By Wednesday, Annabeth's mood has descended to some form of normalcy, distracted from the crushing realizations of her own mediocrity by the tugs of impending midterms and the fear of the melodica mouthpiece dangling from Travis Stoll's lips. Absently, Annabeth wonders how easy it would be to stiff Piper's piccolo earplugs from her bag.

(Probably pretty easy. Piper's been awfully distracted lately.)

Piper's sitting on the chair next to Annabeth, somehow perched neatly cross-legged on the seat. The cold and the wind have frayed her braid even more than usual, so she's coiled it into an even messier bun by the nape of her neck. Looking up from huffing down her flute's headjoint to warm it up, she suddenly grins.

"I keep forgetting to tell you," she says. "I'm coming to the show tonight."

"Oh!" Annabeth replies. "I thought your dad was coming back today."

Piper shakes her head. "His flight got canceled. Or some meeting came up. I don't really remember what excuse Jane used this time."

"That's the third time in a row he's canceled, though."

"What else is new?"

"It doesn't have to be new to be disappointing, Pipes."

"It can't be disappointing if you're expecting it," Piper sighs. "But I'll get to see you all play."

"Yeah, I'm sure you'll enjoy the product of Drew's tyranny," says Annabeth. "And we can go get ice cream afterwards."

"She didn't get fired?"

"What?"

"Drew?"

"Drew got fired?"

"I'm asking you."

Annabeth thinks. "I actually didn't see her at all Monday night. I just assumed she was yelling at the costume department backstage, or something. But I didn't hear anything about her getting fired."

"Idle gossip, maybe," says Piper. "Don't go around telling anybody – wouldn't want to be spreading rumors, you know."

Annabeth frowns. "That's never bothered you when it comes to Drew before. And you know I would never go around saying anything. Who would I even tell?"

"Percy?"

Spluttering, Annabeth nearly drops her valve oil. "I – what? Why would I tell him?"

Piper shrugs. "Something comes into your eye, when you talk about him. And you better believe I know something about that –"

"That's not true."

"You were awfully hurt when Rachel didn't invite you to eat pizza with him. When have you ever been unhappy about getting a free excuse from a social gathering?"

Annabeth shakes her head. "Where did this come from? Stop with the matchmaking, Piper."

Piper grins. "Who said anything about matchmaking?"

"Nobody," Annabeth protests, "but you implied it. Besides, you didn't say anything about it when I told you on Monday."

"Very astute," says Piper. "But then I came in this morning and I saw how he was looking at you. Why is he even here? It's only five minutes to call time – that's probably when he usually sets his alarm to wake up so he can get his properly disheveled skater-boy look perfected."

Annabeth does think it's odd that Percy's started showing up early ("did you realize he's started this habit just as you two started this new duet thing?" "I haven't been paying that much attention to him, Pipes. You sure you're not the one in love?" "Who said anything about love?") but plenty of things are coincidental. She's accidentally made direct eye contact with Jason Grace five times since showing up to band this morning and nobody's claiming they're in love.

Again. Not that anybody said anything about love.

"Listen," Annabeth says, "if this is just about me spilling some hot juicy gossip you overheard from your pals in the flute section to Percy, you don't have to worry about that. We don't talk."

Annabeth's luck has never been worse, because just that moment Percy strides by them, tapping Annabeth on the shoulder. "Hey," he says. "Mr. Johnson wants to talk with us."

"Psychic," says Piper, pointing to her head.

"Huh?" asks Percy.

"Lucky," hisses Annabeth, setting her horn down. Then, louder, "nothing. Piper's just…pitching potential acts for herself at the school talent show."

Percy blinks. "We have a school talent show?"

"We're thinking about starting one," Annabeth scrambles out. "Could be fun."

"Sounds exciting," says Percy. "If you manage to convince Travis that melodicas aren't allowed, you can count me in." He turns to Piper. "Are you actually psychic?"

Piper waggles her fingers in the air. "I sense skepticism. You are hesitant to believe what people tell you at first, but once you get to know who they truly are, you can be a loyal friend."

