Annie:

I felt the burn in my abs as I finished my final stretch. Yesterday was my resting day. Well, it wasn't the exact resting day my coach wanted, but I didn't do as much as I usually would have on a normal day. So, that's resting for me. I 'mmm'ed from knowing I finished and picked up the bottle of strawberry Gatorade from my bedside table, taking a long swig until I could barely breathe.

"Knock knock," Artemis called from my bedroom door. Sure, our old roommate moved out, being scared to death of Nikki, but we were still here. From what Nikki says, she's going to make us move in with her into an apartment next year, as she hadn't gotten lucky to get the suite but had gotten a two bed room, getting one little cube to herself. She would probably force us to do it now, but her dad told her he would pay for her apartment if she got good grades and got two roommates. The roommates part was easy, but right now, she was cutting down on partying and marking up on studying. It's actually kind of hard to watch her study. I mean, picture a freckle-faced, pink-haired petite girl sitting cross-legged in something crazy, like a tutu or something, biting a random color highlighter high lighter. I mean, you should really see it.

"Come on in," I called out, walking over to my closet to change into something other than a sweat drenched pair of black running shorts and sports bra. This morning I overslept more than I should have meaning I had to wait to finish my exercises after classes and, by the order of Arty, after my homework. I hadn't been sleeping well since Joel was down here. UCLA was dealing with an earthquake, meaning he was currently bunking with Zak and Marcus for the next week. He keeps trying to talk to me, making me work my hardest until my day went like 'Wake up. Train. Go to class. Do work. Train. Go for a long swim (for fun this time). Come home. Eat. Sleep. Start all over.' The only person I've seen in the last few days has been my step-sister (well, technically we were adopted to be complete sisters), Artemis.

Artemis gently pushed the door open, and I couldn't help but look back over at her. She looked shy, which didn't seem normal. Her blonde curls were let down, reminding me of Annabeth. Her grey eyes were nervous, but they still had that happy gleam I had seen her have since we were fifteen and she had Zak had finally hooked up. Even if he wasn't with her, it was like the possibility made her shine brighter than Apollo in the morning sky. Her outfit definitely reminded me of her mom. She was wearing a pair of grey sweat pants that I couldn't have pulled off even once in my life. A tight 'American University' tee shirt hugged her body like a supportive hug from my old best friend, Felicia, during the 'Boyfriend Support Group Session' held every Friday to complain or brag that we used to have in High School, which felt like a lifetime ago.

"Annie, I kind of need to talk to you about-" Annie started off in a serious manner, and I knew I wasn't going to like it, which meant it had to do with either Joel or Marcus. I shifted uncomfortably, wanting desperately to ditch to the bathroom so that I could change, but I don't think Artemis noticed, nor cared since I had already ditched like ten times.

"Artemis? Annie? Where are you? Get your skinny butts out here?" Nikki screamed at the top of her lungs until I thought at I wanted to scream at her just to shut up. A few moments later a short freshman was standing in my door way, her face excited as if she had just been told that it was legal to drink at eighteen. I have to admit, the image in front of me was pretty funny. Her hair was still a bubble-gum pink, but the rest of her looked almost normal. She was wearing a pair of black jeans, a top with 'I Dream of a Better Day… Where Chickens Can Cross the Road Without Their Motives Being Questioned' printed in bold letters with a cartoon chicken at the bottom, and a pair of combat boots to match said orange shirt. Her natural pink lips had been glossed until it looks completely fake. Her emerald eyes were shining brighter than the strobe lights at prom that gave me a migraine before getting totally dumped.

Something within me ached as I thought about Prom. Artemis could look back at it with a smile because she remembers being held tightly in Zak's arms, making a bunch of girls boil, and listening as Zak made some of his last jokes making fun of school and some of the brats that went there. Nikki remembers being there with the hottest guy, tearing up the dance-floor, drinking spiked punch, and getting covered in glitter.

