Chapter 6

Jason's Point of View

I find myself at Nico's house for the second time today before I really even know why. I just want to make sure that he's okay. But I stand outside debating whether or not I should go in for ten minutes before I actually do. Sally opens the door when I knock, and when I ask where Nico is, and if I can see him. She points upstairs and tells me that I can try, but that he hasn't let anyone in all day. I head up the stairs and follow the hallway at the top, ending up in front of the room I know to be Nico's and hesitantly, I knock twice on the door.

"It's Jason," I add when he, as I expected, doesn't respond. A few seconds later I hear the click of a lock and Nico peers out at me, as if to make sure it's really me, and to check that I'm alone. He opens it wider to let me in and locks it behind me. I take a good look at him.

He looks as cute as ever, but it's obvious that he 's been crying; his eyes are still red as if he was crying just moments before I walked in, and the bags under his eyes appear even darker than usual, if that's even possible. His hair is ruffled and sticking up in odd places. He's in a pair of loose grey sweat pants and, to my surprise, my sweatshirt.

"Hey," he says, attempting nonchalance.

"Hey," I reply in the same manner.

He steps closer to his bed and then falls backwards onto it, his arms open. He sighs and covers his face with his hands. After all that happened today, he seems to have let his walls down enough for me to see that he's clearly not okay, but he still sees a little bit closed off. I'm sure he'll build them back up soon enough, anyways. I sit down at the edge of his bed and look at him, though he's still hiding beneath his hands. "Are you okay?" I ask even though it's a dumb question.

"Fantastic," he responds, voice dripping with sarcasm.

I pull my legs up onto his bed and turn so that I'm sitting cross legged, my knee barely brushing against his side. "Can I help?"

His response is sharp again. "Haven't we been over this? I. Don't. Need. Help. And even if I did, I don't think you'd be the person I would go to," he says. "Sorry," he adds after a minute.

I choose to ignore the comment and address the real issue. "Nico, everybody needs help sometimes. It's alright to admit if you do," I say as gently as I can.

Then I hear him sniffle, and I realize he's crying. His hands are covering his face again. I reach over and gently grab his wrists to pull them away, but he lets out a gasp of pain and jerks away. He sits up and looks at me with wide, dark, fearful eyes. In this moment more than any other, it hits me, how small and fragile he is.

"Nico…" I trail off, already knowing the answer to the question I'm about to ask. "Did you…?"

He doesn't answer because he knows he can't lie to me, not after today. But I think he knows the way I feel like he can see through me, because I think he feels it too. He just continues to stare at me for a moment, like a dog caught in the act of destroying a room. Then he crawls past me and jumps onto the floor. He goes over to the window, places his hands on the windowsill, and lifts himself over it. I hear a small thud on the other side, and I follow him.

Once I do, I find myself on a slanted roof looking out upon the night sky, and I join Nico, who's already sitting with his knees to his chest.

"You cut again?"

Looking out at the starry sky, he asks, "Did Percy ever tell you about my sister?"

This takes me completely by surprise. "Um, no- he didn't," I stutter. "I mean, we're not really that close though, so…"

He closes his eyes and shakes his head.

"Does she go to our school?" I ask. "I don't think I've ever seen her-"

"No, she doesn't," he cuts me off, to my surprise. "She doesn't go to any school, for that matter," he continues, his voice trembling with the weight of what he's saying. And I know it, I know what he's going to say, and my heart almost stops.

"She's dead."

Shit. Shit, shit, shit. "Shit, Nico," I start, unsure of how to respond. "I'm- I'd say I'm sorry, but… shit. I'm sorry." I try to fit this in with the limited knowledge I have of him. He's lived with Percy's family for a year, ever since they moved here. His mom is dead. His dad disappeared one day, leaving him to Ms. Jackson. But...That's it. That's all I know. Though deep down, I had to know that he had some awful secret hiding in his past, I never expected something as terrible as this.

Nico continues as if I didn't just put my foot in my mouth. "She was my best friend in the whole world," he says. He sounds so broken and alone. "I've always been sort of… shy. Sort of afraid. When I was a kid, they had to send me to a counselor because the anxiety got so bad that I refused to eat or sleep or go to school. But Bianca was always there for me. Even when I grew up, I still told her everything...Until last year, that is.

There was a party one night. Bianca really wanted to go; she had been begging my dad for weeks. He finally gave in, but only because Percy was going too. The Jacksons were our neighbors at the time, and they were really close family friends so she went with Percy. He promised he'd look out for her."

He's crying by this point. Tears stream continuously down his cheeks. I want to touch him, to hold him, to comfort him, but I know that he's too far away; a year away, on the night he last saw his sister.

Nico continues. "Needless to say, he didn't. He was drunk out of his mind, even though he grew up with an alcoholic father, and swore he'd never be the same. And she- she was too. Her friends were even more drunk, but they- they wanted ice cream. It was really late, and people were already starting to leave, but they decided to go to the store." My heart sinks in my chest; I know where this is going.

"Nobody stopped them. Nobody said, 'Hey, maybe you shouldn't drive when you've had so much to drink'. So they left, 5 girls in total. This girl, Zoe was driving. Later we found out that she had a BAC of .24, she was really drunk. She- she swerved to avoid hitting another car, and she ran straight into a street lamp, not two minutes from the house." He chokes on the last part, like it hurts too much to get out. I'm sure that it does.

"Only one of the five is still alive today. Bianca, she-" his voice breaks. "She got the worst of it, sitting in the front seat."

