Still working on the rights to Percy Jackson but I don't think it's gonna happen. So disclaimer again. I don't own it. But past that. On with the story!

Chapter Five WiseGirl36

Contrary to popular belief Percy actually liked to read.

Somehow, for some weird reason, all of his fans had gotten the idea that he didn't like it at all, that fact always got Percy confused. Did having Dyslexia mean that you automatically hated reading? Because he didn't. Books were like music, a well written book spoke to people just like a well played song spoke to you. He found them similar.

Music and Words. Hence why he went into song writing. They seemed to fit well together. And he had so many words stuck in his brain from those letters.

Sometimes he would wonder what would have happened to him if he had never read those letters, if he never knew that somewhere there was a girl fighting just as hard as he was to keep her chin up, to not disappoint everyone, who felt the world on their shoulder.

W4W: The World hurts. Especially when it's all on your shoulders. So why not let someone else take the burden every once and a while. There are people that will. Or maybe they'll even carry you while you're carrying the weight of the world. Those are the people who love you. So love them back. Let them help you. Fight together, not apart.

When he was traveling through Europe with Nico after they got out of highschool, a man in Rome taught him how to play the guitar. And from then on he played and played until his fingers bled from the blisters and calluses that came with the territory. And then he started humming. Humming along to the songs he played, little ditties that he had made up. And then, he wrote. He wrote down the words that had been haunting him ever since he had graduated from Goode High.

Yes he had actually graduated. After that first letter, he decided that maybe a good education could do something for you. Maybe.

The first song, Weight of the Worlds, came out later that year. He had recorded it in a small record shop in Poland, sitting on a stool, strumming his guitar while Nico filmed it with his flip phone and all the Polish people smiled and nodded their heads to the music as if they knew what he was saying. And maybe they did.

Music seemed to connect people in ways that the words couldn't.

When the Weight of the Worlds went viral, it was an overnight sensation. Percy was given a one way, first class ticket to New York to meet with Olympian Records. They couldn't wait to get their hands on the boy who apparent made girls faint in their living rooms while watching the video. (There was actually a video and news report about this as Percy later found out).

He went from a boy backpacking across Europe to a worldwide sensation, concerts were sold out, records reached platinum, his songs hit number one on all the charts.

And he owed it all to her. To the girl with the pen that wrote those letters to him.

If she hadn't… well he'd still probably have fresh scars on his arms and cigarettes in his back pocket and his mom worrying if he'd even make it home at night.

Now she didn't have to worry, Sally Jackson was living in a beautiful apartment with her new boyfriend, Paul Bolfis who Percy approved of, even though it wasn't his dad.

But all that went to say, Percy liked reading. There was no doubt about it. He'd even write some things himself, even though he was a terrible writer except with his song lyrics, and even then they weren't fully his.

But it led him to Writer's Corner, a large website devoted to people who dreamed about writing as they sat at their computers, typing away at different worlds. It almost gave Percy chills to think just how many undiscovered worlds were in that computer.

Reaching for his blue coke which was always at his elbow, he logged onto his account, GreenEyes&BlueCoke, cliché he knew, but it worked. No one would suspect the great Percy Jackson, the international sensation to be on Writer's Corner. After all, he seemed too cool to write. But he liked the website, he liked reading all the stories.

There was a new alert. One girl was breaking records left and right and through the window with one of her stories, in only a few hours she had at least a thousand views. The website called her their magic maker, one of the best writers of their time. Curious Percy clicked on the name: WiseGirl36.

For her user picture it showed a picture of a girl, a piece of paper pressed against the glass of the window, her face unrecognizable, the sunlight pouring over her (Percy didn't think it was cliché like his name was cliché, it was pure, simple and beautiful… oh gods did he really just say beautiful? He never used that word). She was scrawling something down with a piece of paper. The caption read: A Writer at Work, Oblivious to Any Life but the One She's Writing. It was a long caption but Percy guessed that it fit the picture.

