I'm just going to jump right into the chapter, even though I'm sure you guys want me to address where the hell I've been for like 2 months, I can't really say anything more than everyone I live with is really freaking technologically challenged because I'm not even typing this on Microsoft Word. This is WordPad, like a freaking sanitary napkin for words. I'm not on my goddamn period, so wtf? It may seem like I'm PMS-ing though. I'm only like this in my head, trust me, in real life I'm quite quiet and boring... so. On with the chapter. It's uber long, and it's a split between Percy and Nico and there's a lot of Luke mentions in this.

Oh, also, I was reading this amazayn (Yes, I'm a Directioner) fanfic called I Give It All, and it turned me into a total ApolloxPercy fangirl. I totally ship them now. So yeah.

Chapter 11: Dark

I've had too much time to think in here. These people leaving me alone with all these thoughts definitely isn't good for society. I'll probably be released and end up burning down whole buildings and donating money to suicide bombers just on a random ass whim.

One thing that's been hanging over my head, is the reason why Dakota, my roommate, was cooped up in here. He's an alcoholic, I think I said that before, but he drinks so much because he wanted to feel powerful and loved.

Guys don't really talk about it, but yeah, we do want to be loved just as much as girls do. We want someone to at least seem like they care, at least fill our heads with some half way decent lies about how great we are, and lots of us don't get that. Dakota sure as hell didn't get that. Unless he was having drinking contests with his dad or showing off to his dad's friends how much he could drink or bragging at school about how carefree his life at home is. No one ever realized that this was becoming a problem, because people don't think of guys as having those types of problems. Guys don't cry or write in journals, and now I know why we never hear about guys who are depressed. They're all locked away in rehabs and psychiatric wards of hospitals because they don't know how to talk and hash things out like girls. I'm pretty sure if I'd just told Nico what the hell was wrong he wouldn've came up with some brilliant plan on how to make me feel better. Or he wouuld've told Rachel and she would've handled it. I didn't actually have to screw Bianca or start drinking or even get all hopped up on pain pills all the time. I could've just used my freaking voice.

So, what wold happen if guys did start hugging their best friends? What would happen if we publicly admitted to loving our best friend? What if we said that we needed someone to hug us? What if we were okay with crying and not just in dark movie theaters? What if guys were as strong as girls? Girls who put their neck on the line, starving themselves, wearing tons of makeup, spending money on new clothes, binging, ditching meaningful friends all in an attempt to be loved? I'm not saying those are good things to do, but what if guys had those ideas in their heads and all girls all over the world just wanted people to love them and everyone eventually figured out that the only way to survive is to atually be fucking nice and sweet and occaisionally, I don't know... honest? What if we all had the incredible breakthroughs that I did while in the hospital? What if that happened and everything wasn't so effing dark all the time and people actually understood each other? Would everything be perfect, or at least better, or would everything kinda fall to shit and become just lies, lies, and more lies for us to stand on.

That's a lot of questions.

I have no idea if even one of them will ever be answered, but they're all worth answering.

In group therapy, there's two girls, 4 guys, me, and the woman running the session called Miss Luna. Her name is legit Luna. Like... wtf?

Anyway, the two girls, Zoe and Calypso are best friends, and wicked cool. I mean, Zoe has this refined beauty that I didn't even know really existed. She's really funny and tough at the same time. Every once in a while you'll see just how scared she is though. Her father, an Army general, abused her while she was at home and she got arrested a lot of assult and such. She was brought here for attempted suicide. Calypso is almost the exact opposite. They kind of look alike, if you squint, but she's quiet and obviously beautiful. Petite but you can tell she's got some go, and she has a voice that just relaxes you like nothing else. She has social anxiety and was bullied severely. She's addicted to narcotics. We don't always get to see Caly because she often just sits in her room, trying to fight urges to burn herself and such. I feel really bad for her sometimes. She's so small. I mean, compared to this huge world, she's such a tiny girl. Tiny and breakable like porcelain. Everything is much too dark for her perfect pale skin and I really do wish I could protect her. I wish I could keep her safe from all those deep dark demons that don't live under her bed, but in her head and eat away at her. I wish, I wish, I wish she had someone other than Zoe to help her. I really do.

I've made friends with some of the guys. There's a guy called Zack who I think has a similar problem to mine. He's been diagnosed with BPD, while I haven't actually been diagnosed with anything yet, but he's cool. He's quiet but he's loud once he gets comfortable and he's into baseball. He's like a blonde Nico.