And I remember crying. I remember sitting in the bathroom, bawling my eyes out, and only able to think about how he was the first guy I really fell for. Joel was the first boy to make my heart swell and head bang and still be able to smile like an idiot. And right there, in the gym where we had gone together since fifth grade, we got in a fight, screaming until we felt like crying. Right there, with the entire student body to hear, he broke up with me.

I just can't seem to forget it, though I really want to. He just hurt me so much, and I want to forgive him. But I can't.

"What?" Artemis asked, rubbing her temples like she was getting a migraine.

"Thanks for calling me skinny," I smiled just to annoy Artemis, which I did successfully, and Nikki rolled her emerald eyes.

I looked down at the ring in disbelief one more time. Both Artemis and I were naming off how my father should propose to her mother, and it was fun. But, it still surprised me. I've always been close with my dad. I know he loves me and is happy with me, but I know he could be happier. I also know he would be happiest with Annabeth. The last time I saw my mother, I was four years old, and that was it. I haven't seen her since, and I completely understand that my parents will never be together. I've been trying to get my father with a good woman for years, but… I still want my mom. Annabeth is amazing, and she may become like a mother, but she isn't my mother.

But my dad is proposing to her, and I know she loves him. So, she'll say yes, and I'll have a step mother soon enough. I guess Annabeth would be the best step mother if I had to get one, but who wants a step mother? Artemis didn't seem to be thinking of that beside me. Instead, she seemed to just be talking to my father, her soon-to-be step-father. Wait, I do get Artemis as a sister, which will be great.

But, again, my dad's getting married. I've always been 'Daddy's Girl'? Now, I'm not only getting Annabeth as competition but Artemis as well.

I snapped out of thinking of how Nikki's eyes were the exact same color as the engagement ring my dad gave Annabeth to whatever she was saying.

"I got scores for my first big test, and they're basically perfect. We have to celebrate," Nikki smiled, and both Art and I told her how proud we were and et cetera.

"Do you promise to come with me tonight to a Frat Party?" Nikki asked hopefully, and I took a second before answering. Since when did Nikki go to Frat Parties? She's always gotten a fake ID to sneak into some club. Something is up, and if she is making us promise, it isn't something good.

"Um, I guess," Artemis shrugged uncomfortably as if she too were afraid of whatever catch Nikki was going to throw at us, and Nikki focused her attention on me, as if mentally forcing me to say yes.

"Well, sure," I wrapped my arms around my bare stomach, and Nikki took a deep breath to tell us what we were afraid to here.

"Good, because I want all of us to go," Nikki smiled widely, and whatever smile Artemis had fell immediately.

" What does 'All of Us' mean?"

"I want Marcus, Zak, and Joel to come, too," Nikki told us, like it wasn't that bad, but it was awful. Marcus and Joel together? With me? No, I cant handle that. I mean, it's the guy I got drunk and hooked up with along with the guy who broke my heart at prom. That's just asking for trouble. I couldn't handle it. I just couldn't.

"No, not them. Can't we just go have a girls night, without my love triangle, please?" I pleaded, wanting to cry.

"I barely party, but Zak doesn't at all. You know how close he was to becoming an alcoholic. I'm not putting him around beer everywhere. No," Artemis protested as well.

"But, please? You know how hard I worked for that test, and Joel wasn't just your friend and your ex. He was my friend, too. He taught me how to ride a skateboard, and he is going home soon. This could be the last time it's the five of us, and, Annie, you love Marcus. You can't go counting him out because you really like him. And Zak has gotten so much better. I have faith in him, and you can even make sure he's okay, Art.

"But just please, let me have this," Nikki looked at us like we were her parents and she was trying to convince us to let her go to Julliard and become a musician instead of going to a good school and getting a stable job.

I looked at Artemis, and I knew she was about to cave. Art could definitely take care of Zak, and I also knew she had been dying to get some time with him alone since Joel showed up and they had been trying to make sure everything didn't go up in smoke. If she was making sure he didn't drink, that would be a lot of time with him.

