SummerSpirit18: Thank you. I had some fun camping, it could definitely have gone better. I had no luck with job hunting, but thanks for wishing it anyway.
xXGoldenDarknessXx: Not the first word that came to mind, but okay, we'll go with it!
Mrs-diAngelo25: I loved writing the part about the lady that smelled bad. I like camping until I have to wash my dishes. And the dishes of everyone else. Yeah, I can look out my window and see leaves changing, I don't need to go camping for that. I hope you like the chapter!
infinity heart star lightning: I'm sure you can handle it. Yeah, I stopped being excited for school this morning when I had to wake up at 5:30 in the morning for the first time in two months. I'm really trying to keep to Mondays, I'm so sorry I didn't upload yesterday. The library was closed.
I don't own Percy Jackson. I do own Ms. Hill (who is based on a real person), Dr. Jack Willis, and Dr. Toni Murray.
Chapter 3 – Seventh Grade
It was mocking him. It was laughing. He could hear it, little high pitched laugh, smoky, sort of, like it'd been burned. He lifted it up and checked the bottom, then dropped it back down. Of course. It had been burned. But what could he expect from school cafeteria pizza?
It'd been over a month now since he'd eaten anything. He picked up the pizza and took a bite. He chewed for what felt like forever, but it tasted like cardboard. He could feel the cheese and the sauce and the bread but it just tasted like cardboard. For the first few weeks he'd tried to force himself to eat, but now it was just once in a while that he tried. He hadn't tried at all last week and now he felt like he had to. But he just couldn't eat it.
He tried to remember the last time he'd really eaten anything. Christmas morning, when Persephone had made muffins. She couldn't cook, not to save her life, but she always tried during the holidays. This time she'd made peppermint muffins, trying to get into the holiday spirit. Nico didn't want to know where she'd gotten a recipe for peppermint muffins, or where she'd gotten the idea to dye them. She'd tried to do a marbled batter, like a red and green swirl, but she'd mixed it too much and ended up with a sort of puce color. They looked horrible and tasted worse, but they still tasted like cardboard to Nico. He'd meant to just say that he wasn't hungry but his father had given him a look and insisted that he eat one. He'd stomached half of it before he felt like he was going to be sick (he was almost positive that it wasn't the cooking, just whatever was making it so he couldn't eat, although he had some doubts). Then he'd managed to hide the rest of the muffin in his pocket and two hours later he'd flushed it down the toilet.
He took another bite of the pizza and chewed on it for a few minutes before swallowing. Hell, he already felt sick. Maybe that was just the smell and the sight of all the grease on the pizza. Good God, it was orange, and he could have licked it all off with his tongue.
Did this count as an eating disorder? They'd talked about eating disorders in health class last semester, just like they'd talked about them in sixth grade. He knew that anorexia meant that you weren't eating, but did it count as anorexia if he wasn't trying to get thin? He looked down at his arms. He was quite thin enough, he knew that if he'd lifted up his shirt (not something he would do in a school cafeteria) and sucked in his stomach he'd be able to count each and every one of his ribs. So did it count as anorexia if he just couldn't eat?
Percy watched Nico sitting alone from across the cafeteria. He'd tried to sit with Nico at the beginning of the year, but after a while it had become clear that Nico wanted to be alone. He was worried for his friend, they barely talked anymore but he still considered Nico his best friend.
Ever since Bianca's death Nico had been getting steadily worse. Percy didn't want to say anything for fear of losing Nico's trust (he didn't even know if he had it anymore) but if Nico got worse then Percy would go to the guidance counselor. Or a teacher, or maybe Nico's father. But he hadn't seen Hades in a while, would Hades even recognize him?
"Percy," he heard, and turned to see Annabeth snapping her fingers at him.
He blinked. "Sorry. Colosseum in Rome, I'm listening. Keep going."
Nico wasn't going to finish this pizza, he knew that. He stood up. His head spun for a few seconds, but he was used to it. That had been happening for the past three weeks. He stood there until it had passed, then picked up the pizza plate and went to the trash.
His head was still spinning and he felt a little dizzy, but he ignored it. He only had five minutes left of lunch anyway, and it was better to get to class early than to have to fight past the crowds of people leaving the cafeteria.
He was almost out the doors when his knees buckled and he fell to the ground.
Annabeth was still talking, something about gladiators and lions, but Percy had tuned her out a while ago. When he looked back up at Nico's table, Nico was gone.
Percy scanned the cafeteria, but Nico wasn't there. He must have gone up to class.
He was about to turn back to Annabeth and try to listen when he saw a black lump on the floor near the door. Oh my God, he thought, is that Nico?
He stood up, throwing, "Bathroom," over his shoulder as an explanation, and went as fast as he could towards the black lump without attracting attention. When he was a few feet away from the lump, he saw that it was Nico. He fell to his knees and turned his friend over. Nico's eyes were half-open, but they only focused on Percy for a second. "Nico," Percy said, panic filling his voice. He turned around and called to the first teacher he saw. "Ms. Hill!" he called. Ms. Hill turned around and stood up quickly.
"What happened?" she asked. They were attracting a crowd.
"I don't know. I was walking over and he was just lying here." Percy tried to swallow his tears. "Is he okay?"
"Micheal," Ms. Hill said to a nearby boy. "Go get the nurse."
