Chapter Nine
Love At First Fright

The Degis meet had gone okay. We'd taken second out of twelve schools. On the ride back home, Josh had explained that Degis was amazing at everything; academics, athletics, even their music department…they always placed in the top three at everything. People had really hoped we'd beat them at swimming.

And they'd come in first.

"Second's okay, but people really wanted us to get first. See how Coach is just sitting up there fuming? We're going to get it at practice Monday," Josh said with a groan. "But, like, we don't blame you." Meaning they did. "You'll get better after you practice more."

I didn't say anything. We were almost back to Shallow Lake, so it was time to call my ride home. After Mom had married Gabe, she'd gotten us really nice phones, something we never would have been able to afford before.

"Percy?" she picked up after the third ring. "How did your meet go?"

"Fine," I mumbled. "We're almost home, so can you come pick me up?"

There were a few seconds of silence, though I swear I could hear someone talking in the background, and he did not sound like Gabe. "I'm sorry, honey. I had to go out of town for…one of my classes. I think Gabe is home though."

Yeah, I'd walk the five miles home before I called Gabe. "Okay."

"I have to go. I'll be home tomorrow afternoon, and then you can tell me all about the meet. Love you, honey." She hung up. I had a feeling she was lying to me.

"Are you going to the party at the funeral home?" Josh asked. "It's probably just starting now."

I looked at the time on my phone. It was a little past ten. "Nah. I don't have a costume."

"Throw on some goggles and call yourself Michael Phelps," the guy sitting behind us said. "You really think people are gonna dress up? We're not in second grade anymore. I got my parents' van tonight. You wanna drive over with us?"

As great as it felt to be included, I really didn't like parties, especially when everyone knew each other, and you were destined to be the new kid standing in the corner while everyone hooked up. "No. I'm really tired."

"Whatever. Suit yourself. You know, Silena's single again," the guy said to Josh. "Think I'll get lucky?"

"Depends on how wasted she is," Josh laughed.

The bus pulled into the school's back parking lot. In a matter of a few minutes, everyone had left…probably all heading to the party. Maybe it would have been better if I'd just went with them.

I sat down on the curb. This had been smart. I didn't want to go home to Smelly Gabe, but I had nowhere else to go.

"You need a ride?"

"Grover!" He'd just about scared the life out of me. "You shouldn't sneak up on people like that. What are you doing here?"

His face turned red. "Sorry. Umm…I was here…you know. Do you need a ride?"

"I don't know."

"You don't know?"

"I just don't really want to go home." Might as well be honest.

"Oh, well…you can come…to my house…if you want to…" he said shyly, like he expected me to turn him down without a second thought.

It was Halloween. Everyone else was at a party, so no one would know. And I kind of felt bad saying no, especially when it was obvious that I had nowhere else to go. "Sure."

His face lit up. "So you're not going to the party either?"

"Not really my thing."

Grover nodded. "Me too."

Some Hilary Duff song started playing. Grover's face turned red again, and he pulled a crappy flip phone out of his pocket. "Yeah...oh…okay…yeah, sure…bye."

He looked embarrassed. "Our truck broke down. My dad thinks he can fix it, but it'll take a few hours."

He sat down on the curb next to me. "You know, we could…go to the party?"

"Yeah. Just until your dad gets here."

I had a feeling this was going to be a bad idea.

"Pretty awesome party, right?" a frat boy with a cup of something that was definitely not fruit punch yelled over the booming music – a remix of Thriller mashed together with every other Halloween song imaginable.

I rolled my eyes. "Yeah. Great." So far I was feeling really stupid. I'd worn this stupid slutty genie costume for nothing – Diana Grace had somehow made it look fashionable, I swear.

He wasn't going to come.

"What's up your ass, bitch?" he probably meant it to sound taunting, but the drunken slur kind of ruined the effect. "I planned this party. You want my card?"

"No."

My eyes wandered over to the entrance. There he was in some crappy costume. Fuck. I was not ready for this.

Mr. Frat Boy Party Planner slipped something into my hand. "Instant courage. It's totally healthy," he promised.

"I'll take two."

"That's intense. Good luck."

I looked down at the little pills in my hand. They were pink and yellow, one with a dinosaur on it and the other a big smiley face. This was definitely safe. Definitely legal.

I didn't think so many people would show up to a stupid Halloween party. It wasn't like my sister was popular. She'd never even had a real boyfriend, but the guy she was making out with on our couch didn't seem to notice.

She'd hired some skeevy party planner who seemed to have three loves in life: drugs, beer, and cheap Hawaiian shirts. He'd probably never amount to anything in real life, but the guy did know how to make a party pretty rowdy.

I wasn't supposed to leave my room all night by order of Bianca, but screw that. She wasn't my mom, even if she pretended to be. My real mom was probably a porn star in California by now or something equally epic.

