A/N: Please comment and favorite if you like it! This one is a little longer than the last, and please let me know what you think of the little surprise at the end ;)
Nate Jackson was late for class. He'd overslept, his parents apparently hadn't felt the need to wake him up (though he really wished they had, he'd been having a terrible nightmare involving a girl that looked a lot like Hannah Bell, the closest thing he had to a nemesis.) They had pulled up the car into the school drive (well, his mother had, Nate was only twelve) at 7:59, one minute before the bell was supposed to ring. Nathan slung his backpack over his shoulder, took one last bite of his blue waffle, then sprinted across the grounds and into the school building. He ran though the hallways, nearly bumping into many people, and slid into his seat in the back of the Latin classroom at 8:01, exactly. Dang it, he thought, almost had it. As he sat down, next to him, Hannah snickered. He glared at her. They had never gotten along perfectly, and now was no exception. But he did have to wonder...the dream, the one she had seemed to be in...what was that about?
"Ah, Nate," said his teacher, Mr. Brunner, from the front of the room, "glad you came to join us today."
Nate was glad he'd been late to Mr. Brunner's class rather than any other, because Mr. Brunner had always seemed to favor Nate, along with that girl Hannah, the one from his nightmare. He was never sure why, though. I mean, Nate wasn't exactly a straight-A student. He had ADHD and dyslexia, and he'd been kicked out of six schools in as many years. But every time Mr. Brunner asked a question, he'd look at Nate and Hannah with his thousand-year-old eyes, as if he expected both of them to know the answer. And when neither of them did (he was pretty sure he had heard that Hannah had ADHD and dyslexia as well,) then Mr. Brunner would just look away, disappointed. It wasn't fair! Why didn't he push the other kids like that?
Nate snapped out of his thoughts. "Um, hi, Mr. Brunner. Sorry, I overslept a little bit..." He replies, abashed. "I'll just, um, get out my homework."
But as he bent down to get his homework, the strangest thing happened. A wave of images washed over him, and they were almost like memories...except nothing like that had ever happened to Nate in his lifetime. There was that blond Hannah-ish girl again, telling him he drooled in his sleep. A boy with only one eye, calling Nate "Percy" and claiming they were brothers. The one thing he recognized, a woman that looked a lot like his mother giving him a blue chocolate chip cookie. A girl, who appeared to be deathly sick, but saying she could see the stars again. A bubble underwater, where he and the girl were kissing. That all flashed through his mind in an instant, leaving him dizzy and nauseous. "A-Annabeth..." Nate managed to get out. "It's me..." And then everything went black.
When Nate woke up, he was in the nurse's office, laying down in the bed. That was the good part-sleeping during school. The bad part was that he was next to Hannah Bell, and she was already sitting up. She must have fainted too. "You alright?" He asked her, finding it weird that the same thing had happened to both of them. He'd almost made it this whole year without an incident, and now, on the last day of school? Man, his life sucked.
"You drool in your sleep," she replied, and Nate gasped.
Where had he heard those words before? They sounded hauntingly familiar...but he just couldn't figure out why! This whole blackout thing was a mess. At least lunch was next, so Nate could go talk to one of his few friends, Cameron. Nate was sure he would be in a good mood, ready to listen, because it was enchilada day. Wow, did that boy love enchiladas.
Hannah and he were silent for the rest of the time they were in the nurse's office, and when she deemed them ready, she sent them to lunch. They didn't talk to each other at all, and as they both walked into the cafeteria door, she sniffed and went to join her friends, including another guy with an enchilada obsession. Weird, right? You would think there was only one in every school.
As Nate went to join Cameron at their table, he wondered if he even should tell Cam. I mean, Cam might think Nate had gone insane! He could lose the only friend he had, and he really didn't want that. But he decided to tell him, because if there was one thing Nate was certain of, it was that he would stand by his friends, no matter what. Even if death was threatening. And he needed to trust his friends to do the same. So when Cam arrived at the table, holding (surprise, surprise) an enchilada, Nate proceeded to tell him all the events of the morning. He explained about the rush of memories, but as he tried to explain specific moments, they kept slipping out of his grasp, as if he were trying to keep hold of an eel in the water. He explained how he had heard a name...Annabeth, how he had said it right before he blacked out. When he finished the story, Cam didn't look shocked, or afraid, he only looked hopeful.
"No," Cam muttered under his breath. "It can't be..."
"What? What is it?" Nate asked, totally oblivious. He had no idea what was going on, and somewhere in the back of his head, he knew he should've been worried, because Cameron seemed to know exactly what was happening.
"Nothing. It's nothing. But I could've sworn..." Cam picked up his tray and left the table, straightening his rasta style cap as he went.
Nate sighed. He was on his own again. Well, what was new. He lived with his parents, always living under the shadow of his twelve year older half brother, who died tragically right before Nate had been born. His parents refused to mention his name, and Nate never asked. And now, after Cameron had left, he realized that he needed to talk to his mother, to have her help him deal with whatever these flashbacks were.
Nate went through the rest of the day in a daze, taking P.E. class (without Cam, as he had a note excusing himself from it for life,) and struggling through English and math. When it was finally time, the end of the last day of school, he jumped into his mom's car and was silent the whole way home. When they arrived at their apartment, his father, Paul, wasn't there. He must've still been finishing up his job at school as a teacher. So after Nate set down his stuff and flopped on the couch, his mom came over and sat next to him. She always knew when something was wrong.
"Well, mom..." He explained everything that had happened in Latin class, all the memories he could recall. The names, Percy, Annabeth. By the time he had finished, his mother was staring at him, a tear running down her cheek.
"Oh...it can't...how did this..." She stuttered, trying to find the right words. For Sally Jackson suspected something of this second son, but she could hardly date to bring herself to hope.