Micheal nodded and rushed out of the cafeteria.
Nico could hear the people saying his name, and he thought he saw Percy above him. Green eyes, black hair, a worried look. But there were too many people and soon he couldn't focus and Percy became part of the multicolored blur that was slowly going dark. His head was heavy, he didn't have the strength to move it. How many people were there, anyway? It seemed like there were hundreds of them, thousands, millions even. They were like birds, all calling his name. Nico, Nico, Nico. He would have covered his ears if he'd been able to move his arms. They were coming closer, the green eyes were their leaders. He knew those green eyes. He knew them. They were Percy's eyes. But Percy wasn't a bird…
Am I dying? he wondered as the blackness descended on the birds. Briefly he thought about Bianca, about his mother, and he realized that he wasn't afraid. And that scared him more than anything in the world, the fact that he wasn't afraid to die. Because now he knew just how far gone he was.
The last thing he saw before the blackness took all the birds away was the pair of shining green eyes.
Nico opened his eyes slowly. He could feel a prickling sensation on his arms, but his head was too heavy to raise it and see what was on his arms.
He remembered the cafeteria, the pizza that he hadn't been able to eat, and collapsing. He remembered the birds and the green eyes. But he didn't remember anything else, just the darkness. So where was he now?
Somewhere to his right he heard someone crying, but he didn't turn his head to look. He just closed his eyes again and willed the darkness to come back, because he'd rather feel nothing, remember nothing, than to feel this. It felt like everything was crushing him. He could feel his chest moving up and down, so why didn't he feel like he could breathe? The bright lights in the room hurt his eyes, even through his closed eyelids. He remembered wondering if he was dying, and as he lay there in an unfamiliar bed with a prickling sensation on his arms and bright lights and a feeling like he was being crushed he wondered why he hadn't died, and for a brief second he wished he had.
He opened his eyes again when he heard a chair scraping the floor, and a second later Persephone's face appeared above him. Her cheeks were wet with tears, and he thought it was unfair that she still looked gorgeous even with tear-filled eyes. Most people's eyes looked bloodshot and their faces streaky when they cried, but Persephone just looked like a wet flower. Nico didn't know how, but she did.
For once he couldn't compare her to his mother. He'd never seen his mother cry. She wouldn't be crying now, either. She was stronger than Persephone.
"Nico!" Persephone gasped, and pressed a button next to his bed. He shut his eyes again as her voice shot pain through his head. A few seconds later he heard shoes on a tile floor, but he didn't open his eyes. "He was awake," he heard Persephone say.
"Nico?" a woman's voice said. He assumed it was a nurse. He felt her put her hand on his shoulder. "Nico, can you hear me?"
He opened his eyes again, but squinted against the bright lights. The nurse had hair so blonde it was almost white, and her eyes were bright green, but darker than Percy's. She smiled at him.
"Hi, Nico, I'm Caroline," she said. He didn't say anything, just stared at her. "How are you feeling?" He still didn't say anything. He fought off the urge to close his eyes again. Caroline's voice was too loud to his ears, even though he could tell she was speaking quietly. "I'm going to go get a doctor and your father, okay?" She didn't wait for an answer, just patted his shoulder and walked out of the room.
Persephone had put a hand over her mouth, and now she let out a sob. Why are you crying? he thought. What happened to you? I'm the one in a hospital bed. But he didn't say anything, just stared up at the ceiling.
He had to stay in the hospital for a week, and went to mandatory therapy the next day. It wasn't Dr. Willis, the one he'd had two years before, it was a woman named Toni Murray and he hated her even more than he'd hated Dr. Willis.
Nico's father took him out of school and he finished seventh grade online.
Okay, anyone who read The Sadness Of Mistakes already knows this, but I'm not actually supposed to have a FF account. I asked my mother about a year and a half ago if I could get one and she said no. So I went ahead and made one anyway. But my internet at home is monitored, so I have to do all my FF stuff at the local library.
I know I promised to upload on Mondays, and I'm trying to keep to that promise, but it was Labor Day yesterday and the library was closed. But so far I haven't come up with any problems that there might be next Monday, so I should be able to upload. If for some reason I can't, I'm so so so sorry. But I promise that I will try my best to upload every Monday, and if I can't there will be a good reason.
I loved writing this chapter, I loved the part when Percy saw Nico and was trying to wake him up.
Story time! I go for a walk every night at like 9 o'clock. I go to the playground and sit on the swing for like half an hour and then walk home. So a few days ago I was sitting on the swing and I look over and think, "Huh, that's a really big dog." It wasn't a dog. About twenty feet away from me was this big black bear. I know black bears aren't really dangerous, but it was still scary.
First day of school was today. My first class is Biology, which is on the third floor. But I have the greatest Bio teacher in the world, I had him last year for Physical Science (which is different from Physics). Actually today he asked me if he could use my lab book from last year as an example of a good lab book. I'm not quite sure why he asked, did he really think I was going to say no?
My Advanced Ancient World teacher wasn't there. There was a sub. First day of school and he's got a sub already.
Culinary was awesome, I'm so excited for the rest of that class. We're going to make all these different things, I can't wait to learn some new recipes.
I hope you guys had good first days (unless you didn't already start school).
I promise I will do everything I can to make sure I upload next Monday. Hope you liked the chapter. Review!