All I wanted to do was find someone who wasn't too busy getting some to hang out with for the night. Oh, and maybe get some beer. That would be good.

I did a quick scan of the room. There were guys dancing with scantily clad girls grinding up on them, several couples making out on scattered pieces of furniture, and only a few people standing on the edge of everything.

One of them was Grover Underwood. My sister told me she thought he was gay, and I wanted to know if she was right.

Bianca and I were pretty open with each other. She'd known I was bi since I'd had my Barbies and GI Joes act out tea parties followed by nuclear wars. Of course, Dad didn't know, but he also didn't know Bianca hated Shallow Lake and planned on going to college in Maine.

The point of the story is she kept her eyes open for me, and she told me that Grover was definitely gay. Bianca had some kind of hidden gaydar. Lance Bass? She called it.

"Hey," I whispered from behind him. "Wanna come up to my room?"

Grover jerked around to face me. "Oh, uh…yeah. Sure."

He seemed nervous. I reached into one of the candy dishes and pulled out a tablet. I was pretty sure it was ecstasy – completely harmless, unless you mixed and matched your drugs.

"Take this. It'll help you loosen up."

Grover tensed up even more. "Look, I know you're gay." That had been smooth.

Grover grabbed the pill out of my hand and swallowed in one fast motion. "No, I'm not."

"Let's go up to my room."

Yeah, except just as I said that, I saw some guy carrying his girlfriend into my room.

Gross. I was making Bianca wash my sheets when this was all over.

I'd been a little drunk before I decided to come to the party, but this wasn't the normal buzz felt like.

My best guess was the colorful candies in the little bowls all around the house had definitely not been Sweet Tarts. I'd been at the party for twenty minutes and already things were starting to get really weird.

Everything in the room seemed brighter, despite the scattered lighting. That, and things were starting to spin and blur together. People seemed to be talking way too loud – I could hear every word over the blaring music.

These things were great to realize before you went and ate, like, twenty of the mystery pills.

But I wasn't feeling worried. In fact, I was feeling really…good.

All of the sudden, there was this genie sitting in my lap. I didn't realize genies were the type to go for zombies.

Wait, I forgot. I was only dressed up as a zombie.

"Hey, Luke," she giggled. Her voice sounded familiar, but out of place, kind of like seeing your teacher at the grocery store or the mailman at the clinic. She ran her hands through my hair. "You haven't been very nice to me lately, but you can make it up."

I didn't know this girl. Or did I? Things were getting really blurry, and I couldn't think about anything for more than a few seconds. But she felt really good sitting on my lap, so I went along with it and started kissing her.

She spread her legs around me and pulled me closer. Whoa. "Pretty awesome party, right?" she whispered in my ear, planting kisses down my jawline.

She didn't really give me a chance to answer, because her mouth crashed against mine a few seconds later – or was it minutes? Time was either going really fast…or really slow. It was getting hard to tell the difference.

"This is fun, but I can think of something better to do," she hinted, her hand finding its way down my pants. "Let's go find a room."

I picked her up in my arms and stumbled upstairs. She was giggling the whole time. "You're really drunk," she laughed.

I found a room that had a bed and stepped in, making sure to shut and lock the door behind me.

And I have no idea what happened after that.

"Well, my room is being…occupied, so this is my dad's."

Everything was black. The carpet, the walls, the bedding…everything. No wonder Nico was emo. "I know it's kind of dark. Dad's not really a happy person."

He'd gone into a pretty good career choice then. "I'm not gay. I just don't really like parties, and I was in town late working on singing with Mr. Sol, and then my dad's car broke down, and I needed somewhere to stay, and-"

Nico kissed me. I'd never been kissed before, but from the way my lips were tingling, I think it was safe to say I was as gay as it got. "It's okay. I'm bi. I get it. People in a small town don't understand us."

Us. I kind of liked the way that sounded. Nico kissed me again. "Look, I don't want to be your boyfriend. I just want a friend – someone I can talk to. You know?"

Okay, it was true I thought Nico was good-looking, even if he was kind of…emo. But I didn't really know him.

Then again, he was the only other gay person in this town. A friend I could be honest with sounded good.

"Okay."

Mom and I clashed a lot. We argued about politics, what to watch on TV, what college I should go to one day, what came first: the chicken or the egg…you get the point. If it was debatable, we argued. Usually, our arguments weren't too heated.

But not tonight. No, tonight had been a giant screaming match with no end. Mom said I needed to loosen up and do something fun. I told her to leave me alone – my GPA was at stake. She said I needed to think about seeing a shrink, and things had heated up from there.

Long story short, I wanted to be anywhere but home. I would never go to a party where there was drinking, among other illegal things. It was a fast way to lose any scholarships you might one day earn. But what was the harm in just walking by?

When I saw someone sitting on the curb outside the house, I almost thought about turning back for home. What if the person was a creepy rapist? Who else sat outside a funeral home at midnight?

