Annabeth

by Jack Beach

One moment, sometimes that is all it takes to change the lives of dozens- even thousands of people. One day Annabeth Chase finds out she is not like the average girls who attend Goode High School, and when a boy with green eyes tries his damndest to show her that isn’t all bad, will she listen? Or will this all end in flames?

A/N: Hey guys! I know a new story probably wasn't what you were expecting if you're a longtime reader but this has been rattling around in my head for months now and I had to get the damn thing out! Over all I like this first chapter a lot and hope you do too!

Annabeth Chase hated the wide eggshell-colored walls of Goode High School. She hated the pearlescent mirror-like shine of the gym floor. And most of all, she hated the ever present presence of the student body that had labeled her a pariah ever since she had arrived.

The boys often made fun of her for being thin, pale, and quiet. The girls ridiculed her for her mother's overbearing zeal that seemed to follow her everywhere in the oversized sweaters, bulky pairs of jeans, and large dresses that concealed her figure.

"You look like a skeleton under a tablecloth, Annie!"

"You need a fucking sandwich."

"Why don't you have any friends, Annie?!"

"Eat shit, Annie!" That one hadn't been particularly creative.

She'd heard it all. The disgorged angry vitriol of the masses seemed to chip away more and more at her every day. But she never said anything. All for the carefully crafted facade her mother, Athena Chase, wished to keep in place.

Annabeth hated every second of school from the minute she moved from San Francisco to Upstate New York in elementary school. She hated the little town of Rome they'd moved to. And she hated taking the medicine her mother made her take.

"It's for your own good, Annabeth. Don't you want to be a good girl?"

"Yes, Mama," Annabeth whispered as she took her medicine, not wanting to be locked in the closet for disobedience.

"Chase!" Coach Hedge shouted, startling Annabeth from her dazed and drowsy memories.

"Y-Yes, Coach Hedge?" Annabeth's quivering gray stare seemed vacant in its almost lost and perturbed gaze.

"Hit the showers!" His angry stare sent the haze in her eyes away, turning them from lazy, half-lidded dull nickels, to wide frightened silver dollars.

"Showers?" Annabeth asked, looking down.

Coach Hedge looked greatly frustrated, his glare conveying he'd rather be anywhere other than talking to her; his nostrils flared, reminding Annabeth of a raging bull. "That's right, cupcake," he yelled," Showers! You're a big girl now in high school, and you've gotta hit the showers."

"Don't forget, Annabeth. Only dirty girls take their clothes off in front of other people. Only whores act indecently." Her mother's voice echoed behind her eyes.

"But Momma said…"

"I don't care what your mama says! If you want your credit in P.E., you need to shower like everyone else. Did you hear any of the other kids complain?"

"No, sir," Annabeth quavered, her eyes cast downward as she slowly marched toward the girls' locker room.

The lime green tile of the locker room was damp and slick with the condensation from multiple shower heads in use. Girls laughed, squealed, and chattered, making Annabeth grow tense at their imminent scrutiny. Steeling her resolve, she removed her shirt, bra, shorts, and underwear.

Looking down at the gently swelling mass of her breast, Annabeth could hear her mother's voice again, "only dirty girls get those Annabeth! If you have them you must be a bad girl, so what have you been doing Annabeth?"

"No mama, I haven't been bad I swear!"

"You're lying Annabeth, you're lying and you're keeping the truth from your mother!You need time to think about what you've done!" She'd locked Annabeth in the closet for six hours for her perceived lies.

Annabeth gulped, looking away from her own breasts and stepped forward; her heart hammered in shaky fear of the other girl's reactions.

As she walked past other girls, the shower heads shuddered and pulsated with water pressure; the drains gurgled as water disappeared down them. A few girls threw her sneering glances before they blanched and looked her up and down.

Annabeth frowned as she caught these reactions. The girls began to turn in mass with looks of shocked disbelief. At first Annabeth was very confused by their reactions, but when she finally summoned up the courage to look at some of the other girls, her frown deepened.

