[Disclaimer] Contains lyrics from the song Nothing. Sorry, A Chorus Line. I don't own your lovely music.

Percy's English teacher finally jumped off the deep end and abducted him at Victoria's Secret. Yeah, you read that right. She thinks he'll get his dad to rescue him. He doesn't know his dad. Things are gonna get interesting…fast.
Mr. Sol hit on Bianca before their Christmas concert. And now she's got a date or something with him. She was going to explain to Thalia, but the timing wasn't right. You just don't talk about your love life when a hormonal pregnant girl is upset.
Speaking of Thalia, she's got double trouble on the way. Twins. She was going to tell Luke, but he punched her and that was the end of that. She's now decided on adoption.
Things seemed to be going great for Luke and Silena, but he can't seem to get Thalia off his mind. Silena's on his mom's good side though, especially since she told her about Thalia's "abortion." Luke's mom really hates Thalia.
Grover and Annabeth are on to Mrs. M and maybe, just maybe will be able to find Percy. But will they be too late? Duh duh duh…..

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

Chapter Twenty-Six
Confessions and Obsessions

I knew something was wrong when my mom asked if she could come into my room instead of just barging in screaming. "You busy, Luke?" she asked, hovering at the door.

I had a bad feeling about this. "No."

She slowly stepped into my room and sat down on my bed across from me. I tossed my chem book aside – I'd been trying to study, but what was the point? There was no way I was going to pass this semester. Maybe that was what she wanted to talk about.

"Were you going to tell me about Thalia and…the pregnancy?" Mom asked in a tone I'd never heard her use before. It was soft and…maybe hurt?

"Can we talk about this later? I have a chemistry test that I'm trying to study for and it's been a long day and I really don't want to-" I started, trying to brush her off.

"Luke." A hint of irritation crept into her voice.

I pulled my knees to my chest and looked down. Talking about it made me feel like puking…or screaming, or maybe both. It was easier to just ignore everything. "She didn't tell me, Mom. She just got rid of it and wasn't ever going to tell me." It. A baby. I pushed the thought out of my mind.

Mom was quiet for a long time. "I wish you'd felt like you could tell me," she finally said. "You're only 16, Luke. It's a lot to deal with by yourself."

I knew how to respond to shouting. I didn't know how to respond to…this. "Yeah, well, it's done and taken care of. There's nothing I can do to change it – nothing to talk about." The words were hard to force out. "I didn't want to talk about it then, and I don't want to talk about it now."

Mom chose her words carefully. "I don't think you want to, but I think you need to."

"What am I supposed to say, Mom?" I knew I was shouting, but I didn't care. "That I wish she'd told me so I could talk her out of the abortion and raise a baby with her? That I can't look at her without feeling guilty for what she did? Because I can't stop thinking about it, Mom. I'm trying not to, but it's impossible." I didn't realize the words were true before I'd said them.

Slowly, Mom reached out and wrapped her arms around me. It was the first time she'd hugged me since I was a little kid. Any other time, I wouldn't have let her touch me, but I couldn't bring myself to care. "You know I love you, Luke," she said softly. "I don't always agree with what you do, but I want you to be able to talk to me."

I didn't say anything. I mean, I wasn't sure what to say. Something was wrong with my mom, that was for sure.

"Why don't we start over?" she asked.

"I think it's too late to start over, Mom."

She pretended not to hear me. "No more secrets. No more lies. No more…Thalia."

Eventually Mom figured out that she wasn't going to answer her. "Just think about it, Luke." She walked out of my room and lingered at the door for a second. "She did the right thing, you know. Neither of you are ready to be parents…especially not with each other."

I grabbed my textbook and pretended not to hear her, making a point of not looking in her direction until I was sure she was gone. Once she was, I got up and slammed the door. I grabbed my phone and sent a text to Silena.

Why did you tell her?

Her response came a few seconds later. I'm sorry. I thought she knew.

Is it that hard to keep your mouth shut?

I'm sorry.

Whatever. Don't care. Bitch. I shut the phone off.

I wanted to throw the phone at the wall just to watch it break into a million pieces. I wanted my mom to come back and shout at me so I'd have someone to be angry at. I wanted to talk to Thalia.