Nico clutches his knees to his chest and sobs so hard that I have to stop and wonder if he can even breathe. I soon realize he can't when he begins to hyperventilate for the second time today. It's an awful sight; his already small body folded in on itself as if he wants to take up the least amount of space he can, as if he hopes that if he makes himself as small as possible he'll just disappear. His loud sobs barely have the chance to escape between his quick breaths and even though I know he's far away and I'm not quite real to him, I scoot closer and start to rub circles on his back, hesitantly. I'm still not used to touching him, and he's not ready to be grounded just yet, but if he doesn't control his breathing he might pass out.

I speak as gently yet firmly as possible. "You need to breathe, Nico. Slowly." I say, after he starts to panic even more. "Slowly and deeply. We did this earlier, remember? You can do this. I want you to breathe in, and when I count to ten, you're going to breathe out for a few seconds. Okay?"

He nods slowly and takes a deep breath.

"One, two, three, four, five, six…"

He can't make it any farther than that the first time, but that's to be expected. We repeat the exercise until his tears have stopped falling and his breathing has evened out.

"Okay now?" I ask.

He shakes his head.

I don't speak. I mean, what can you say? What could anyone say that mattered? The world does terrible things, and words can do nothing to change that. Even though seeing Nico this way has left a deep ache in my chest, I know that I know nothing of his pain. I know that I will never understand. My words or even my embrace can't change that moment his family got that call, or the moment they opened to door to find an officer whose expression read bad news. That moment when his entire world crashed around him, when the ground opened up beneath his feet. I was not there in that moment when he thought his heart might collapse, or when it hurt so badly he thought he might bleed to death, or maybe that he already had. I was not there, and I never will have been there. There is a gap between us; Nico is still in the past, the place I will never be able to touch. I am here now, but what can I say?

He finally speaks again. "Bianca was always my dad's favorite. After- after she...He sort of just gave up. I mean, he was never a great dad, but he always tried. He loved us. Or at least I thought he did. When I lost her, it was almost like I lost him too. His drinking problem got worse and he was high all the time. Then one day, he just left, and he didn't come back. Nobody knows where he is now; doesn't want to be found," he shrugs as if he doesn't care, even though I know he does.

"I'm so sorry, Nico," I say, though the words are meaningless. "I just wish there was something I could say. I mean, my dad doesn't give a shit about me, and I haven't seen him for years. And my mom- she's…" I trail off. "But I can't- I can't even imagine what that must be like for you."

He tells me that he's sorry about my family, and I can tell he's sincere, even though he has no reason to be.

I can feel him shivering beneath me, so I stand up. He looks at me like he's a lost child, and I say, "Wait here. I'll be back, I promise." Then I climb back through the window.

I head across the hall to Percy's room, knock twice, and open the door once I get approval. Percy's sitting on his bed watching Annabeth, who's looking around when I enter. Her perceptive grey eyes soon focus on me.

"Hey, man, can you do me a favor?" I ask. "It's for Nico."

"Wait, did he actually let you inside? He hasn't let anybody in there."

I nod. "I need some blankets, and some hot chocolate."

Percy nods and says, "Okay." He shows me a hall closet with stacks of blankets and quilts that Sally made and heads downstairs to get the hot chocolate.

Ten minutes later I'm balancing two cups of hot chocolate and a large and fuzzy blanket as I walk across the slanted roof. Nico's resentment at me for leaving fades and is soon replaced with gratitude.

"Thank you." he says sincerely. Sometimes his manners still surprise me. I hand him both mugs, sit down, and spread the blanket out over us. He hands me my mug back and takes a sip of his.

"This is where you talk to her, isn't it?" I ask on a hunch, taking a sip of hot chocolate. I can feel it traveling down and warming my insides.

He seems shocked for a moment at my guess, but nods. "Visiting her grave… It never felt right. There was a time, when we were younger, that she lived with my mom in Italy, and I stayed here with my dad. We missed each other like crazy, talked on the phone every night, and- well, it's kind of stupid," he trails off.

"You looked up at the sky when you were apart, just to know you were always looking up at the same sky?" I say with a slight smirk.

He almost chokes on his drink. "How did you know that?"

"Oh come on," I bump his shoulder lightly. "It's in all the movies.

He tries to glare at me, but he fails laughing instead. He actually laughs, and it's a beautiful sound.

"My sister Thalia and I would do that when we were younger. She lives with some relatives in Europe, and I'm here with my mom."

"But she's still alive," he says almost bitterly, as he raises his mug to his lips. I do the same.

"She is," I say. "I'm sorry Bianca's not," I add. "And I know nobody will ever replace her. But there are people willing to try. I'm here. I'll be there for you." I drain the rest of my hot chocolate as he sets his mug down beside him.

He's crying again. This time though, I know that he's not so far away. He's still stuck somewhere between the past, where he can hold on to his sister, the best friend he ever had, and realizing it's time to take the first steps towards moving on. So this time he's crying for the present; he's crying over his sister, but more about how her being gone has made him feel. He's crying for himself, and he's crying because he doesn't want to be alone anymore. So I bridge the distance between us and once again rub circles on his back. To my surprise, he leans in closer to me and presses his head into my chest. I wrap my arms around him and look up at the sky as I let him cry into me.

This is the same sky I watched with Thalia, and the same sky we watched separately when we were away. It's the same sky Nico watched with his sister, and the same sky they watched separately when they were away. And it's the same sky he now watches by himself, curled up here, all alone in the world. Except now I'm under it with him. It strikes me, at this moment, how small we are: even smaller than the stars in the sky. We are not important, not in the scheme of things. Yet neither are the stars, or the moon, or even the sky, but this moment is still real, and somehow that makes it matter. It matters to us, if to nothing else. We are not big. We are not bright. We are not infinite. But we are here, and we are real, and we are alive.

If anyone asks, later on, why I do what I do next, that's what I'll tell them. I grab his hand in mine. I lace my fingers through his.

He doesn't pull away.