But my situation didn't work out like that.

Instead, I got Joel, the boy who broke my heart and came back a few months later trying his hardest to get me back, making everything -which was hard enough at the time- a total mess. Then there's Marcus. Perfect, perfect Marcus who only brought trouble by making me fall for him and is now trying to get me to let myself fall for him instead of trying to stop it, like I currently was. I would be stuck with Joel trying to win me back, Marcus trying to win me as well, and Nikki off somewhere getting some hot guy's phone number or something.

I don't know about you, but that doesn't sound like what I had hoped my Friday night to be like.

"I don't know how Zak will feel, but I'm in," Artemis smiled for the first time all day, and Nikki smiled her wide, wild smile as well. Both girls looked at me, and I knew I had to say yes. What kind of friend would I be if I didn't?

"Alright, fine," I huffed, knowing tonight would be torture.

Artemis:

"Why do we have to do this again?" Zak complained once more as he idly flipped through the senior yearbook I had on my desk. Annie had been on the yearbook committee, and they had a lot of trouble hurrying the pictures from Prom it. But they all looked good. I don't know why I wanted to see them, but I did earlier. Zak smirked as he saw the picture of Nikki winning Prom Queen. She hadnt thought she would win. She kind of ran as a joke, but, with how she was dating the hottest guy in school, Gabe, is obviously awesome, and looked great in her dress, she won by a landslide. Zak and I still enjoy to tease her about it.

"We are doing this because Nikki wants us to," I smiled as I turned back to the jewelry box on my desk.

When I was thirteen, Mom took Annie and me to a small little antique shop like a week before the wedding. With all the stress of the wedding, Mom wanted us to calm down a little bit. So, she took us there, and Annie bought a pair of shoes that looked like they were from the sixties, and I found a pretty little box from the twenties. Annie lost the shoes about two days later, but I never lost the box. Right after the wedding, my dad came to see me, and he gave me this bracelet with the name 'Artemis' in cursive hanging from it. I was always so scared that I would lose one of the only thing my father gave me that I put it in the box, which it has never left. I always made it a priority to make sure I didn't lose the jewelry box, which was something Beck used to always ask me about. Because he's being raised where his father is always around, he doesn't understand how I make sure anything my father gives me is kept safe. Whenever I tried to tell him that, he didn't understand. So, one day, I told him that I kept fears and nightmares in there. Even the night before I left, he came in my room at midnight to put the nightmare he had just had in the jewelry box.

I was snapped out of thinking of the jewelry box to feel the snap of the clasp of my necklace hurt my index finger. I mumbled an 'Ow' and put my finger to my mouth.

"Zak, I can't get this clasp right. Can you get it on for me?" I asked, and Zak took a breath of relief from not having to keep looking through our senior year book. I could see Zak come behind me in the mirror, and he smiled when I handed him the necklace he gave me when we were fifteen. There had barely been a moment when I wasn't wearing the necklace.

Zak closed the little clasp thing around my neck, making me shiver from the sudden coldness from the necklace. I had always loved the necklace, even when it was technically his until we were fifteen. If there was anything I loved more than the necklace itself, it was how Zak smiled whenever he saw me wearing it. Zak's soft lips kissed my neck, and his muscled from years of training arms wrapped around my waist.

"Do we really have to go tonight?" Zak whispered in my ear, making me shiver again but for an entirely different reason this time. I really wanted to just say that I say we felt sick and skip it tonight, but I knew not to.

"Zachary Black, yes, we do," I squeezed his hand, and he sighed, kissing my neck once more before letting go of me and returning to the yearbook he had been reading earlier, probably going to mark out his picture with a Sharpie. Personally, I thought he looked cute in his picture, but he hated it.

"Come on. We have to get going before Joel figures out that Marcus is the guy Annie has a huge crush on and someone gets hurt," I grabbed my cell phone and my jacket before opening the door.