'What? '

The other girls had very similar bodies to hers, if not a little healthier where weight was concerned. Soft swelling curves at the chest and hips were no new sight to Annabeth, but what puzzled her was that every single girl was missing something she had.

"Annie's a boy!" A girl, Drew Tanaka, yelled pointing and laughing at Annabeth. Now all eyes were firmly on her as girls began to gather, confirming a horrible realization. None of the girls had anything between their legs.

But Annabeth did.

Shrieking girls surrounded Annabeth. A hard slippery thing impacted her cheek eliciting a pained cry as a bruise began to form, and then more and more of the objects pelted her all over leaving bruises. Her gray eyes darted around uncomprehendingly as the girls began to chant in unison.

"Annie's a boy!"

"Annie's a boy!"

"Annie's a boy!"

Annabeth's vision distorted, turning into a long tunnel that was fraying at the edges. The chants of the girls seemed to be miles away and yet they were thundering right against her eardrums. Annabeth shouted incoherently clutching at her head.

A stray object hit her chest sending a jolt of pain up her spine, when she looked down she saw bars of soap accumulated at her feet. And then she saw the cluster of fresh white to red welts forming bruises along her pale smooth skin.

A bubbling scream of anguish ripped from her throat as her head seemed to split in two and lights burst above her. The girls around her screamed in surprise and pain as they stepped on shards of glass.

Third person P.O.V

"What's going on in here?" The voice of Hestia Olympia, the girls basketball coach, called from the shower room entrance. Her bright auburn hair was pulled into a tight ponytail, exposing her sharp jawline that was accentuated by her deep amber eyes.

"Ms. Hestia!" Drew chortled clearly having the time of his life as she looked down on the blonde girl. "Annie here has a dick!"

"Language!" Hestia yelled back immediately, but what she had heard processed in her mind and she ran forward, taking a closer look at the girl in the middle of the circle.

Small pink-nippled breasts poked out from the shaking girl's chest; her smooth white skin shuddered in fear and cold. Hestia looked farther down to the widened hips and saw that there was indeed a penis there.

"Oh my," the teacher whispered before rushing to the far wall of the room and grabbing a towel. Then she rushed back over, grabbed the girl or boy and wrapped the towel around him or her. "Here dear, keep this on."

"W-W-What's going on?" the frightened blonde asked, looking up at the woman with such big gray eyes they seemed to be dinner plates.

The teacher's heart seemed to shatter then and there, looking at the child's lost and confused expression.

"All of you," Hestia thundered, her face a red mask of anger and disgust," get out of here and go to your lockers! The day is over; I'll be seeing all of you very soon to discuss punishments! I can guarantee you that!"

Hestia led Annabeth from the shower room to collect her clothes and walked her up to the principal's office by the shoulders. The halls passed in streaks of gold, red, and white that lined the walls. A few students watched dumbfounded as Hestia, the local "easygoing teacher", glared at anyone who got too close and tried to divert her path.

The main office passed in a blur of a secretary squawking in surprise at their passing, and then they passed a few perplexed office workers as they approached the principal's office. The light oak texture of the door seemed even more jarring with a dark black nameplate emblazoned with golden letters that read "Principal Dionysus".

Hestia's quick, sharp knocks on the door startled Annabeth, who jumped at the sudden noise.

"Come in," the principal's drawn-out, disinterested voice called from the other side, making the coach set her jaw angrily.

The office walls were painted a vibrant purple, while the carpet was a garish golden shag that looked extremely difficult to clean. Behind the desk, a slightly rotund man with tight curly black hair, a scraggly unkempt beard, and a loud purple suit with a leopard print tie sat.

"Ah, Ms. Olympia," the principal sighed, scratching at his beard,"to what do I owe the pleasure of your presence?"

"Sir, there was an incident in the girls' locker room," Hestia sighed, pressing the back of her hand against her forehead. "Quite frankly, sir, I don't know what to do."