I wanted her back.

So I suppose I have some catching up to do before I tell you about how I was making out with my music teacher in the front of his car. These things don't just happen.

It started last week when I showed up early for jazz choir so I could run through my solo a few times with the piano part. Music festival was less than a month away. I was going to have to get over the fact that I hated Mr. Sol sooner or later.

Okay, maybe hated wasn't the right word.

He was waiting for me, sitting on the piano bench with the sheet music all ready. "Okay, well…let's do this. Tell me if I'm going too fast or too slow…" His cheeks turned bright red, and I knew I probably looked the same way. "And we'll go from there."

"Whatever." I cleared my throat. The thing I didn't like about Nothing was that it started out with the actress giving a speech. No piano notes you could fall back on. It was just plain and simple acting for an entire terrifying 30 seconds.

"I'm so excited, because I'm gonna go to the High School of Performing Arts." I cleared my throat again. "I mean, I was dying to be a serious actress. Anyway, it's the first day of acting class and-"

"Bianca. You sound like one of those girls who's all oh, yeah, I'm excited but I'm rich and spoiled so really, I don't care. You've gotta make your judge believe that you really are a desperate actress who just wants to please her teacher."

An awkward silence hung in the air.

"Okay, that came out wrong," he stumbled. "I mean, I didn't mean it like that, but you know…"

"How about we just skip the introduction for today?"

He shook his head and played the opening chords. I tried to ignore the nervous feeling in my stomach. "Every day for a week we would try to-"

"You're nervous." He stopped playing.

"Well, excuse me if I'm not super comfortable around you," I retorted.

He stood up and tucked the piano bench in. I took a few steps back, then found myself pressed against a wall…with Mr. Sol pressed right up against me. The nervous feeling had increased exponentially, but another part of me felt…excited? God, no. I was not feeling this way about my music teacher.

But I had to admit, he was kind of amazing looking. His sandy blonde hair hung into his green eyes, which were intensely staring at me. "Well, I guess we'll just have to fix that," he whispered, cupping my face in his hands.

And then because I didn't say anything, I guess he assumed he could go for it. His mouth was on mine, and I didn't push him away. I'd never kissed a guy like this – maybe college was finally when they grew up and figured out how to make out without slobbering all over a girl.

Mr. Sol reached a hand up my shirt, and then I realized, I was making out with my teacher, and I didn't even know his first name. I imagined telling Thalia that I'd kissed Mr. Sol. It made the whole thing sound so…dirty. I couldn't help but laugh.

He slid away from me, looking hurt. "What?"

"It's just…I was just thinking…I don't even know your first name." So, it sounded lame out loud. And it made me sound like I was about six years old. Way to go, Bianca.

He gave me a half smirk. "Cyrus."

"Okay, Cyrus…" I tested out the sound of it.

"Yes, Bianca?" He licked his lips, and I noticed that some of my lip gloss had rubbed off on him. My stomach did a little flip. My God, I was pathetic. Something needed to be done.

"Yeah, this is great, but…" I stuck a hand on my hip and tried to fake the confidence I definitely wasn't feeling right now. "I don't mess around with people who aren't ready to get serious."

He just shrugged. "Okay. I'll pick you up Saturday at seven."

"And what are we going to do?"

"That's a surprise." He winked.

So I'd tried to tell Thalia, but she obviously hadn't been in the mood to listen to someone go on about how great their life was when hers obviously…sucked. So Mr. Sol – it was too weird to think of him as Cyrus – was my secret.

I could go on about how I'd obsessed about what to wear and how to do my hair, but let's make this story short. He was twenty minutes late and didn't offer any excuses. I could tell he was stressed about something. When I'd asked him what was on his mind, he'd cryptically answered stuff.

He was quiet until he pulled into the parking lot of some little restaurant. "I hope you like Italian food," he said.

"Yeah, well, we're not going to eat here," I said, watching as the Stoll brothers popped out of a car on the other side of the parking lot, each holding the door open for a Gardner twin. Any other day, I would have laughed and thought of some snarky comment about how perfect it was. "People from school are here."

