HEY GUYS! MY MUSE IS BACK! I'VE GONE THROUGH THE OBSTACLE ALL AUTHORS KNOW AS "WRITER'S BLOCK" AND NOW IT'S LIKE MY BRAIN IS FEEDING ME A TON OF IDEAS! I'VE EVEN GOT TEN OTHER STORIES PLANNED OUT AND SAVED UP FOR LATER. YAY! THAT MEANS YOU PEOPLE WILL PROBABLY GET MORE UPDATES SO HOPEFULLY YOU THINK THAT'S GOOD NEWS...

DISCLAIMER: RICK RIORDAN OWNS ALL THE CHARACTERS! THE PLOT IS SOMETHING GIVEN TO YOU BY A BRAIN FART I MANAGED TO HAVE ONE DAY.

"Typically, I was a validation on your sleeve
Oh what an indication
To the center of the pain
Through your tattered window pane
To the middle of your heart..."

-"Selene" by Imagine Dragons

ANNABETH'S POV-

A gentle breeze blew my hair back in a long wave of curls. I sat primly on the edge of the park bench, backpack straps still pulling down on my shoulders. Today was the day I would finally talk to Percy and I didn't plan on blowing it.

If what Thalia said is true then getting Percy to open up would be a lot harder than it used to be. A few years back, a puppy dogface was counted as enough to get Percy to tell me anything, but I'm not sure that will work anymore. My best bet is to go with a different approach and I knew exactly how I wanted that to be.

I had each and every step strategized to the most microscopic detail and failing wasn't involved. Percy would be my seaweed brain again or I would tear myself apart trying. Figuratively of course.

"Let's get this over with." I almost jumped at the sound of a slightly familiar deep voice. "I only agreed to meet you here so that you'd leave me alone."

The owner of the voice stepped in my line of vision and what I saw made me catch my breath.

The boy standing in front of me was honestly the most handsome person I have ever seen. His eyes were the color of the ocean on a stormy day and his raven hair was swept to the side in messy waves that made me want to run my hands through it. For the first time in my high school life, I agreed with Drew McLean. Yummy was the perfect way to describe this man's washboard abs. This was puberty done right. This was Percy Jackson.

I coughed awkwardly and tried to remain composed. "I didn't think you'd show up."

"Really?" Percy crossed his toned arms over his green V-neck T-shirt. "Then why'd you bother to wait for me?"

I averted my eyes. "Who said I was waiting? I always come here after school. It's become a habit I've never bothered to get rid of."

Percy clutched the straps of his backpack. "Is that all you wanted to tell me then?"

"Nope." I pushed myself up. "Follow me. I want to take you somewhere."

Percy hesitated. "You're not going to kidnap me or something are you?"

"No, we're only going to the basketball court." I tried at a playful smile. "Unless you want me to kidnap you?"

Percy ignored my attempt at a joke and headed towards the recreational area.

"Basketball it is." I muttered.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

"We're here," Percy dumped his backpack onto the floor, "now what?"

I grabbed a hidden ball from under a bush. "We do what normal people do in basketball courts; we play."

Percy made a swipe at the ball under my arm, but I slipped away before he could manage it. "Not so fast, Jackson. We're having this game my way."

Percy huffed. "It's basketball! Why do you need to make it so complicated?"

"I'm Annabeth, that's how things work with me." I stepped in front of the hoop. "So do you want me to explain the game to you or not?"

Percy sighed and leaned on a tree. "Go right ahead, Blondie."

I scowled. "Who ever gets three shots first gets to ask the other person a question and they have to answer it or they lose."

"That's it? No rules?" Percy asked.

"Only one," I raised my pointer finger, "none of the questions can have anything to do with things that have happened in the past. The present is what we'll be focusing on for now."

"Sounds good." Percy pushed himself forward. "Ready to lose?"

"Bring it on." My eyes narrowed in determination.

"If you say so." Before I could do anything, Percy shot forward with the speed of lightning and grabbed the ball. In the blink of an eye, he had dribbled it halfway across the court and shot it into the hoop using a bank shot from some ten feet away. I stood there gaping at his newfound skill.

Percy swiveled on his heel to face me and I was irritated to find that he had a cocky smirk plastered on his annoyingly attractive face. "Close your mouth, Chase. I don't think you want some flies nesting on those pretty little lips of yours."

