A/N: Thanks so much to everyone who read!

Pineconeface711: Thanks so much! I'm so, so glad that other people are interested in hearing her perspective- I hope you keep reading! :)

Bluepancakes13: Yay! I'm glad you liked it- chapters will be about 1,000 to 2,000 words long just because that's the way it's easiest for me to break it down, since the full thing is like 18 pages in Word and that's just ridiculous for one chapter :) I'll definitely keep going and hope you like the next chapters as much as this one!

Love, bloomy

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Forgetting turned out to be even harder than it had sounded at the time. After I got back home, I kept seeing more and more weird things, all the time. They all seemed to correlate to all the mythology stuff we'd done in school. But as the months passed, I started to think maybe I was just crazy. Maybe Percy Gotta-go was just a hallucination, just like all the other monsters that wandered the streets of Brooklyn. I had almost started to believe it by June, when it was time for freshman orientation.

Fun, right? Actually, not fun at all. I hated things like this. You know, where they say:

"Rachel Dare, as in Shelby's little sister? Oh my god, I love Shelby! She was so pretty!" or

"Your father is a very great man; I admire him very much," and all that other stupid, fake stuff that comes with being a part of my family. I hated it. Plus, who wants to be at school in the middle of the summer?

The teacher doing the greetings at the top of the steps, who looked like one of the detectives on Law & Order or something, just said "Welcome to Goode High!", which I seriously appreciated. He seemed pretty cool. I walked in the entrance, and guess who was there?

Wonder of all wonders, it's Percy Gotta-go. I could feel my eyes getting wide, when suddenly he saw me and sprinted. Now that pissed me off. I mean, the least he could say was "Hey, sorry I tried to kill you, how have you been?", right? I ran after him into the gym, where there was all kinds of commotion going on. I grabbed his shoulder indignantly and practically shouted in his ear.

"What are you doing here?"

"Rachel Elizabeth Dare." Oh, nice answer! Good job remembering my name, thanks for pretending not to know me! I was seriously livid at this guy.

"And you're Percy somebody. I didn't quite get your full name last December when you tried to kill me."

"Look, I wasn't- I didn't- What are you doing here?" He was obviously just as dumb as he had been six months ago, and not much more eloquent, either.

"Same as you, I guess. Orientation."

"You live in New York?"

"What, you thought I lived at Hoover Dam?" It took all my strength not to scream and strangle this creep, but just then some guy behind us told me to shut up, because the cheerleaders were talking.

Big whoop. I looked up, and- can you believe it? My day got even worse.

Because at the microphone, where the cheerleader should have been, was a vampire with a metal leg.

No, I'm not making this up.

"Run," I told Percy. "Now." I didn't know why I was trying to save this jerk's life, again, but I had to get out of there, too. I stepped on approximately 50 people and ran out of the gym, down the hall, and went into the first door I saw. It was a music room, and I hid behind a giant drum. After a few seconds, the creep ran in.

"Get over here! Keep your head down!" I was still irritated, but the fear was pretty much dominant.

"Did they follow you?"

"The cheerleaders?" I nodded.

"I don't think so," he replied, which made me feel a little better. "What are they? What did you see?"

What was I supposed to say that wouldn't sound completely retarded? 'Oh, you know, nothing much, it's just that the cheerleaders are metal vampires'?

"You… wouldn't believe me."

"Oh yeah, I would," he said, sounding pretty sure. "I know you can see through the mist."

"The what?" I really wasn't in the mood for his vague statements at the moment.

"The Mist. It's… well, it's like this veil that hides the way things really are. Some mortals are born with the ability to see through it. Like you." Here he went with that mortals thing again.

"You did that at Hoover Dam. You called me a mortal, like you're not." He looked like he wished I hadn't noticed, but didn't respond.

"Tell me," I begged. "You know what it means. All these horrible things I see?" All of a sudden my emotions started rising up- the fear, the frustration, and I felt like I was about to start bawling or something if I didn't get some freaking answers, pronto.

"Look, this is going to sound weird," he said.

No, really? Cause so far, today has been so normal. "Do you know anything about the Greek myths?" he asked.

Oh, no. I was afraid I knew where he was going with this.

"Like… the Minotaur, and the Hydra?"

"Yeah, just try not to say those names when I'm around, okay?" But I was too busy freaking out to pay attention.

"And the Furies?" I was horrified. This was worse than any horror movie or nightmare. Every terrible monster we had ever studied in school, coming after me in real life? "And the Sirens, and-" I was about to say 'the Cyclopes', but he stopped me.

"Okay!" he looked around like he was expecting to be struck by lightning or something, then kept talking. "All those monsters, all the Greek gods- they're real."

"I knew it!" I had known, although I wasn't too happy to be proven right. "You don't know how hard it's been. For years I thought I was going crazy. I couldn't tell anybody. I couldn't-" but I stopped myself. What was I doing trusting this guy? If he knew about all these crazy monsters, how did I know he wasn't something out to get me too?

"Wait. Who are you? I mean really?"

"I'm not a monster," he said, as if that answered my question. This guy really was a master of evasion.

"Well, I know that, I could see if you were. You look like… you. But you're not human, are you?"

"I'm a halfblood. I'm half human." Well, thanks for that. I had no idea.

"And half what?" but he didn't get a chance to answer me, because our friends the vampire cheerleaders were back.

"They're horrible," I said aloud. They were.

"What do they really look like?" he asked, but I was too disgusted and terrified to even try to describe them.

"Forget her," the first one said, giving him a grotesque grimace and approaching him. "Percy," I said, warning him.