Deep breaths. There was a party. Someone had probably just stepped outside for air.

And that someone was Percy Jackson.

"You here for the party, Annabeth?" he asked. He sounded really tired.

"No," I said honestly. I had nothing else to do, so I sat down next to him. "I needed to get out of my house."

Percy didn't say anything.

"It's a long story."

Again, nothing.

"You know-"

"Annabeth, I don't really know you, but you seem like a very…uptight person. If you want to talk, I'll sit here and listen, though," he interrupted.

"Who's your mom? Come on, it's obvious it's not the lady you're living with."

"Luke! She's seven."

I hated small towns. In any big city, no one would look twice at our family, but in Shallow Lake, everyone came to their own assumptions. Mom hated it just as much as I did – sometimes I think that hate got placed unjustly on me.

"My mom is Jamaican." I waited for Percy to say something.

"And?"

I sighed loudly. "Do I look Jamaican?"

"I guess not."

"My mom couldn't get pregnant. After five years, my mom and dad decided to try other…options." Now that' I'd started, the words came faster and faster. "My dad was professor at a college, so they had a lot of money. They hired this girl to donate her eggs and then carry a baby for them. After I was born, they moved here to get away from…my real mom. A few years later, things started working again for my mom. The doctors said it wasn't all that uncommon. Mom and Dad had their real kids, and I was just the…extra."

Wow. I really wish I hadn't said all that to someone who probably couldn't care less. Maybe Mom was right and I was just like a volcano, bottling stress and tension in until I exploded.

And maybe she'd been reading too many self-help books.

"That's it?"

"Do you not understand how a small town works? People judge you when you look different. People judge you when you act different. People judge you when you're not the perfect definition of what a person should be like."

"Just quit caring about what people think."

Someone stepped out of the house. Grover Underwood. The two of them had probably come together.

"Listen, I've had a long night, and it sounds like you have, too. I'm sorry you think your life sucks, but maybe if you weren't so…hard to relate to, I'd be able to help you more."

What the hell was that supposed to mean?

"My dad's just around the corner. You still want to spend the night at my house?" Grover asked Percy, who nodded.

"See you Monday," Percy said to me, then headed off with Grover.

Who the hell did he think he was?

My mouth was dry, my clothes were off, and the girl next to me was crying.

The girl next to me. Thalia. Clothes off.

Oh shit. Just stay calm.

She had her back to me, so I traced small circles on her shoulder blades. "It's okay," I whispered. We just had sex, and the last thing I remembered was getting dressed for this party. Yeah, this was the antithesis of okay.

"Nothing…is okay," she choked out. I couldn't remember her ever crying. "My mom died, and I'm stuck living with my stupid aunt, and you've completely abandoned me except for when we're having sex, and-"

"It's okay," I repeated firmly. Man, I had the headache from hell. "I'm not leaving."

Thalia starting crying harder, almost like I hadn't said anything at all. "Do you know what it was like, getting pulled out of school to go identify my mom's body at the morgue? There was blood everywhere…and…she was just…there…dead…gone…" she trailed off.

If the way I was feeling was anything to go off of, Thalia was drunk – and she was definitely a weepy drunk.

I had no clue what to do. "Yeah, well…you're here now, with me. And I'm not leaving." I felt like a record stuck on repeat. What were you supposed to say? "You're strong. You'll get through it."

Thalia turned and faced me. She had mascara streaks running down her face and more tears were still falling. "Promise we'll stay together."

She'd never struck me as an insecure girl before, but this night seemed to be filled with firsts. "We'll stay together. I promise."

She put her head on my chest and kept crying. I put an arm around her and pulled her closer. "We should go home." How we'd get there, I didn't know. Neither of us was in a state to be driving. And I walked here…I think.

"I don't want to go home. That's where Nell is. I hate her," Thalia whispered into my chest. "Let's go to your house."

I tried to figure out the chance of Mom being home. She'd left for some party somewhere and hadn't said when she'd be back. "Okay. Get dressed," I agreed.

Thalia got out of bed and grabbed a pile of fabric that looked mostly sheer. Once she had it on, I saw that it was basically a bikini with a lot of mesh covering her stomach and legs. "It was my mom's. I found it going through her stuff. Now are you going to quit staring and get dressed?" She was starting to sound more like herself

I grabbed my clothes and quickly pulled them on. "Let's go."

The clock in the hallway said it was a little after four. Most people had gone home, but there were still scattered people making out in corners. Bianca was going to have fun cleaning all this up. Furniture had been turned over, Styrofoam cups were everywhere, and the whole place smelled like beer.

Thalia slipped her hand in mine. "I'm really tired," she yawned. "Let's hurry up."

"My house is only a few blocks from here."

She didn't say anything. I looked over at her and saw she'd fell asleep right on her feet. Deciding it was better not to wake her up, I picked her up in my arms and continued home.

I couldn't help but feel like I'd done this before.