I blushed a bright red, but played it off with anger. "Don't get too high and mighty yet. That was only one shot."

Percy dunked the ball a second time. "Two you mean."

"Ugh!" I ran forward and stole the ball from Percy, blocking his attempts at taking it back. I would've gotten away with it too if he hadn't started tickling me, causing me to drop the ball. Needless to say, he scored a third shot.

"That was cheating!" I yelled.

Percy shrugged. "You said there were no rules."

I crossed my arms and stood there waiting while Percy thought up a question to ask me.

"Why did you send Thalia to ask if I wanted to meet you here? Why not just ask me yourself?"

I hesitated. Admitting that something bothered me wasn't the type of action I did often. "I was….afraid that you'd say no." I shifted from foot to foot. "Disappointment isn't really a feeling I like setting myself up for."

I clenched my fists, prepared for the new Percy to laugh at me, but the snickering never came. All he did was nod.

To sum it up, this is how it went for the rest of the game:

PERCY'S WIN: What's with Thalia's new style?

MY ANSWER: I wouldn't call it new. She's always had that inner punk, she just decided to make it part of her outer appearance too.

PERCY'S WIN: How the hell did Nico manage to get into an honors class?

MY ANSWER: He's smarter than you give him credit for, Percy. It really wasn't that hard.

PERCY'S WIN: Is green still you favorite color?

MY ANSWER: I paused at that one and frowned. "I don't know. I'm still trying to decide if it represents the same thing it used to."

PERCY'S WIN: What did you mean by your last answer? What does it represent to you?

MY ANSWER: Safety, rebellion, and maybe a bit more.

Both Percy and I knew that I was talking in code, but none of us brought it up. When I finally won a round, I asked the question that was constantly on the back of my mind. "Do you think it's still possible for us to go back to the way we were before any of this happened?"

Percy stiffened. "No."

"Why not?" I demanded.

"That's more than one question." Percy pointed out in a hard voice.

"That is it!" I slammed the basketball onto the asphalt floor and jabbed my finger hard into Percy's chest. "This whole game I've been trying to keep my cool, but I just can't take your attitude anymore!"

"You're the one that wanted me to be here!" Percy pushed my arm away roughly. "Why would you care if I'm not the same anyway? We haven't been friends for years and I don't see the point in trying to be close again!"

"I care because this isn't you!" My chest heaved with all my pent up frustration. "It's so obvious that the way you're acting is completely fake! Everything you do is robotic and planned!"

Percy fell back and grabbed at his backpack. "I knew this was a stupid idea!"

"Then why'd you come!?" I shouted.

"I don't know, okay!" Percy rubbed his temples and let out a tired breath. "I have no idea."

"Tell me when you do then." I shoved the basketball back into the bush it came from and stared Percy right in the eye. "Because I can't take any more confusion in my life. I was hoping that seeing you again would clear some things up, but it only served to make everything worse. Thalia is going to be so pleased when I tell her that she was right. You're a complete jerk."

I didn't mean for Percy to hear the last part.

"Oh you two are exactly the same." Sneered Percy. "You both think that you know me like you know the back of your hand, but you're wrong. It'd be best if you gave up on me and left this all alone."

Percy started storming away.

"Fine! Go back to where ever it is you came from!" My voice was choked slightly with tears. "Leave us just like you did back then, but try to take in how much you'd be leaving behind! I'm trying to put things back to the way they were and you won't let me! I don't understand!"

Percy gave me a conflicted look. "You're right. You don't understand and it'd be a whole lot easier for all of us if you went back to your Leo and pretended I never even existed."

I frowned. "How do you know about Leo?"

For a moment, Percy seemed as confused as I felt but then a sudden sense of dawning seemed to overcome him and his eyes widened. "Forget what I said."

"Wait, who told you?" Even as I questioned him, Percy shuffled away quickly. "Percy?"

He put on a set of earphones. "Sorry! I can't hear you! My music's too loud!"

"Seaweed brain!"

Percy ducked into a group of trees and disappeared.

That's when I came to realize that I'd called him by his old nickname.

LATER THAT NIGHT-

"So you snuck out without them knowing?"

"Yup." Thalia replied. "They think I'm having bathroom problems. Too much beans."

"Won't they find out though?" I asked.

"Nah!" Said Thalia. "My dad wouldn't bother with me."