Outside the door, Annie looked adorable. She was wearing the same black minidress she was wearing when she went on that date with that loser Joshua. She had spent about an hour curling her straight hair into where it cascaded down her back, and her heels looked like a deathtrap, just waiting for you to trip and fall on a brick or something headfirst. I looked completely different. The only thing that was even close to being the same in our outfits was the fact that we were both wearing black heels. Everything else was different. While she was wearing a dress, I was wearing black skinny jeans and a purple ruffle top underneath a leather, bomber jacket. We looked utterly and completely different in every way. I looked like my Mom, and she looks like her mother. She used to be the spitting image of her father, but, as she has grown up, she looks more and more like her mom. It's easy to see that we're step-sisters and not full-blood, or even half-blood.

"I hate this," Annie pouted with her arms crossed.

"Thank God, someone who thinks like I do," Zak smirked as he walked through the door behind me.

"You think I want to do this? But I'm going to, and so are you," I grabbed my keys from the countertop, and Annie sighed involuntarily. She looked like someone had just told her that she had just been kicked off the swimming team, losing her passion and her scholarship to AU, which seemed like an exaggeration to me. We've had to do much worse than this. Like, when our baby brother was being born, we were stuck at Uncle Malcolm's for the night, without Aunt Mia, having to help him with two toddlers. Then, while Dad was proposing to Annabeth, we were also at Uncle Malcolm's. While I was having my appendix out, Annie was at home taking care of Percy because he had a cold and making sure little Beck didn't get sick, too. I think she can handle going to a party with two boys who she swears up and down she hates while she really loves them. How hard could it really be?

"Where's Nikki?" Annie complained once more, plopping down on the sofa.

"Joel was teaching Marcus how to skate, and Nikki had to go pick them up," Zak shrugged as he sat at the chair near to the sofa.

"Joel and Marcus are together?" Annie panicked, and she started breathing loudly as if she was trying to warn us that she was about to pass out.

"Andromeda Jackson, calm down. Joel's been staying with them for the last five days. I think you need to accept that there are moments where they are alone," I smirked, checking my Droid. The page where I had to slide the unlock key was a picture of Beck, Zak, and me. I had always been close to Beck, and Zak had as well. It's always been weird. We both just love him so much that it's almost like Beck is our son, not my brother. People used to think that until they saw how much Beck looked like Percy. Then, they just kinda knew that Percy was his father, not Zak. Zak and I were always the ones who grew up before we should have. By the time we were fourteen, we were basically twenty. Beck seemed to notice that, too. Annie was always a sister to him, and Joel was simply Annie's boyfriend. But I was like a second mom to him, and Zak was like the older brother he always wanted. I'd be lying if I said that didn't worry me sometimes, especially when I got the acceptance letter to AU. It wasn't that he needed me, but it was that I needed him.

I ignored the photo and slid the phone unlocked. It went straight to the main screen, showing me my speed-dial, a green sticky note app telling me my TO-DO list, and a few little apps. The first person I saw on speed dial was my mom, smiling into the photo looking much younger than her actual age. The one beside it was Percy with a picture of him reading a story to Beck. The third had the picture of Zak and me at graduation that my mom took and that Zak had changed to his contact picture one day. I hadn't changed it since. The final was of Annie, smiling at Camp in front of the Hecate cabin that she was now the leader of. Nikki had been insulted that she wasn't on one of the four speed-dial list icons where all I had to do was press it to call them, but I had pointed out that she always called me, not the other way around, winning me the argument.