The principal cast his gaze over to the student whose hand was still on the shoulder of. He quirked an eyebrow and said, "Let me guess; she has something to do with this?"

"No, er, yes. It's complicated. Ms. Chase here had a bit of an... upsetting shock."

He quirked an eyebrow at that,"What, is this a game show where you say cryptic things and I have to decipher them?"

Taking in an annoyed breath, Hestia huffed and dropped all pretense. "The girls took their first communal shower, and when Ms. Chase walked in, they all started screaming and pelting her with soap bars."

"Quite the overreaction. What'd you do, kid? Hide all their clothes and turn all the shower handles to cold?"

"Sir, they started yelling because she has a penis."

Whatever he had been expecting to hear, that had obviously not been on his long list, as soon as he heard it Principal Dionysus' eyes grew wide and his mouth flew open, "What?"

Hestia nodded, chewing on her bottom lip. "I know. I was very shocked, too."

The principal exhaled heavily, sitting back in his chair, and digging his palms into his closed eyes. "Jesus Christ, this is going to be a shit-show." Quickly sitting forward and clasping his hands primly on the hardwood of his desk, he looked to the student. "You, if you knew you weren't a girl, why did you go in the girls' locker room?"

Annabeth looked appalled and affronted. "I am a girl! Mama said so!"

Both adults blanched at her. Clearly something was wrong here. If the girl was transgender, her mother would have said so to her and by extension told the school so something exactly like this wouldn't happen.

"Honey," Hestia said, squeezing Annabeth's shoulder and giving her a gentle smile, "girls don't typically have the things you have down there. But clearly you've been on hormones; in every way except down there, you are a girl."

Annabeth had the widest look of shock on her face. She looked down at her delicate thin fingers as if she expected them to burst into flames at any moment. "Mama lied to me?"

Both adults looked very uncomfortable at one another.

"Ah, Ms. Olympia, I think we can send Ms. Case here home for the day." The look of discomfort on the principal's rosy-cheeked face would have been funny, if the situation hadn't been so horrible.

"Chase," she corrected, "Annabeth Chase, and I think that would be for the best."

"Right," he nodded, reaching into his desk and pulling out a pink form. "In the meantime, you'll need to make a report on what happened. List all the names of the students who assaulted her, and I'll let you hand out any punishments you think might be necessary."

Hestia nodded, taking the form in her hands.

The principal looked over to the hyperventilating blonde and tried to give her a reassuring smile, but it fell very flat as his uncaring eyes betrayed him," Do you need your mother to come and get you, Annabel?"

"That's not my name!" She shouted.

The sudden noise startled the principal, making him jerk back in his chair and Hestia jump as if someone had suddenly burned her. Overhead, another light shattered, startling the two adults even further.

Dionysus turned a stern gaze upon her, "I understand you're upset, but that is no excuse to shout at your elders. Is that understood?"

Annabeth looked down at her worn white tennis shoes that had turned a dusty gray with age. "Yes, sir. And no, I don't need a ride home; I live right on Roberts Street."

The principal shook his head, waving her off with a hand. Once she had left, he turned to the coach. "You know some of those girls are going to tell their parents all about what happened today, right?" He paused, looking thoughtful. "And then there's what that 'girl's' mother is going to say."

"Don't say 'girl' like that," Hestia glared at him, before turning her attention back to the scene she had walked in on earlier. "I still can't believe the way some of those girls were acting. Drew Tanaka and her crowd, I can understand, but I saw Rachel Dare yelling at her too, and she's typically one of the best-behaved girls here."

Dionysus tapped a finger on his desk, nodding. "Well, write down the names of all the girls for now, and we'll go from there."

Hestia nodded and left the office to begin filling out the paperwork.

Percy's P.O.V

The clock ticked over Ms. Dodds' desk, driving Percy insane. He wished the day would just be over already.

"Pssst, Percy!" Connor Stoll half-whispered, half-shouted at him from the seat behind him.

"What?" Percy turned back a bit irritated.