"What about Nico? The poor boy is alone!"

"The suffering will do him good." Thalia said lazily.

I bit my lip slightly in concentration. At the moment I was double tasking, creating a design for a museum building that was needed for my architecture class and talking to Thalia on the phone about her current dilemma; dinner with the di Angelo's. Her dad Zeus had suddenly come up with this crazy idea that having dinner with his brother Hades would be a great idea. That meant Nico and Thalia were forced to partake in the torturous family event and pretend they were enjoying themselves.

So what was the problem in all of this? Well for starters Nico was still angry at Hade's for not telling him about his wedding proposal, Zeus and Hades were even worse than Thalia and Nico when it came to getting along, and what else? Oh yeah, Hades girlfriend, Persephone, was also invited meaning that Nico had to be civil towards her, which according to Thalia wasn't going very well. She'd been pretending to be in the bathroom for the past twenty minutes just to avoid the feared awkwardness going on at the dinner table.

"So how'd it go with Prissy?" Thalia asked.

I groaned.

"By your dying whale noises I'm guessing not good?"

"It was terrible." I said. "And somehow he knew about Leo."

"What? I never told him anything and Nico hates his guts right now too much to even look at his shadow. Where would he find out about repair boy?"

"I don't know." I wrote down the measurements for the mosaic dome on my drawing. "I'm still trying to figure it out."

"The faster you do, the better. I swear that kelp head knows more about us than we do him. It's creepy."

"How do you think Nico is holding up down there?"

I could practically hear Thalia wince. "I can hear some hard core yelling going on through the closed door so I'm thinking that he's probably lost his cool altogether."

"You know…." I started." The nice cousin thing to do would be to go back him up."

"Do I have to?" Thalia whined.

"I'm only pointing out-" I stopped mid-sentence.

"Pointing out what?"

"No way…." I breathed in surprise.

"Annabeth?" Thalia sounded worried.

My pencil hovered over my blueprint as a sudden thought struck me. The last time I mentioned Leo was to Sally on the same day we heard someone crashing on the fire escape outside. I never told Percy about Leo so he must've heard it somewhere which meant that the person spying on Sally and I was…..

I slammed my pencil onto my desk, scaring Thalia on the other end.

"Annabeth! What's going on?" Thalia yelled.

"I can't believe it!" Even to me, I sounded scandalous.

"Some more explanation would be nice!"

"It's Percy!" I said through clenched teeth.

"What?" Thalia sounded downright out of it.

"It's Percy!" I repeated. "That rat has taken up stalking as a hobby!"

MEOWMEOWMEOWMEOWMEOW

CHAPTER NOTE: AWWW! HOW CUTE! PERCY'S JELOUSY GOT THE BEST OF HIM AND NOW ANNABETH THINKS HE'S A STALKER! *SNICKER* FOLLOW/FAVORITE/REVIEW?

RANDOM QUESTION: WHAT'S YOUR MOST FAVORITE PLACE IN THE WORLD?

STORY RECOMMENDATION: "Percy's Bullies" BY Liana Legaspi IS ONE OF THE MOST AWESOME SET OF ONE SHOTS I HAVE READ IN A WHILE! IT'S REALLY GOOD AND VERY DIFFERENT FROM ANY OTHER BULLY-FICTION I'VE READ. CHECK IT OUT!

GUEST REVIEW REPLIES:

TO GUEST WHO WROTE: Loved it loved it I have been waiting forever for you to update I absolutely love the story good work keep going: I UPDATED SOONER THIS TIME! WOOHOO! I'LL TRY!

TO GUEST WHO WROTE: B, I think: I KIND OF ALREADY DECIDED ON THAT...

TO GUEST WHO WROTE: so he joins the army dun dun dun: YUPPERS!

TO SO BITTER SWEET: YOUR NAME IS A LINE FROM A SONG I HEARD HAHA! YES I DID! AWW REALLY? *VIRTUAL HUG* AND SPEAKING ABOUT MEETING SALLY AND PERCY...OOOP! CAN'T SAY SPOILERS NOW CAN I?

TO GUEST WHO WROTE: OMG I loooove this story plz update asap!: LURV IS IN THE AIR! HERE'S AN UPDATE JUST FOR YOU!...AND THE OTHER 95 FAVORITES AND 161 FOLLOWERS I AM SO THANKFUL FOR!