It was pretty tempting to call my mom and see how everything was going. I had talked to her yesterday, but, with how crazy Avery and Charlie can be and how Beck is head over heels for Katrina, you never know what could have changed by now. I wanted to know how Aunt Mia and Uncle Malcolm were faring with their six year old twins, Charlie and Avery. I also wanted to know how the cutie, Katrina, was doing. I even wanted to know if they had seen their neighbor on the floor below, Joshua, who cheated on his girlfriend with Annie without her knowing. I even wanted to know if Zak's mom's boyfriend had proposed. Before we left for school, he asked Zak if he could propose to her, and, while he had said yes, Zak hadn't wanted to talk about it since it happened. He loves his mom, and he was always protective of her. His mom, Martha, had dated, but she had never married. She always said that she loved Zak's father, Hades, and that she loved her son so much that there wasn't much to give to another man. She had dated this guy, Dave, for about four years now, and she seemed to love him. He has a daughter, Cali, who is fourteen, and she gave her approval immediately, unlike Zak. The only thing I knew about the proposal was when Zak warned me that Thanksgiving would be crowded because he was going to both Dave's side and his side to tell everyone about how they were getting married. I had offered for him to just come with me, but he said that his mom would want him with her now that he was in DC. That was all I had been told about it, and that was a long time ago.

Annie fidgeted on the sofa, and she just stood up once more. Her mouth was moving, letting me now she was talking, but I wasn't really listening. I knew it would be about Marcus and Joel, and that subject was starting to get bitter. We can all tell she loves them both, but she wont admit it. She just says that she wants someone who doesn't make her want to scream like they do, but not one of us buys that. Why should we? We've known her since we were eleven, and we know when she likes a guy and when she doesn't.

"Open up!" Nikki called from the front door.

"Couldn't you just be nice about it?" a voice, Marcus I think, complained to her, and I knew she was rolling her eyes.

"I wouldn't have to be mean about it if you hadn't kept falling off a skateboard like a baby," Nikki smirked, letting me know it was definitely Marcus. For the last two weeks, they've been at each other's throats for some weird reason. Zak thinks it's because Nikki is a little upset that she gave up her crush on Marcus so Annie could have him and he keeps screwing it up, but it felt like it wasn't her being mad about Annie. There was something more there, but I just didn't know what it was.

I opened the front door before they could say any more about it. The three stood there, Nikki and Marcus looking at each other like they were moments from screaming at each other, and Joel looked at me with relief.

"Thank God. They've been doing that for the last twenty minutes," Joel sighed, and I moved so the three could walk in. Joel walked in without really thinking, but Nikki looked at Marcus with a 'I still hate you' look before walking in. Marcus shook his head, almost snarling, as he walked in.

"Hey, Art," he regarded me with a smile, but it fell when he looked back at Nikki when he almost snarled again.

Joel tried to smile at Annie, but she looked away immediately to stare at her pedicure. Zak hit his head against the back of the chair when he saw that. Marcus was too busy exchanging death glares with Nikki to notice it, and Annie forced her eyes there.

Great, even she knew something was up with them, and she was the one who was going crazy here.

"So, Nikki, where are we going?" Marcus asked as if he was bored out his mind to annoy Nikki. She clutched her fingers into her palm like she was stopping herself from strangling him.

"We are going to the party. Now, if you want to be part of we, you better shut up," Nikki almost growled, and I stifled a laugh. It was almost funny to see a girl with pink hair growl. She was wearing a 'New York Does It Better' dress that looked more like a long shirt than a dress. She was wearing a pair of knee-high black converse to match the dress which was black as well with the words printed in 'kidnap' letters with the weird magazine things or whatever.

I raised an eyebrow at Zak as if to ask what happened to them, but he shrugged. No one seemed to know, not even Joel. For the last few days, Zak and I have been trying to get Annie to at least talk to him, leaving him to spend his time with Marcus and Nikki.

Marcus's mouth opened to say something, but Zak cut in.

"Are we ready to go?" Zak asked in a mock chipper voice. Nikki smiled at Zak and nodded a yes. Zak got up from his seat, and we all started to leave. As Nikki scowled at Marcus and Annie tried to speedwalk unsuccessfully, as she was in heels, away from Joel so he wouldn't say anything, I knew tonight was going to be a long night.

Alright, well, this was setting up for the next chapter where Annie finally talks to Joel, and why do you think Nikki and Marcus are being so bad? Keep reading to find out. :)