"You'll never believe what Drew said happened in gym."

"I don't believe anything Drew says anymore," Percy sighed, turning to face forward and continuing to brood over his math homework.

"It's about that weird Annabeth girl! Well, I guess not 'girl'." Connor snickered to himself at some joke he'd made.

'Annabeth? Isn't that the girl who's always wearing baggy clothes and people always make fun of?' Really Percy didn't even need to think about it, the minute he heard the name he knew they could only be taking about one person.

"What do you mean by that?"

"Drew said she's got a dick! Fuckin' crazy, right?" Connor laughed and shook his head.

"A dick? So what? You and I have dicks too, dude." Percy sighed. Obviously he understood why everyone thought this was such big news, but honestly, who cared? Just leave the poor girl alone.

Connor stared at Percy as if he'd grown a second head."What do you mean 'so what'? It's crazy; this whole time we all thought she was a girl and turns out she's a guy!"

Percy shrugged, resting his chin on his hand. "She's a girl, as far as I can tell." He said. "I mean, she's short, thin, has a pretty face, and boobs. Sounds like a girl to me."

"B-but the dick!"

"Dude, if you don't like that, then stop talking about it; I mean, it's not like anyone's forcing you to talk or think about it," he grumbled, turning back.

Percy sat very uninterested in his homework now. Even if he didn't want to admit it, he was very put out by the news; on more than one occasion, he had thought Annabeth was a very pretty girl. Even now, it was hard to reconcile the image he'd had of her in his head with the new reality.

'A dick, huh?' Percy snorted, continuing to work on his math homework.

Percy obviously knew about transgender people; it's hard not to in this day and age. But knowing about them and knowing one in person felt a bit different. He didn't think he would treat her any differently, in fact he was still thinking about her as a girl. But obviously, it wasn't like he had any reason to think differently of her in the first place; she hadn't done anything wrong, after all.

Besides, he'd treated her with the same mild interest he had since she had moved to the quiet little town when they were in elementary school. Back then, he'd thought she was a cute girl with her sunny blonde hair pulled up into haphazard pigtails and her clear sparkling gray eyes filled with a wanting need to learn. Now, she was a beautiful slim girl with long golden hair that she wore around her shoulders in loose princess curls. Sure, she wasn't as curvy as someone like Drew Tanaka or Silena Beauregard, but they were both cheerleaders, so that was an unfair comparison. Besides, she often wore large clothes anyway, so it was hard to get a feel for how shapely she was or wasn't.

'Oh God! I need to stop thinking about this; I'm starting to sound like a fucking chaser. Besides, I've already got a girlfriend, so I shouldn't be thinking about another person.' The bell rang, releasing Percy from the prison that was Algebra 2 and his captive mind.

The halls were packed as usual with the annoying bulk of the student body. Upperclassmen jostled and shoved their way through younger kids, not paying any attention to whether or not one of them had caught the odd elbow.

"Hey! Percy!" Rachel shouted, waving at him with an inscrutable expression on her face that caused her lips to pull downward. Her freckled cheeks were flushed, and her messy red hair was more frizzy than usual.

"What's up, Red," Percy laughed when she scowled at him from beneath her lashes.

"Stop calling me that!"

"And I keep telling you, I will when it stops being funny. Where are we going anyway? I know you wanted to go out on a date after school."

"Right… about that," she trailed off, not meeting his gaze.

"What? Did something happen?"

"Percy," she sighed, clearly expecting him to have heard the news. And of course, he had.

"Shit, alright," Percy sighed dropping the pretense of beating around the bush," What was gym like? I bet it was a shock." Percy frowned, rubbing the back of his head awkwardly.

"W-we didn't exactly react… maturely," she sighed, not meeting his gaze.

Percy let his hand drop from the back of his head. "Rachel…"

"I know! But it was such a crazy situation, and then she started shouting, and then someone threw a bar of soup, and before I knew it, we were all yelling and throwing things."

