Here's a recap (in case you decided to skip chapters one through five)

Luke is a step away from getting suspended. It's only October. He had sex with Thalia during her grandma's funeral. She freaked out on him and left. Now she's back. Oh boy.
Percy is the new kid at school. Annabeth doesn't like him, but she doesn't like most people.
Grover's in jazz choir, but he doesn't think he can sing. He also might like Silena, but she thinks he's a loser.
Thalia's mom is dead, and her aunt is kind of mopey. Oh, and her family is super rich.

And that's what you've missed. ;)

Chapter Six
Water in the Brain

"What are you doing, Luke?"

Smoking. Drinking. Watching Cake Boss – I swear it was the only thing on. But Mom could see that.

"You're home early."

Quit dodging!

Shut up, Thalia! God, I was talking to myself.

I took a deep drag of my cigarette and held it in until it felt like my chest was about to explode. I actually stopped smoking a few weeks ago…for the millionth time. Stress always brought me back to the habit.

Mom wrinkled her nose. "Are you trying to kill yourself? And where'd you get that?" Her eyes flickered to the empty beer cans stacked up on the coffee table.

I shrugged. "I gave the creepy homeless guy who lives at the park ten bucks to go buy it for me."

"What's wrong with you?"

She apparently wanted an answer. Well, I wasn't about to give her one. "You're the one who raised me. Ask yourself."

Oh shit. I'd just set myself up for the same lecture I'd heard a million times. "I raised Chris. He's one of the best neurologists in the country. I raised-"

"Blake. Played college basketball. Kevin. CEO of some fancy company in New York. I know."

Her face was turning red and the veins on her neck were bulging. I was in for it. Whatever. "You know what's wrong with you? You don't care…about anything! You try to push the people who care about you away. And you know what the worst part is? You don't even-"

The doorbell rang. Mom sighed and stormed out of the room. "Answer the damn door."

I kind of considered staying put, but Cake Boss had ended, and Say Yes to the Dress was starting. Kill me now. I shut off the TV and walked to the door.

Well, if it wasn't my favorite UPS guy. "Package for you," he said. Today's was in a long and thin box. Again, it was addressed to my mom. When the hell did she get so popular?

"I heard screaming," he noted. Or maybe he meant it as a question. Whatever. He was a UPS guy. It was none of his business.

"Yeah. You did," I said.

"Is it the girl who gave you the hickey?" he asked.

"That was a mosquito." He gave me a look. It was one I'd seen Mom try a million times, the I know you're lying so just tell the truth look. Only it actually kind of worked for him. "My mom was yelling."

He nodded eagerly. "Go on."

Yeah, I really was going to give a random UPS guy my life story. "There's this girl. And we…" I trailed off, not sure how personal I wanted to get.

"Slept together, keep going," he finished for me. I probably stood there with my mouth hanging open like an idiot, because he said, "I'm a good guesser."

"Okay, well, she freaked out and left. Like, 2,000 miles away left. And now she's back."

"And now you two are back together and your mom doesn't think you should be having sex with her," he said.

Yeah, not quite.

The first day of school was always death, especially when your mom died no more than two weeks ago, and people were torn between giving you fake sympathy and demanding where the hell you'd been for two years.

"Hey, who's that?"

"It's Thalia Grace. Remember? The Goth girl in middle school? I heard her mom jumped off a building."

Yeah, that's what I'd been hearing all day. One, I hadn't been Goth. The look had been more punk than anything. And two, my mom had not jumped off a building, been killed by African slave traders, or faked her death and tried to start up her acting career again under a different name. My God, people needed to get their own lives.

Only a few people had been courteous enough to actually say what they were thinking to my face.

Like Kelsey Forester. I wanted to ask her what had happened to her arm, but decided that wasn't a great way to greet one of the few people who'd been remotely friendly towards you.

"It's good that you're back, Thalia," she'd said with a smile. "Luke might quit being such a loner now."

Way to hit a soft spot. I'd asked her what she meant, and she'd just laughed. "He's been hung up on you since you left. Why'd you go, anyway?"

It took me a second to realize she was talking about my first exit, when we'd first moved to California. "Mom missed California," I lied. Well, technically I could have been right. I didn't know why we'd left in the first place, so my guess was as good as anyone's.

I'd gotten variations of the same question from a handful of people, but nothing from the one person I was most nervous to face.

Luke and I had four classes together: English, algebra, chemistry, and gym. He didn't give me anything. Not even a sideways glance when he thought I wasn't looking.

You could swear he was a girl based on how well he held a grudge.