"Anything to share, Percy?" Miss Luna asked me. I was between Zoe and Zack. Zoe had snickered a little when she saw me turn red, but I was used to it. I didn't even care anymore.

I sat and thought for a moment.

I thought some more.

What the hell are you doing here?

"Why am I here?" I blurted. I got a lot of head turns, Calypso looked up slowly, like she was thinking the exact same thing and it was totally creeptsastic that I'd just said that.

"What?" Zack asked.

"I mean, what the fuck? If we all had just found something healthy to do, do you think we would be here? If I hadn't nearly hacked my hand off at the wrist, I bet I'd be in my room right now high as a kite and drunk as a skunk. Do you think that's the case with all of us? Do you think that had we not tried to off ourselves, would no one have cared?" I said. And as the words left my mouth I felt this overhwleming hate and guilt. Hate toawrds myself for thinking, for voicing, that I didn't think Nico or Rachel or my mom care. I felt it settle in my stomach and sit there. I waited for it to pass, I would've loved for it to pass, but that dark, sinking, terrible feeling just sat inside me and wrapped itself around my tongue, leaving me with the taste of vomit and Nyquil that I had taken the night before.

"I like to tell myself that someone would've found me. Not dead, but shattered and scarred and broken and all the dark in my chest would've been heated up like it was inside a microwave and it would've turned to light with a perfect toe popping kiss. I like to think that istead of feeling like nothing, I would've felt like everything, like the freest of all butterflies and like the slowest and most thoughtful of sloths. That's what I tell myself. That's what I tell myself when I ask 'Why the fuck am I here?'"

And as those words left her mouth after moments of sickly silence, I immediately felt them in my chest. The dark that was resting there definitly hadn't been thrown in the microwave yet, but I felt this tiny little bubble of hope. It lied in the small tear that fell from Zoe's eye and the little grin that was playing at Zack's lips. It was in the small tremor Caly's hand possessed, she'd never said anything so strongly. All the hope in the world had come from the tiny little voice called Calypso and I wanted to bottle it up and stick it on a shelf to light up a whole world.

To get me out of this dark.

Nico POV

Ever since Riley kissed me in that bathroom, things have definitely changed between us. For one I'm always acting like this drooling, fawning idiot around her and it's becoming quite embarrassing. No one had mentioned it to us, though I'm sure Rachel and Hazel noticed Riley ditching them to come and hang with me in my attic when I'd gotten suspened for fighting.

Luke has been creeping around. I don't know how in the hell he's doing it, but suddenly, mroe people hate me than last week, and the week before that, and the week before that. For some reason everyone has taken a shining to pikcing on me and have decided that I'm the wackjob that got Percy accused of being a wackjob and locked away in a psychiatric ward in the hospital.

I guess you could say that he's a young politician.

Maybe that's what he's studying while away at college, I don't know, but what ever it is, I'm about ready to shoot his professor for teacheing him so well.

"Why is he so freaking concerned with the life of us lowly high schoolers anyway? Doesn't he have college girls to worry about? Does he not know he could go to jail?" I whined to Riley. Her blonde hair was up in a ponytail and she'd been up in my room for the past two and a half hours trying to like Slipknot. She claimed it was only because she was aware that one of the guys in the band dressed as a clown, and she was afraid of them.

"Maybe he just really hates you." she shrugged.

"Thanks." I said dryly and she giggled.

"I'm sorry, but you know it's true."

"Still, it's irking the heck out of me. Not only do people find it funny to harrass me while I'm trying to enjoy a wholesom school lunch, but baseball players from other schools think it's cool to try and shove me at the games. Do you know how much damage I could do with a baseball bat?" I shouted incredulously. She said that I was really melodramatic, something she didn't know I had a penchant for until now.

"Calm down Nico. It isn't that serious."

"Yeah... it is."

She'd kissed me on the corner of my lips and said everything was going to be fine, that I didn't need to worry about Luke plotting to ruin my last year of high school.

But two weeks later, when I was walking to my car after a baseball game, in the dark, I worried. Becuase I ended up getting my face pounded in by two football players from Jordan High, and let me tell you, it wasn't fun havving nearly 500 pounds of sweat and and meat touching my skin. It made me want to rip someone's freaking face off.

That's how my month has been without Percy.

Pathetic, huh?