Percy looked at his girlfriend in horror; he couldn't believe anyone could be so cruel. "Rachel, she didn't deserve any of that. For Christ's sake, it's just a bit of extra skin."

Rachel cried out, "I know!" as she buried her face in her hands. "But it just got so out of hand."

"Shit," Percy sighed, rubbing his forehead. "I think we should go over to her house and check on her."

"W-what?" Rachel paled, clearly not liking the sound of that.

"Yes, Rachel," Percy said very angrily, "what you guys did was fucked up. How would you feel if someone started yelling at you, pelting you with bars of soap while you're afraid and naked?"

"I understand, but I can't do it, Percy! I can't bear to see her after that!"

Percy blew out a frustrated breath and nodded stiffly," fine, I'll stop by her house and make sure she's alright."

It seemed as if Rachel might have said more, but she had thought better of it; her wide pale green eyes passed over Percy before she turned and left.

"Shit," Percy sighed, for the umpteenth time hearing his shoes squeak as he walked out the front door and onto the street.

Annabeth's P.O.V

The wide open street to her left hardly showed any signs of life aside from the errant car driving by, or the occasional child riding along on their bike past her.

Annabeth trod gracelessly along, her faded tennis shoes scraping the pavement and her long blue dress swaying with the wind. She had never thought much about how her panties chafed against her skin or how uncomfortable they made her feel, but now, as she walked, it was all her mind could focus on.

'Not a girl.' she thought, her eyes turning down and her teeth digging into her lower lip.

A small boy passed her on his bike, the handlebar dangerously close to clipping Annabeth's right elbow.

The boy called, "Move out of the way, you doofus!" His neck craned back to make a face at her.

'Little shit,' Annabeth thought, furiously wishing he would just slam into one of the trees that were to the left of her along the sidewalk.

Then, something strange happened. Annabeth could feel a familiar straining sensation in the back of her head, like a headache that was trying to form, but wasn't quite there yet. The feeling rubber-banded, the force ricocheting from the back of her head to out in front of her, and shot straight for the boy riding his bike.

Mid-guffaw, the boy shot to the left. His bike wobbled and veered dangerously before colliding with the tree. Both the boy and the bike hit the ground hard. The boy began to cry from the ground, shouting for his mother.

Annabeth blinked. Then she blinked again. There was no physical evidence to support her idea, but she thought that she had, somehow, caused the boy to crash. She could feel it; it was like what had happened in the showers and in Principal Dionysus' office only minutes earlier.

She smiled happily, despite the oddity of the situation; the boy had been taken care of quite well. It would teach the little snot not to go around just insulting people. So Annabeth continued walking, her mind still turbulent, but happy about having finally been able to do something to someone who had insulted her.

The black tar shingled roofs of Mrs. Angela and Ms. Gretchen's houses sparkled under the midday sun, with the odd reflective properties the material often had. When Annabeth passed the red and white houses respectively, she had uncomfortable and melancholic memories of staying in with Mrs. Angela when her mother had to go to work and Annabeth didn't have school.

Mrs. Angela was a nice enough woman. She was well into her eighties, and more often than not, she had Annabeth fix her moth-eaten sweaters and old church skirts with a needle and thread. The smell of mothballs and old people always gave Annabeth a headache and made her anxious to leave so that her fingers could have a respite from the constant clumsy poking of the sewing needle she used.

Ms. Gretchen was a bit younger than Mrs. Angela, but not by more than maybe ten years. Apparently, this age gap was large enough to warrant a different type of babysitting style, as more often than not they would just sit around in her house watching Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune.

Even though Annabeth didn't like the smell of Mrs. Angela's house, she did like sewing enough. The only reason she continued going over to Ms. Gretchen's house was because she had a large number of cats that Annabeth loved to pet.

"Hey! Annabeth!" A voice, soft yet firm and moderately deep, called to her from the direction she had left the school in.