So here I was, in my eighth hour study hall, just thinking about how stupid I was for losing my virginity to a guy I knew would never be anything more than trouble. That, and just how stupid I was for still wanting him.

It was probably some psychological thing. I lost my mom, and I wanted someone dependable to cling to.

Yeah, only I was seriously messed up if I considered Luke Castellan a dependable person.

This was pathetic. I was never the type of girl to sit around fantasizing about being Mrs. Thalia Insert Last Name Here, mostly because I saw how far it got my mom.

Again, it was probably some psychological thing. I couldn't handle the unimaginable grief of losing my mom, so I was instead focusing entirely on another emotion.

Ha. I needed to quit watching Celebrity Rehab. My inner voice of reason was starting to sound suspiciously like Doctor Drew.

That's when I decided that the only way to solve this was to talk to him.

And that's how I ended up at Luke's locker after school, trying frantically to think of something to say. Yeah, this was an extremely well thought out plan.

He gave me the look of death. "What do you want?" Get lost, bitch. I knew it was really what he wanted to say. Well, I could play things his way.

"How about your virginity? Oh, wait. I have that already."

"You think you were the first girl I slept with?" he shot back.

I rolled my eyes. "Since you weren't smart enough to use a condom, I'd say yes."

"If you were pregnant, you'd look like a whale by now."

"Oh, aren't you a charmer."

"I was good enough for you."

"You think I'd do the same thing twice? You're the last person on the face of this earth I'd want to be with. You wanna know why? You have all the empathy of a rock. You run away from commitment like it's an infectious disease. And-"

"Can I ask why the hell you came looking for me if all you wanted to do was act like my mom?" he interrupted.

"I can't stand you!" That hadn't come out that loud. The whole hallway wasn't staring, I tried to tell myself.

At times like these, it was best to just storm off.

And the worst thing was I still wanted him.

I'd never been swimming.

See, in New York, there weren't a million clean lakes everywhere. The only place you'd find pools was at the Y. And in order to get into the Y, you had to pay money, and that wasn't something we had a lot of.

Then we moved to Shallow Lake, and I got shuffled from school to school. Obviously, boarding schools didn't have swimming pools. The hippie school didn't even really have anything that resembled a gym. The only reason Shallow Lake High had a pool was because one of the alumni had gotten a medal in swimming at the Olympics and donated it.

No, it hadn't been Michael Phelps.

Anyway, in exchange for donating the pool, he asked that Shallow Lake incorporate swimming as part of their physical education curriculum. Oh, and that we get a swim team. From what I heard, they were okay. Nothing amazing, like the rest of the athletic departments in Shallow Lake were rumored to be.

I didn't care if I was amazing at swimming. I just didn't want to drown, or worse, become known as the loser who didn't know how to swim.

"Okay, everyone in the water," Mr. Mars said gruffly, pulling me out of head. Mr. Mars wore shorts pulled up to his chest and socks pulled up to his knees. Even so, I pictured him as the type to be in a leather vest driving a Harley when he wasn't in school.

A few girls squealed as they got in the pool. I braced myself for the worst, but to be honest, being in the water felt…normal.

One of the guys who I assumed was on the swim team started doing a lazy backstroke across the pool. Well, that didn't look hard. I was feeling more confident that I could do this.

Mr. Mars blew his whistle even though no one was talking. "One lap across the pool and back. Go," he shouted. I don't think he understood the concept of an indoor voice.

Just like that with no instruction, I was expected to know how to swim. I suppose when you lived in a town with the word lake in it, people assumed you at least knew the basics.

Here goes nothing, I thought to myself.

I started doing what felt natural. Later, I'd be told that it was a near-perfect breaststroke, though I had no idea what that was. Not to brag, but I was done before some people had even reached the far end of the pool.

"Jackson," Mr. Mars said/shouted. "Another lap. Go."

I knew it was too good to be true. He was probably making me go again so everyone could see a perfect example of what not to do.

Again, I went across the pool, this time trying to go as fast as possible to get it done with.

"Holy shit," I heard a girl say.

I finished my lap and looked at Mr. Mars, nervously waiting for whatever he wanted to say.

He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "You swim at your old school, Jackson?"

"No…sir."

"Go out for the swim team. They could use someone like you." I wasn't sure if it was an idea or a demand. Probably both.

"We could actually do relays if we had someone who could do the breaststroke," the guy who'd been doing a backstroke before piped in.

"Shut up, Taklan. Well, what are you all looking at? Backstroke, two laps. Go!"

"I think swimmers are really cute," a hot blonde girl whispered to me before taking off. "A lot of girls do."

Swim team, here I come.