"Uhhh?" Please don't be an idiot right now. Please, please, please. The vampire's fangs dripped with saliva as she sneered lecherously and offered him a kiss.

"Percy, she wants to bite you! Look at her!" How could he not see? He was acting as if she was some Sports Illustrated model or something, and I couldn't believe that he really couldn't see what was actually happening.

"She's just jealous," Vampire # 1 said, and stepped forward again. But finally, some semblance of intelligence showed up, and Percy pointed his sword at her.

Wait, where had the sword come from? I knew for a fact he hadn't been carrying one in the auditorium. Anyway, he suddenly noticed what was going on. "A vampire!"

Thank you, Captain Obvious.

The second one corrected him. They weren't vampires, they were 'empousai', whatever that mean, and the servants of Hecate, whoever that was.

"Mmm," the first one said, and went in for the killer kiss. Percy had gone back to idiot mode, and just stood there waiting to be killed, so I picked up a drum off the floor and chucked it at her, but she just swatted it away. I threw a xylophone, too, but she avoided it again.

"I don't usually kill girls," she snarled, "But for you, mortal, I'll make an exception. Your eyesight is a little too good!" With that, she lunged at me, and I got ready to die. But instead, I just got covered in dead vampire dust, because Percy stabbed her to death with his sword.

"Gross!"

"Monsters do that," he said. "Sorry." I was actually pretty glad not to be dead, and besides, now we were even. I'd saved his life last winter, and now he'd saved mine.

Now he and the other vampire started dueling while I tried to stay out of the way. She kept talking crazy stuff about some camp and the Lord of Time. And then, to top it all off, the rest of the freshmen decided to visit the band room-I could hear them coming down the hall as the vampire chucked a tuba at us.

"Percy," she said, feigning surprise, "why did you throw that?" Then, she pitched a bunch of other music stuff at us.

"Stop it!" Percy said, as the vampire ran for the doors. He ran after her with his sword. I realized her plan a split second before he did.

"Percy, don't!" I tried to warn him, but the doors were already open. The vampire turned around, trembling like she was the victim in this situation. Yeah, right. Percy stabbed her, or tried to, anyway, but either right before or right after, she completely went up in flames, setting the whole room on fire at once.

"Percy?" Law and Order was leading the pack of freshmen, and he looked completely flabbergasted as the band room sizzled and burned. "What have you done?" There was complete chaos, sprinklers going off and kids screaming. He was going to be put in jail, or worse, and this wasn't even close to his fault.

"You have to get out of here!" I told him urgently, and for once he listened to me and catapulted out the window. I took a quick look around and thought for a few seconds, realizing that I could easily be blamed, too, in the murder of two innocent cheerleaders and destruction of school property. I barely stopped to consider it before heading out of the window after him. "Percy, wait up!"

He was standing with a girl I'd never seen before. She was tall and blonde, very pretty, and had the kind of tanned skin and ripped body that you see in girls who do nothing but beach volleyball, all the time. I guessed she was Percy's girlfriend, judging by the way her hands were on his arms and how close together they were standing. She didn't look too pleased to see me.

"What did you do this time? And who is this?"

"Oh, Rachel,- Annabeth. Annabeth- Rachel. Um, she's a friend, I guess." He guesses? After we've saved each other's lives, or whatever, twice?

Then again, we'd only met twice.

"Hi," I said to Annabeth, and then I turned to Percy. "You are in so much trouble, and you still owe me an explanation!"

"Percy," his girlfriend said, not sounding too friendly, "We should go." Oh, no. Not this time. He was not getting away without an explanation again.

"I want to know more about half-bloods, and monsters, and this stuff about the gods." I got out my sharpie and grabbed his arm. His girlfriend wasn't going to like this, but desperate times… I wrote my cell number on his hand. "You're going to call me and explain, okay?" It was more of an order than a question. "You owe me that. Now get going." The police were coming, sirens wailing in the distance, and he was way too near the crime scene.

"But-" Oh, so now he feels remorse about abandoning me? But there was no time for that.

"I'll make up some story," I reassured him. "I'll tell them it wasn't your fault. Just go!" I ran towards the school before he could try to stop me, and before his girlfriend could slit my throat.

I was running up the stairs when Law and Order stopped me. "Ms. Dare, what's going on?"

"I don't know," I said, trying to act terrified and confused. It wasn't too hard. "I mean, Percy and I were, you know, kind of bored, at the whole orientation thing, so we, like, went into the band room, to, like, you know," I looked down, pretending to be embarrassed. "But when it was over, the cheerleaders came in and caught us, and they were, like, giving us this whole lecture when suddenly the room was on fire! After that things just happened so fast, I don't know what was going on. Is everyone okay? Did they put the fire out?"

"It's going to be okay, Miss Dare. The fire is out, yes. Are you saying that Mr. Jackson is not responsible?"

"No, he's not, I mean I was holding his hand the entire time, and the fire started on the other side of the room!" Of course, this wouldn't match up with what he had seen, whatever it was, but I hoped it would be enough for them to let Percy off the hook.

"Well, that's a relief. Thank you, Miss Dare."

"Can I please go home now?" I forced my eyes to tear up a little. "I- this is a little too much."

"Do you know where Perc y is?"

"No, when I ran after him I couldn't find him, I'm sorry! Please can I go home?"

"That's fine, Miss Dare."

"Thank you!" I ran off before he could think of anymore questions. Really, some days I deserve an Oscar.

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If I gave you my number

Would it still be the same?

If I saved you from drowning,

Could you promise me you'd never go away?

Could you promise me you'd always stay?

-"My Number", Tegan and Sara