"Pretty sure you're just describing how relationships work," says Percy.

Shrugging, Piper picks up her flute again. "If it strikes a chord with you, maybe I'm just a really good psychic."

Percy laughs. "Who would you get to volunteer on stage? Dr. Brunner?" He waggles his own fingers, putting on a dramatic impression of Piper's voice. "'I sense that you have a strong dedication to discipline and a strangely hairy bottom half.'"

"Why were you ever looking at Dr. Brunner's bottom half?" Annabeth questions.

He shakes his head gravely. "Bumped into him at a grocery store while he was wearing shorts. Traumatizing experience, really, seeing your principal in swim trunks."

"I can imagine," says Annabeth, "though I'd rather not."

"I'll bet Piper can," says Percy, "being psychic and all."

"I'd rather use my psychic powers for more productive pursuits," says Piper.

Percy asks, "like school talent shows?"

"Among other things," Piper sniffs. She waggles her fingers again, ominously.

"Right," says Percy. "Well, anyway. We should probably get going."

As soon as he disappears, Piper elbows Annabeth. "You two seem to be getting close."

"It's just situational," says Annabeth. "Between the musical and this duet? It ended up this way."

"Mm-hm," says Piper. "You two go talk."

"With Mr. Johnson," Annabeth says.

"Good thing," says Piper, too loudly for Annabeth's comfort. "Who knows what you two would get up to on your own."

Annabeth flips her off as she turns to the door and hears Piper's giggling fade away while she strides off. The sound makes her smile, and it almost makes the idea of spending more time with Percy – alone – seem worth it.

For no other reason, she swears.

"Annabeth," Mr. Johnson nods as Annabeth reaches him in the hallway. "Thanks for coming."

Annabeth blinks. "To…the hallway?"

"Yes," says Mr. Johnson. "I just wanted to briefly address some things I've been noticing with you two." He glances skyward, as if reading some manual on How to Give Constructive Criticism to High-Schoolers on the stained ceiling panels. "You were excellent in the first rehearsal – great blending, great communication, excellent harmonizing. But since then, you feel –" he makes a strange grabbing motion with his hands, pulling them apart like he's stretching pizza dough – "out of sync. Off. Not to your full potential, one might say. I might say. I do say."

"We'll work on it," says Annabeth.

Percy nods. "It's probably my fault – I've just been kind of tired, recently, with the musical and all."

"It's both of our faults," Annabeth says quickly.

Percy gives her a look, opening his mouth to say something else, but instead just gapes a bit. His eyes dash between her and Mr. Johnson until their director finally speaks.

"I'm glad you both are very eager to take responsibility for this." Mr. Johnson taps his baton against his fingers, searching for more words. "Look, kiddos. I get that you two are very different. I get that I'm just your teacher that you see in rehearsal a few times a week, but I know my students. Especially my best students." He grimaces. "Don't let anyone else know I said that. Look, my point is this: I know how you each play, and I see harmony deep inside that."

Annabeth can still hear Frederick's voice, his eyes fixed on the road as he calls their playing terribly flat, Helen's hesitant pretty good for a high-school production. Percy's ringing laugh, teasing voice, him apologizing to her, Rachel telling her that he's always talking about her. Annabeth's not sure when she reached the point where she could unflinchingly stand by and watch Mr. Johnson call Percy Jackson one of his "best students," or even the point where she would reflexively defend him, but a lot has changed in the past two weeks. She wishes she could go back to when Percy was just the chaotic, mildly annoying tenor sax player who sat a row in front of her, before even the relationships with people she thought she could count on – good or bad – blurred into a cacophony of emotion she couldn't sort in a million journals with a hundred colored pens.

"I don't think we're that different," she says, slowly. "Not that it's a bad thing to be different. It's a good one." She can feel her face flushing under Percy's confused stare. "Like, musically, and all that. Harmonically."