The new story was called: The Letter Writer and the premise of it struck him as incredibly familiar. He opened up to the first page and began to read:

The girl stood in front of the library book shelves which seemed bigger now, a letter clutched in her hand. No one thought it was strange after all, the girl was frequent in the library at her highschool. But this time it was different. This time she was clutching the letter in her hands. Clutching the letter so tight that it was slightly crumpling in her small fist. But no one noticed.

After all why would they? Why would they care what she was going through? It's not as if they knew about it, it's not as if they could tell. If they really knew what was whirling through the girl's mind then they'd be crying and fawning over her.

She didn't want them to treat her like she was a dead girl walking.

The wax from the envelope was slowly melting from the pressure as she looked at the books, dying it red. It was now or never, she told herself. If she didn't do it now, she wouldn't work up her courage to do it again. Her hands shaking she pulled out the book she had decided on. An old book about the Revolutionary War which she had used a few weeks ago for a research paper.

It was fitting for two reasons. The first was that she felt like she was rebelling, rebelling against the stereotypes in life, like the fact that her parents thought she would break every moment of the day. The second was that it was the book she had been reading in the Waiting Room that day… the day when she found out.

Opening the book to the middle, she gently slipped the letter into place and then closed it softly and pushed it back into its spot. She turned on her heels, anxious to get out of the library before she changed her mind and snatched the envelope back.

The girl had decided to do it when she realized that she didn't have that much longer. Cancer did that to you. It ruined all the plans you had for your life, she found out. Especially when it was terminal and you weren't expected to have that much longer to live. Only four years at max. Not even enough time to finish college.

It was strange, she thought, knowing that you were nearing death. It was as if someone had put a counter, a timer on her life. And each day it ticked, closer and closer, lower and lower to that dreaded zero. But she wasn't scared of Death. No she was scared that no one would miss her. That no one would care if she died.

She had many friends, she had a boyfriend that cared about her, that loved her, and two parents that at least were willing to spend money on her, but were they going to cry their hearts out when she was gone, were they going to scream at God and ask why he took her away, were they going to bang their head against her coffin, begging to just wake up like she'd read in a book. Were they going to pinch themselves and try to convince themselves that it was only a dream?

Or would they cry a little and then move on? Forget all about her?

So she wrote the letter and placed it in the envelope, sealed is shut and placed it in a book. Maybe someone would find it and read it, maybe they would care. She could only hope, all she had was hope. She had never been too loud before. Always quiet, always going with the flow, always in the background. She wasn't popular but she wasn't hated. She was just there.

Just another student in high school.

But she didn't want to be just another student. She wanted to be someone.

And now she wouldn't have time to be loud. Time was one thing that could never, ever be on her side. Her time was running out, it was draining faster and faster. And that letter…

Well that letter was her last hope.

Percy sat back in his chair. Who wrote like this? He was numb as he read the words again, slower as if to make certain that he didn't miss anything. He didn't want to. No wonder she was breaking records all over the place. This book wasn't about sex or drugs, he could already tell. It wasn't about vampires and werewolves. It was about life. It was raw, it was emotional, and it was passion. It was fire. It was change. Why couldn't people write like this anymore?

He clicked on the next arrow to go to the next chapter. Percy leaned back in his chair and began to read again.

The boy found it.

He didn't mean to really.

It was part of his detention for spitting gum at one of the teachers while his back was turned, it was the one with the mustache who couldn't clean the dried up spittle from all of his yelling, the one who taught his pre-calc class, which he was retaking… again. And so he was on "community service" or whatever the principal called it. He really couldn't get kicked out of the school, not with his father being one of the biggest bigwigs in the city. And also a large donor to the school.

So he had to put the books back where they belonged which was tedious and annoying. He didn't want to spend any more time in the library than he had to. He'd lose his reputation which he had worked so hard to earn.

It was while he was in the history section that one of the old books on the Revolutionary War had fallen out onto the floor. When he went to pick it up he noticed something white sticking out of the pages. Needless to say, he was curious. All boys were after all.

It was a letter.

