There was one agonising moment of shocked silence. Then, like birds who had been tied down for too long, they surged forwards. She and Percy collided with enough force to move mountains. Annabeth was acutely aware of the heavy, painful silence that had fallen over the students in the immediate vicinity, but she couldn't give a damn. Who cared if anyone was watching? What did it matter? Because, oh Gods of Olympus, he was here and he was so, so real. The face that had been imprinted behind her eyelids, engraved in her brain, was no longer just a face in her dreams. Here he was with her. Everything would be all right now. How, how she had longed for this. How she had missed.
The world was falling away. None of it mattered. None of it was important when Percy's heart beat beneath, her fingers, when his lips where on hers, and his arms around her. They could have been falling down through the desperate pits of Night and she wouldn't have known, wouldn't have cared. Somewhere in the midst of her chaotic euphoria, she had the presence of mind to wonder back to Camp Jupiter. Would she judo flip him again? She doubted it. There was nothing more important anymore than the feel of her Percy, her Seaweed Brain, entwined around her, the heat that radiated off the person that dwelled in the largest part of her heart. This might be why people chose to drink, she supposed, to intoxicate themselves. It meant to lose touch completely with the harsh truths and realities of the world, and wrap oneself in a fabricated net of illusions of safety.
Except this wasn't an illusion. Oh Gods, oh Gods, this was real. This was the here and the now, and no one could take this from her.
It turned out that these delicate, dizzying moments could easily be taken from her. All it might take, for instance, was the shrill call of a teacher's whistle to shatter this loss of control. The sound resounded through the hallway, bouncing off empty walls and amplifying itself by so much that most students clamped their hands firmly over their ears, for fear of sustaining ear damage. In fact, the noise was so shrill that it seems to Annabeth that she could still hear a faint ringing in her ears several hours later.
A short, stout man in bright orange tracksuits dropped the whistle and surveyed the event before him.
"What, may I ask, is this?" The words of the teacher were accompanied by a poorly concealed sneer and a voice dripping with malice and contempt. He made it quite clear what he thought of the scene he had just witnessed. Several of the students snorted with a sort of vindictive pleasure, further confirming Annabeth's suspicions that the great majority of kids at this dump of a school were cruel sadists who had nothing better to do than laugh at other people's pain. Di immortales, how could anyone be so shallow?
It was strange, though how little these words got to Annabeth. The arrival of her boyfriend had given her a burst of strength, the feeling that she truly was worthy of the name she had earned for herself after both wars. She wasn't going to let another vile, good-for-nothing mortal irk her with a few cheap insults and shallow threats get under her skin.
So as the teacher stood there staring, impatient for an answer, she found the capacity to stay calm, to deign not to reply. Percy squeezed her hand, reminding her that she was never alone in a fight, be it with teachers or monsters. Apparently bored with the lack of influence he was having over the demigods, the man turned on his heel and jogged back the way he'd come. Annabeth looked at Percy. They started to laugh.
Annabeth couldn't sleep. The clock ticked on and on, round and round, almost hypnotic, if she gazed at it for too long. It could help her sleep, Annabeth suppose, if she stared at it for long enough. But in reality, she was afraid to sleep. She knew it would only lead to the nightmares, the ghosts that chased her each day. Every day.
At some stage, Annabeth was forced to face the fact that this was just going to be another long, long night. Which would inevitably be followed by another long, long day. At least Percy would be there, she reminded herself. Maybe this school wouldn't be like all the others if she had her boyfriend with her. Perhaps for one year, one glorious year, she might just pull through.
Content to listen to the sounds of the world around her, Annabeth stared at the crack of light that had begun to filter through her curtains. All around her, the city had begun to wake up. Commuters, hopping into taxis and cars. Buses, zipping from one end of town to the other. Shops, opening again for a day of business. And they were all so undoubtably normal. The workers, the drivers, the shop-keepers, each one would live their whole life so blissfully ignorant of the true enormity of the world they lived in. It was cruel, Annabeth thought. So cruel that these people could live could live such a free, innocent life, while she staggered through each long day, all the while labouring under the undeniable prospect that she or her friends could die at any given moment.
Annabeth shook her face and rubbed her eyes. Well, if there had been no chance of sleep six hours ago, there was certainly none now. Especially not when she could hear her very mortal brothers beginning to stir somewhere down the hall, and her dad's heavy footsteps as he lumbered around in the kitchen as he set about making coffee.