"That's very true, Annabeth," says Mr. Johnson, never one to turn down an object lesson. "And people think harmony is about being totally in sync, and it is, partly. But it's not harmony when everyone's playing the exact same note." He gestures at Percy and Annabeth with his baton, like it's a magic wand and he's Harry Potter with male pattern baldness post mid-life crisis. "But enough of that. Back to your seats."

Smiling at them both, Mr. Johnson turns around and pushes open the band hall door, releasing a rush of warm-up scales and long tones and chatter that erupts violently into the quiet hallway. Annabeth heads after him, but Percy stays leaning against the wall.

"Not that different, huh?" he says. "I'm honored."

Pivoting back towards him, Annabeth blushes again. "Yeah," she says. "I mean. We're both band geeks."

They stare at each other for a moment, until Annabeth begins to turn back. "We should head in," she says. "Wouldn't want to lose Mr. Johnson's favor just after we've won it back a little."

"Actually," Percy clears his throat, "I wanted to talk to you. It's short, I promise. But I wanted to talk to you on Monday, and I had this whole big long speech prepared, and then I saw you while trying to chase after the little gremlin – my sister – and forgot everything." He looks around them, as if concerned for their privacy. "Thanks for watching Estelle, by the way – I was supposed to be doing that, but she got away. She's got a real knack for that."

"It's okay," says Annabeth. "You saved my butt back there. If anything, Estelle was doing more watching of me."

"She does that, too," says Percy, bouncing a little on his toes. "But anyway, what I wanted to say is this. I'm really sorry about Saturday. Honestly, I didn't, like, hear that everybody was going out to eat together and think, 'gee, let me deliberately keep this information from Annabeth!' If I'm totally honest, I assumed you'd already known. I've always felt like – but this isn't about me. I think I can understand, a bit, how you feel, and I want to apologize for hurting your feelings. And make amends. If you want me to."

And here's the thing. Annabeth doesn't get apologized to much, unless you're counting the time Nancy Bobofit managed a mumbled "sorry" in the principal's office for setting fire to all twenty of Annabeth's spare pencils in the middle of chemistry lab last year, and that was only because Dr. Brunner threatened to expel her otherwise. So the thought of somebody apologizing to her twice, for the same thing – it sends her normally controlled flight into a bit of a tailspin.

But she also wonders at the fact that Percy somehow understands exactly how she felt. That he's intentionally taking the time to let her know. And even though she'd rather it not happen seconds before she needs to have her butt in a seat for the start of rehearsal, for once, tardiness isn't the first thing on her mind.

"I – I —" Annabeth stutters. "Thanks? It's all good."

Her own anger still shames her, like bile climbing up her raw throat, the memory of her forcing tears to stay in her self-defeating eyes when he'd apologized the first time. I'm sorry, too, Annabeth thinks, but saying those words out loud feels like giving him a piece of her she hasn't quite figured out yet – like displaying an unfinished artwork, or sight-reading at a concert, or turning in the first draft of an essay.

"Unlike you, though, I would actually like to get back to my chair in time –" she says instead.

"What happened to us being similar?" Percy asks, holding a hand over his heart with an exaggerated pout.

"I said we're not that different," insists Annabeth. "I never said similar."

"Look, I'm not the honors English student," Percy says. "But I'm pretty sure those are the same thing."

"As an honors English student, I'd like to say they have subtle differences."

Percy laughs. "Is that what they teach you in honors English? How to gaslight people with subtle differences?"

"It's not gaslighting," says Annabeth. "It's critical literary analysis."

"Is that what you call it?"

Rolling her eyes, Annabeth lets out a disbelieving cough. "Yeah, I'm pretty sure Mr. Blofis didn't get a Bachelor of Arts in gaslight gatekeep girlbossing–"

"Perce!"

Both Annabeth and Percy swivel to see Rachel, lugging along a cart filled with messy tubes of acrylic paint. Her frizzy curls are haphazardly splayed across the shoulders of her always paint-splattered overalls, her grin splitting her face and balling up her red-blushed cheeks.

"Rachel!" says Percy. "I didn't know you got to school this early."

"Yeah," Rachel replies, shifting the cart's handle to her other hand. "I'm helping out with one of the intro art electives. Just setting up the room, you know."