Turning around, Annabeth caught sight of one of the few boys she often liked staring at; he had the prettiest eyes she had ever seen. Deep green, like stained church glass that shone when hit just right by the sunlight. His tan skin glowed in the sunlight, making his teeth stand out in their pearlescent shine when his grin stretched a bit wider than any innocent smile should be. His black curly hair was cut short around the sides and hung just out of his eyes in the front, making him almost constantly mess with it out of irritation. It was Percy Jackson.

Annabeth could feel her face go red for a moment as their eyes met, and then she looked away, "What?" she squeaked. Not at all forgetting who he was dating, and definitely not forgetting she had been one of the girls in the shower earlier.

He bent over, his hands on his knees as he panted. "You're a lot faster than you look. I mean, the school is just a few blocks away, but you're already almost at your house. I had to run the whole way."

Annabeth stared at him as he grinned up at her from his odd position, "Why did you stop me?"

He frowned and then made an "O" with his mouth, remembering what he had come for. "I heard what happened. In gym class."

Annabeth's face went red again, this time in embarrassment. "So you came to make fun of me?" She said it as a statement, a plainly stated fact, and there was no room in her voice for a plea that she might be wrong.

He frowned, "What? No, of course not. I'm not an asshole like that. I just…I mean, Rachel was there, and she told me about it. And I wanted to say I'm sorry it even happened. You didn't really deserve it. A girl shouldn't be treated like that."

"A girl?" Annabeth stared owlishly at him. Her schoolbooks, held loosely in her crossed arms, nearly slipped from her grip.

"Y-you know about it?" Annabeth gestured downward with her head, not wanting to say what she had been told.

The boy looked very uncomfortable while he nodded. "Yeah. I just wanted to say, it doesn't really matter all that much. At least, to me anyway. I mean, you still look like a pretty girl, and I can't see you as anything else." Percy closed his mouth, realizing what he had just said.

Annabeth looked down; her face turned red, and a small smile spread across it. Then she remembered who she was talking to and the people he often spoke to, as well as the fact that they often made fun of Annabeth. That sobered her up quickly enough.

"Alright then," Annabelle pressed her lips together into a thin line and nodded," you've apologized. Is that it?"

Percy blinked, clearly very surprised by her curt dismissal. "Yeah. Yeah, unless I could walk you the rest of the way home. It doesn't seem right to let you walk all alone."

Annabeth looked at him in utter astonishment before looking down the road. Not even half a block was left to her house, and she could already see the white outer facade grinning back at her, as if it were some kind of monster beckoning her closer.

"My house is just right there," she shot back frostily, even though her knees were weak and her palms started to sweat.

The kicked puppy look he gave Annabeth almost made her backpedal, but then she remembered all the times boys had stuck their legs out or tripped her, the gum girls put in her hair, and the cruel things they'd all said to her. Suddenly, she didn't feel so bad, because if he felt like he needed to make sure she was okay, why hadn't he done it far sooner than this?

"O-Okay, sorry to bother you, Annabeth. I really am sorry about what happened."

It took a great deal of self-restraint for Annabeth not to run after him to apologize for her cold and glib demeanor, but she just couldn't deal with the possibility he might be acting to trick her somehow.

'It's for the best though. He's one of the most popular guys in school. Even if he isn't doing it to be mean or trick me, nothing more could happen than just a few conversations and him getting bored with me.'

It was sad but true; Annabeth didn't consider herself to be all that interesting, aside from her odd obsession with architecture and now this strange new ability. Because, really, what else could it be other than strange when she was involved?

She continued back to her house, her prison, and the ever overbearing, suffocating presence of her mother.

'I wish he was being genuine,' Annabeth thought, a stray tear slipping down her cheek as she opened the door and stepping in.

A/N: Welp if you're down here it means you've either read the chapter or you skipped down here for some reason (naughty, naughty!) but hey if you thought that trans direction was a weird way to talk the story then oh well cause I didn't want to just write about the already known period Carrie story and I mean I'm trans myself so I kinda would rather I write about something I get rather than write about experiences I've never had to deal with (not that I've been pelted by soap bars In the showers at school).