It's recap time!

Luke's mom suddenly decided to play the concerned parent role. He thinks she's crazy. He also got chickenpox, got Thalia back, and found out about the pregnancy. Poor guy.
Bianca is now dating Mr. Sol. Cyrus. She can't decide which name is weirder to call him. But she's got bigger problems. Like the fact that EVERYONE thinks she's a bitch.
Percy got rescued. Mrs. M blew herself up. And she mentioned something about Annabeth's mom. Wonder which one she meant?
Clarisse's dad is like, a badass army guy. And he's coming home from Iraq soon. And she maybe has a thing with Chris. Things are going great for this girl!
Silena was going to break up with Luke, but he beat her to it, and she's having a hard time dealing with it. So she might want to date Grover now, who doesn't seem to be looking for any kind of relationship.
It seems like Sally knows something about Dean King. But Percy doesn't care, even though it's like, Annabeth's mission to figure the story out. I see conflict coming.

And that's [a very condensed version of] what you missed! ;)

Chapter Thirty-One
The Drama Scene

Ever since I found out I was going to miss three weeks of school, I hadn't been looking forward to coming back.

But the prospect of school no longer scared me half as much as the two girls I was going to have to face there – one being my four-months-pregnant girlfriend (I think it was accurate to call her that), and the other being the girl I'd dumped when I found out about the aforementioned pregnancy.

So I figured if I could the initial confrontation with one of them over with before school started, the day would go at least marginally better.

Wrong.

I'd thought picking up Thalia before school would be a nice gesture. Apparently she didn't see it the same way.

"You know just because I'm pregnant doesn't mean I'm not capable of driving myself to school," Thalia said flatly when she answered the door. "You don't have to start giving me special treatment."

"Yeah, well, I wanted to talk to you." I tried to look at her as subtly as possible and couldn't believe I hadn't noticed before. She'd started wearing baggier clothes, but pretty soon it was going to be obvious that she wasn't just putting on a few pounds.

"Quit looking at me like that," Thalia snapped. "If people see you acting like that, they're going to be able to put two and two together a lot faster." She pushed past me and headed for my car. "Come on, I don't want to be late."

Once I'd pulled out of her driveway, she started talking. "So, I've already found a few couples I like. You can come with and meet them if you want, but it really doesn't-"

"Wait, what?"

Thalia gave me a look that screamed are you that stupid? "Adoptive parents," she said slowly, enunciating the words sarcastically. "My God, you really think I'd want to raise one child with you? We're having twins, Luke. Twins. It's better for us…and them if we give them up."

I tried not to let the words sink in. That was the only way I could deal with all this without completely losing it. "What if I said no?"

"Well it doesn't matter. Because you're going to agree with me."

"I don't think so." She opened up her mouth to argue again. "If you didn't want them, you would have gotten an abortion. Otherwise, what's the point of going through the nine months and having nothing to show for it at the end?"

"Knowing we didn't kill two people and instead are giving two people a better chance at life?"

Thinking of them as two very real people made me feel sick. Kind of like how I'd always feel sick the last few hours before a track meet. Only I doubted puking and then drinking a few energy drinks would help this situation much.

"I don't want to meet potential parents yet."

"I told you that you don't have to come," Thalia said through gritted teeth.

"No…I do want to come…eventually, but…the whole thing hasn't really sunk in yet, okay?" I hoped she'd get that I didn't want to talk about it anymore today. Not when it was obvious we weren't going to get anywhere.

"Well, let me help speed up the process. We had sex on Halloween. I got pregnant. I'm due at the end of July, though since they're twins, they'll probably come earlier. Right now I'm at 16 weeks, so if we wanted to, we could find out their sexes. They're about five inches long, they're starting to grow toenails, and-"

"Stop." My knuckles were white on the steering wheel. Suddenly puking didn't seem like such a bad idea.

I saw Thalia look at me out of the corner of my eye. Her face softened. "You okay? You still look kind of sick, Luke. Maybe you should wait a few more days before you come back to school."

"No. I'm fine."

Thalia waited for a few seconds before speaking. "I'm sorry. I'm scared, too." I didn't say anything. "Umm, I wasn't going to tell you, but I suppose I guess now you have a right to know…" She took a deep breath. "I have an appointment tomorrow at one."

"Oh. Cool."

Thalia sighed. "You can come if you want to. Like, in the room with me. I've got an ultrasound scheduled."

I thought about it for a second. "Are you going to find out the sexes?"

"I wasn't…I mean…it makes it feel too real." Thalia bit her lip. "What do you think?"

It was a step forward that she was at least asking for my opinion, only, I wasn't sure I was ready to give it. So I decided a change of subject was best. "I'll say I don't feel good and leave at 11, then wait for you in my car. Your appointment's in Degis, right?"

"Yeah. Thanks." Thalia looked at me. "No holding hands in the hallway today or anything, got it?" The tough girl exterior was back. "Because one: we do not need to be attracting attention. And two: we're not even really together."

"Okay, well do you want me to drop you off here?" We were a few blocks away from the school. "You know, it might look kind of suspicious if people see that I drove you to school." I didn't try to keep the sarcastic tone out of my voice.

She didn't say anything, just got out of the car once we got to school and marched up the steps without saying two words to me.

I knew coming back to school after a three-week absence wouldn't be the easiest thing in the world. I mean, school was hard enough when I was there every day. Still, I didn't expect it to go half as badly as it did.

It started when I got called out of my first hour algebra class to the guidance office.

Mr. What's-his-face had added a few more posters to the walls about self-esteem and friendship. I wondered what kind of person would come to a perpetually hung-over loser to talk about how they were sad because their best friend told them they were ugly.

"It's not good news, Luke," he said flatly, then continued on about how my grades and attendance sucked. I kind of drowned it all out – it wasn't like I hadn't heard it before. "…your junior year," he finished. Due to the fact that he seemed to speak in one tone of voice, I really hadn't seen the ending coming, and therefore, had missed it.

"What?"

If I didn't know him better, I'd say he almost looked sympathetic for a billionth of a second.

"You're going to have to retake your junior year."