"You never mentioned that," says Percy. "When did this happen?"

Rachel shrugs. "A while ago. You've been distracted lately."

"Oh," says Percy. His eyes flick between Rachel's broad smile and Annabeth's frozen one, fingers tapping wildly on his wrinkled pant leg.

Rachel gestures to the hallway, breaking the silence with a strangely forced laugh. "It's alright. I get it now. I should probably get going, though."

"Oh," Percy repeats. His voice is thick, somehow, as if he hasn't spoken in a while. Annabeth thinks back to his words on Monday – I thought it was ok, as far as first dates go…we're cool now – and wonders how over it he really is.

She's stuck in reverie until Percy taps her shoulder and she looks up to find that Rachel has long departed the hallway. "We should go in, yeah?" he asks, heading again for the doors.

"Yeah," mutters Annabeth, following Percy in as the sound of Octavian's muffled oops when he squeaks a tuning note pushes her thoughts away.

Annabeth had hoped that a nice, regular, conventional band rehearsal would clear her head, but if anything, it seems to cloud her thoughts even more deeply. It doesn't help that Piper keeps wiggling her eyebrows at her Annabeth and then making pointed glances at Percy and Mr. Johnson, but that's not really it, either. By the time the rehearsal reaches Percy and Annabeth's big duet – as strange as it is, even now, for Annabeth to see them as one identity, as Percy-and-Annabeth, one name that seems to roll off of everyone's tongue like honey – Annabeth can barely focus on her color-coded music at all.

But as their moment approaches, Percy glances back at her, and she catches his eye, and it feels suddenly like there is a string connecting them, like her fingers and lungs and lips are connected to his – not in a kissing way, Annabeth reassures herself – like they are both puppets of some larger wave, some greater melody, some grander Music. The rushes, the swells, like wind in reeds, like water, flows through her and warms her to her extremities, and she feels it tugging at them both. And it's not so much the harmonics that float above them when they get the harmonies, or the way they trade dynamics, or the way their tones blend until they sound as one – but the feeling of playing with him – the satisfaction that courses through her veins, vibrating through her, tugging her lips into a smile she has to force down to keep her embouchure. It is visceral and spontaneous and beautiful.

It makes her forget about the way the clarinets miss their entrance entirely, the obnoxious foot-tapping of the trombones next door, the theoretically physically impossible movement of Mr. Johnson's hair that makes her briefly, only briefly, wonder whether he's ever worn a toupee. For a moment, there is only her and her music and the sound flowing around her. Mr. Johnson attempts to cut them off and she doesn't notice until she's been holding her last note three measures too long, but his censure can barely probe her haze. She smiles and nods and reflexively says something that might vaguely resemble, "yes, sir," but also maybe a line from Lewis Carroll's Jabberwocky. Maybe he realizes it, and maybe he doesn't, but Annabeth can't find it in herself to care.

She'll text Percy today, she decides, scrapping herself together while noting in a couple superfluous flats to preserve her reputation of seriousness. Maybe they could meet sometime over the week, at Annabeth's house, to practice the duet, and they'd show Frederick and Helen that all this actually meant something, more than some line in her resume or a conversation-piece for houseguests. And maybe Frederick would say something, something like "you were right, Annabeth," or "you two sounded pretty good." Or maybe just "promising," or "sort of okay." Annabeth would take that.

And maybe, she says to herself, they could be friends. That is all. The only friend Annabeth has is Piper, which she estimates is probably less than the average person. If the average American Family has two-point-five kids, surely the average American Person has at least that many friends. Exempli gratia: Hamlet might not be American, but he really only had Horatio, and look how that turned out for him.

She sees Piper winking ostentatiously at her from behind her stand and immediately regrets everything. But then she sees Percy give her an exaggerated thumbs-up from behind his chair and nearly knock over somebody's stand in the process of extricating his hand from behind himself and she wonders if maybe it'll be worth it.

Besides, Percy-and-Annabeth does sound pretty okay.