He thought that letters didn't exist anymore. Why write a letter when you could text or email faster than you could pull out a sheet of paper and pen? But he opened it anyway. It was addressed to him anyway: To Whom it May Concern. And this letter concerned him.

Or else it wouldn't have fallen out onto the floor.

It was fate. Or whatever those sappy romance novels his sister read called it.

Dear Sir, Madam, or Otherwise,

I don't know why I'm doing this.

I honestly don't.

Maybe it's because I had to get out of the house and away from my mother who keeps looking at me like she'll cry or something every time she sees me, or like I'm going to break every time I sneeze or say I'm tired. Honestly I'm not that weak yet. But I'm getting there… or at least that's what the doctors told me.

I'm writing this letter so that I can use my voice, I've always had a fondness for words but I'm a gods awful writer. But I want to share, hopefully with someone who cares, all the words that have been haunting my mind and I'm sorry but you'll have to bear with my writing ability. I'm not one to speak up in class, or use my voice, so I decided I might as well use pen and paper. And no before you ask, I'm not mute.

I just have cancer.

Wow. Reality really hits you when you see those words written on a page. I have cancer. It's in my Thyroid, or more it started there, but it's spreading and they can't exactly chop off my head like they can a leg can they? Oh and it's terminal. I have at least four more years to live… at the most. At the least… two. And if you do the math, at the middle would mean three. Haha… okay so maybe it's not funny to laugh about Death. I thought it was funny. But what do I care?

I'm dying anyway.

I'm ready to go.

Once I finish these letters that is. I don't want to leave anything undone.

Want to know a secret? I'm not scared. I mean I know it'll be painful, but I'm not scared of the pain. I'm trying to tell myself it's just going to be a new adventure. And I'm sick of the one I'm in right now. The one where I'm the perfect daughter whose parents only started noticing her once they heard that she was going to die, perfect student, friend, and girlfriend of course. And guess what? You, out of all those people, are the first to know. Well other than my parents of course, they were in the doctor's room.

So what are you going to do with this letter? Are you going to laugh? Throw it away? Or are you going to keep it? I challenge you. Keep it. Every time you look at it, think of it as a promise to me. We'll both fight, because I know that everyone has some fight they're trying to win. If you stay strong, I won't give up.

I promise.

Thoughts for the Humble: Death is not the end. Life is not the beginning. It's all one story that we live through. We may not know it yet, but there are adventures we have come from, and adventures we will go to.

P.S. You'll find the next letter in The Complete Works of Flannery O'Connor.

The boy looked at the letter as if it was written in foreign words, numbness seeping through his body. What was this? Was it a joke? Who would leave something like this? Surely it was a joke. No. No. No one would write something like this without meaning it.

There was someone in this school dying.

And no one but he knew it.

Carefully placing the letter back into the envelope, not wanting to ruin it, he slipping it into his pocket and turned around. He left the library that day without finishing his job. Sorting books seemed too menial when there was a girl out there, dying right now.

Percy didn't want to stop.

But Nico interrupted him.

"What are you reading?" Nico asked, coming in from the elevator which led right into his apartment. He was jingling his keys and whistling while he walked. "I hope it's the new lyrics you're writing," he hinted. Percy shook his head.

"I'm going for a walk," he announced. "I'll be back later." He grabbed his coat and his phone and hurried out the door, goosebumps still rising on his skin.

Outside he could think. Outside he could hear himself. He was still numb from reading that story. Yes the Percy Jackson brought to shock by a story on the computer. Another thing you didn't see every day. But he couldn't help it.

The whole story that this WiseGirl36 was writing, it was his story! Well not the cancer part, but the letters, the promise to live, there was even a section called Thoughts for the Humble, which was so similar to Words for the Wise, something he had grown to miss.

Could she be the girl that he had met by reading her story in her letters? He snorted. That was an utterly stupid idea. He was just jumping to conclusions. It was probably some old sap sitting at her computer typing away frivolous words.

After all fate and destiny really didn't exist in the bustle of New York City.