"Shit." Mr. Sol shook his head. "I didn't even think…I mean, I realized it was probably better to go to another town, but I didn't…"

"It's okay," I interrupted. "I got sick of waiting for you and ate like, a whole bag of Doritos before you picked me up so I'm not even that hungry." Real attractive, Bianca.

"Did I mention I'm sorry for being late?"

"You could a few more times before it gets old."

"Some first date, huh?" he said, pulling out of the parking lot.

"Yeah. Whatever. Just take me home."

At a stop sign, he stopped for way longer than the required five seconds. "What are you waiting for?" I asked, sounding a little bitchier than I'd intended.

I heard him unbuckle his seatbelt, then felt him lean over me. His breath was hot on my neck. "I'm okay with waiting if you are."

My stomach did another one of those flips. My God, I really was going to need to work on that. "Well, you might be waiting a very, very long time." I hoped he was smart enough to realize I wasn't talking about the stop sign.

"We can go slow if that's what you want."

And that's how I'd ended up making out with him in the front of his car. And the funny thing is, it was probably about twenty minutes before someone finally pulled up behind us and blared their horn. I couldn't stop laughing, and neither could he.

I insisted he dropped me off a block away from my house on the off chance my dad was watching. "We should do this again soon," he said.

"Yeah. Try not to show up late…Cyrus."

"I'll try, Bianca."

I couldn't wait.

Kill me.

No matter how many times I woke up captured and tied to a chair, I never remembered where I was for the first few seconds.

And then it would all hit me.

Today my head felt like it was being split open. Half of my face was covered with dried blood, and my right eye was swollen shut. I briefly remembered Mrs. M shouting about how impatient she was getting before throwing something at me.

It had been a little over three weeks. I was starting to give up on anyone finding me. And honestly, if I was in her shoes, I'd get the point that by now, the poor kid I'd abducted really didn't know his dad. Because if I did, I gladly would have passed her onto him a long time ago.

Sometimes I wondered how my mom was doing. I knew she was probably worried sick, but at least she had the baby if I didn't get out of this. I hoped Gabe wasn't being too big of a jerk to her, then realized that was a hopeless cause.

Another thing – whenever I heard the front door click open, my skin always crawled. Mrs. M entered the room a few seconds later. She was frantic…well, more than usual. "Someone stole the yearbook!" she shrieked.

"That sucks." My voice was hoarse.

Mrs. M turned on me, and I immediately wished I'd kept my mouth shut. She cupped my face in her hands and forced me to look at me. "You know what that means? Someone could figure me out. Someone could…find you."

"Wouldn't that be terrible?"

She dug her nails into my skin. "I could kill you. I don't want to, but…if you won't tell me where your father is, it might be the only way to get rid of you."

I knew immediately that she would kill me without thinking twice about it. She was that crazy. "Someone would find out." My voice shook.

"Oh, I don't think so. There are plenty of ways to get rid of a body." She began pacing. "I could burn it and dump the ashes in the river. Wouldn't that be just perfect? He always loved the water so much. A bit too much, if you ask me, but-"

"Don't you get it? I don't know him! Just let me go. I promise, I won't tell anyone it was you. Just let me go!"

"Shut up!" she hissed, raking her nails across my face. "You either get your dad to get you out of here…or you don't get out of here at all."

"What's your problem? So what, you're obsessed with some guy from high school. Get over it."

"Some guy from high school? Dean and I were going to get married!" she shouted. "Admittedly, I might have stretched the truth to get to that point, but…he left me! He left everyone who cared about him. No note, no apology, no nothing. Do you know what that's like? Of course you don't, because you're a stupid little child, just like he was."

I would have felt bad for Dean King if he wasn't the reason I was locked in a room with a crazy lady. "Most people like, you know, move on with their lives. You should try it." I was screwed anyway.

"He was my life!" She wrapped her hands around my neck and started shaking me. "You don't understand – no one understands! I need him. I need-"

Everything went black.

The next time I woke up, it was the same first few seconds of confusion. Only this time, instead of waking up to an empty room, there was someone there with me. And my honest to God first thought: Holy crap. I'm hallucinating now.

"Annabeth?" I asked, not letting myself believe that she was really there right in front of me.

She grinned. "Come on, we have to hurry up. I don't know how much longer she's going to be gone."