four of them, phoning their few and distant relatives and working out what to do for his funeral. Annabeth knows that if Helen didn't have all this to do then she'd probably fall apart faster. It's obvious in the strained tension of her shoulders, in her smudged eyeliner, in the way she's locked the door of her and Frederick's bedroom and hasn't opened it; instead, she's been sleeping in the guest room.

Annabeth doesn't answer her phone, which blows up with calls from Piper and Leo. Percy doesn't have a phone, though she wishes he did. He's the only one who she would be okay with seeing her like this: a wreck, in every sense of the word.

The weekend is hardly a tick on Annabeth's radar. Her insomnia goes from bad to hell-inducing, and she doesn't sleep at all on Sunday night. She finds herself standing helplessly in the kitchen, gazing out the window over the sink into the dark night. Helen's passed out in the lounge, having been on the phone to a private investigator for hours. It's the first any of them have heard of the shady shit her dad was involved in during his youth, and she kind of wishes all of that could remain buried. It's easier to remember her dad as an aviation nerd than someone who was once involved in a crime syndicate.

Her feet are cold against the tiles of their kitchen floor, but that's nothing compared to the ache in Annabeth's chest. She pulls the sleeves of her cotton pyjama shirt down over her knuckles, balling her hands into fists. It's three in the morning. In all honesty, she hasn't even tried to sleep tonight; she knows that even if she did, the image of her father sprawled over the steps would haunt her nightmares. She misses him like a lung.

Behind her, she hears the padding of footsteps. "Annabeth?" calls a soft voice.

Though she feels immovable, she turns. "Bobby?"

He's standing in the doorway of the kitchen, half-moons printed like ink stains under his eyes. "I just came down for some water."

On instinct, Annabeth walks over to him. "Can't sleep either?" she asks, quietly. Bobby shakes his head. Lip trembling, he extends his arms. "Oh, come here," she murmurs, and pulls him into a hug. Even though she's meant to be the one comforting him, the warmth of Bobby is a heaven-sent lifeline.

"This isn't fair," Bobby mumbles into her shoulder, muffled by the fabric of her shirt.

Annabeth holds on a little tighter. "I know. It's shit," she whispers.

"Really shit," Bobby repeats. Then, a little quieter, "Mum said we shouldn't swear."

Annabeth stares up at the ceiling, letting the shape of the light bulb sear itself onto her vision. "Between you and me, the situation calls for it."

Bobby nods into her shoulder. He's snuffling slightly—when he looks up at her, his cheeks are damp. "Are you gonna go into school tomorrow?"

Annabeth scoffs. "Wow. I forgot school was a thing that existed."

"But…are you gonna go?"

"No," she sighs. The ticking of the clock on the wall is the only constant left. It reverberates inside her mind: tick, tick, tick. "I'd probably humiliate myself by breaking down in Latin class."

Bobby laughs, but it's more like a shudder of pain. "Do you think…" he starts, but cuts himself off.

Annabeth draws back slightly, scanning Bobby's face. "Think what?" she urges.

"Do you think we'll be okay?"

The words strike a chord in her. "Oh, Bobby," she says, and summons a lie to the tip of her tongue as easily as breathing. "I know we will." She hugs him again, but only to silence the doubts in her own mind. After a moment, Annabeth breaks away from the hug. "Alright, let's get you some water. Then it's bedtime, yeah? I'm supposed to be the insomniac here." She pokes him on the shoulder, wrestling her mouth into a smile. "Not you."

He nods weakly. "Yeah, okay."

guys, I'm so sorry—really hope no one cried lmao. everything will be okay, I promise. and yes, WE'RE INTO ACT TWO! I'm so fucking excited :D thanks for reading, let me know what you thought!