The remainder of that One Week before the dance went by as fast as if it had only been One Day. And because of all the really super Homecoming festivities, Percy had been pretty much MIA since his nomination burped out of the P.A. Tuesday afternoon. So I hadn't really had a chance to see him let alone speak to him. Needless to say I was pretty much a walking ball of nerves.

Nerves and vomit.

Vomit that threatened to spew forth at any given moment.

Specifically the moment Luke caught my arm in the hallway and pressed a rather moist kiss to my right cheek.

I caught the vomit before it erupted out of my mouth, even thought it just might have been worth it to throw up all over his football cleats.

"So is tonight our first date? Or our second?" Luke whispered as he redirected me toward his own locker.

I tasted twice as much vomit that time.

"Are you okay?" He asked me, pausing to study the pained expression on my face. I covered my mouth and nodded. Luke barely missed a beat.

"I mean, I wouldn't necessarily count that party as a date. But we can't just ignore the fact that we've made out, ya know?" He smirked at me, and I swear to God my liver tried to crawl up my throat.

I managed to swallow everything and force a smile, but I knew that if I tried to say anything. . .well, there would be no salvaging the relationship.

Luke didn't really seem to notice as he tossed his books into his locker and threw an arm casually around my shoulders. We wandered down the hallway in silence, Luke greeting every single time worthy person to cross our path; and me praying nonstop for the apocalypse.

Then an angel dressed solely in black and red called my name above the sea of students, and I actually cried out with glee.

"Hey, Percy!" I shouted back to him, bringing Luke to a halt in the middle of the stampede.

"Sophia, come on-"

"Percy, hey how's it going?" I asked breathlessly Percy shoved his way over to us. He eyeballed Luke briefly before shoving his hands into his pockets and smiling down at me.

"It's going."

"Sophia I have to get to practice." Luke nudged my side. I glanced at him over my shoulder but focused directly on Percy as I responded.

"Ok so go. You don't need me to throw around a ball, do you?"

The look on Luke's face matched the look on a kindergartener's face when you're forced to tell them that you're all out of elephant shaped animal crackers.

"I just thought we-"

"Come on, do you really think watching you practice football is going to be at all stimulating for me?" I pleaded, although my plead was an awfully distracted one.

Luke opened and shut his mouth twice while I shot Percy a flirtatious smile. He covered up a chuckle with a very lame sounding cough.

"Besides," I spun around and placed my hands boldly on Luke's shoulders, "The big dance is tonight. I need all afternoon to get ready."

Luke looked ready to call my bluff (the snort from Percy didn't help I'm sure) so I sucked in my pride and kissed Luke softly on the lips.

"You want me to look beautiful, right?"

Luke almost immediately broke out into a sleazy grin and nodded, "Alright go ahead."

Oh, you go girlfriend. I got him whipped.

"I'll see you later." I smiled and shoved myself away from him roughly, grabbed onto Percy's arm and practically flew off toward the front doors. When we got outside Percy stopped me and spun me around to face him.

"Slow down, Sparky." He laughed, "You won't miss your hair appointment."

I scowled at him, "Who says I have a hair appointment?"

He shrugged. That was all, and Percy Jackson disappeared.

He was silent for a minute, which was awkwardly too long a time span, but what he broke that silence with was decidedly more awkward. More simply put; that apocalypse I was praying for, well it quite possibly came and went during this sentence.

"Did you have to kiss him?" He asked me. I stared at him, blinked at him, narrowed my eyes at him. Then I retorted with a confused and strangely insulted, but always effective:

"What?"

Percy just looked at the ground and shook his head, "Never mind."

I stared at him incredulously, "No, Percy, tell me what."

Percy still didn't look at me as he carefully stammered a response, "I just . . . I mean we. . " Then he stopped and looked up at me beseechingly. I held his nervous frustrated gaze for a long time before relenting.

"Yeah."

He seemed to relax a little and turned to survey the emptying parking lot.

"So what time is that hair appointment?"

I rolled my eyes but smiled nonetheless, "Five thirty." I answered sulkily, "And I really don't want to go."

Percy chuckled and stuffed his hands in his pockets, "You'll survive, trust me. Besides it's not like they can do much to improve your do."

"Oh, Percy, no flattery please, I already love you."

"Your hair is so straightened it'd take eight gallons of hair spray to hold a single curl."

I snatched up a few strands of my blond hair and peered at the split ends staring back at me, "And now I forget why I thought conditioner was a waste of money."

"Not to mention time better spent lathering your breasts." Percy wiggled his eyebrows suggestively. I dropped my hair and fluttered my eyelashes at him.

"We aren't all as endowed as you."

Percy shook his head, "I'd say we're pretty equally endowed. Just in different places." And although his tone was playful, I swear I caught his eyes drifting below my collarbone.

I couldn't even try to stop my flustered laugh.

But, once again, Percy abolished the awkwardness as well as slammed us right back where we started, "So I assume Marissa is the mastermind behind your very first hair-dressing experience?"

I shook my head, "Actually Alex made the appointment. But Marissa did say that it was unnatural for an eighteen year old girl to be a salon virgin."

Percy nodded, "I myself was deflowered years ago."

"Not surprising." I muttered. He shoved me gently, his hands still deep inside his pockets.

A familiar gesture that had somehow turned shy over the past few weeks together.

"So. . ." He said softly, "Do you wanna hang out and I'll drop you off at five thirty?"

I grinned and looped my arm through his, thankful for the contact as well as the idea of simply spending time with him at long last.

"Hellz yea."

Percy and I spent two and a half hours listening to my parent's thirty something year old vinyl records and trying to figure out which songs best described our affection for pudding, or at least our passion for movies starring one or more of the Baldwin brothers.

Then at five twenty-six he left me standing on the sidewalk outside a very frighteningly upscale looking salon with nothing but a charming smile and a vague promise of seeing me later. It was vague because I don't think either of us was so sure that I wouldn't have an anxiety attack sometime between our parting and the looming dance.

I'd never been one to do high school sociality exceptionally well.

Come to think of it I'd never been one to do sociality in general exceptionally well.

But I waited semi-patiently nonetheless, in an unbelievably comfort-wise deceiving red leather chair, for Marissa to arrive and strap me into the spinning seat that quite terrifyingly resembled an electric chair.

"Hey, Soph, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't surprised you showed up." Marissa greeted as she slid through the door. I swiveled sideways to face her without taking my eyes off of the humming hair dryers.

"There is no way in hell that I am putting my head in there." I warned her. In response, Marissa smiled, genuinely amused, and walked to the front desk to check us in.

Nearly an hour and forty-five minutes later, I paid a shocking amount of money to the hairdresser that will forever remain undisclosed, and tiptoed out of the salon.

"Sophia." Marissa laughed, "What the hell are you doing?"

I lifted my hands above my head to guard my expensive curls as I ducked carefully into her car, "This mound of dead cells and hairspray cost me a whopping amount of money that, frankly, I was saving to rescue the Beatles music from Michael Jackson. I will be taking zero risks from this moment on."

"You have way too much free time." Marissa mused as she started the car.

"And you have way too much pink nail polish, but you never hear me complain, do you?"

She ignored me and we made our way back to my house to squeeze into our dresses.