Chapter Text
Chapter I
Percy Jackson
“Admit it.” Hazel observed her for a few seconds with her big dark eyes, as she leaned forward to grab her backpack, knocked to the ground under the back seat of Reyna's off-road vehicle. “Reyna, you’re not fooling us. It’s useless.”
The girl studied her from her reflection into the rearview mirror. Then, she shifted her gaze on her own hands, resting composure on her own legs. They were sitting in the car in the school parking lot and, given New York’s icy winter weather and the the fact that they had got there so well in advance - oddly enough, there was no one in the street -, the three of them had decided to stay there a few more minutes, engine off and heating on. Only this time, however, Reyna had thought, otherwise the battery will drain and I will have to take the car to Mrs. Valdez.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She knew exactly what she was talking about. They had discussed it all the way from home to school, repeatedly risking distracting Reyna from driving and, therefore, ending up on top of some light pole or some garbage can.
Her friend cast a thunderous glance at her, sticking her tongue out at her. “I might be only a freshman student, but I can recognize when a friend of mine has a crush, thank you. Nico, say something!” she jokingly complained, stretching her arm towards the passenger seat and giving her brother a pinch on his arm.
“Ow!” he exclaimed, caught off guard. “No, thank you,” he said, massaging the spot where Hazel had hit him with his other hand, “I’d rather not pry into these matters, especially if it’s Reyna.” He shrugged his shoulders, pretending to check that all the books and notebooks needed for that day were in his backpack. “I’d get a good lecture by her and I’d have to work hard to give her advice and support. And then, it’s Percy Jackson we’re talking about. If I’m being honest, I don’t like that guy. Reyna, you’d better get over this crush right now.”
Reyna glanced at him. “I don’t-”
“While you think about it, thank you for the ride!” Hazel interrupted her, and she opened the car door, slipped down with her backpack still in her hand and, inviting her brother to do the same, greeted the girl with a fluid movement of her arm as she walked at a quick pace towards the entrance to Jupiter High.
For his part, Nico took a few more seconds. “See you later, okay?” he asked her, though it was obvious he didn’t expect an answer. That question to him, more than a question, was a real certainty. “Good luck with the biology test,” he said, as he hurriedly slipped his backpack and picked up the Starbucks coffee cup he had leaned into the cup box in Reyna’s car, next to the passenger seat. Then, with a not too joyous gesture and a sigh, the boy imitated his sister and got out of the car. “Oh,” he exclaimed then, turning to her with an amused expression, “if you see Percy, say hello from me.”
“Stop it!” Reyna cried, trying to stay serious as she felt the corners of her mouth bend in an unwanted smile. However, it was all useless, as Nico did not wait for her verdict and immediately closed the car door to go to join Will Solace who, just then, was heading to school with his books under his arm and his blonde hair perpetually disheveled; therefore, all the boy must have heard was, in all probability, only “Sto!”. Which was not such a frightening threat, the girl thought.
It was a few seconds before she decided to turn off the car’s heating, check that the handbrake was properly set, breathe a sigh of frustration and mentally prepare for another day in high school, repeating to herself in her mind that she had to give her best. It wasn’t easy getting into Jupiter High. As the headmaster, Chiron, always said at the opening ceremony of each new school year, “You need commitment, willpower and a good deal of good marks to stay in this institute; that you have entered does not mean that you will stay, so give your best, always.” Over time, Reyna had learned to make those words her personal motto. She couldn’t afford missteps: if she wanted to get into Harvard, studying had to be her main thought.
That’s why it had been months, now, since she had told herself that Percy Jackson had to get out of her head. Of course, with no good results. Especially since, lately, he too seemed to be interested in her. Nico and Hazel didn’t know yet, but only the day before, the boy had asked her to go to prom with him. Reyna, who was checking her notes at the time, had pretended not to hear his question, anxiously waiting for his teammates on the swimming team, which she had seen coming in their direction, to call him for their daily training.
The problem was that she knew he was going to ask her again or, if she said no, he could ask her out on other days, maybe to go for coffee or to take a ride to the park, and Reyna couldn’t afford to fall into the temptation to say yes, or her whole schedule would be in vain. So, at least for the moment, she would just avoid the boy as much as possible, hoping that, sooner or later, he would figure it out for himself.
“Hey, Reyna!” a voice behind her called. It didn’t take her long to figure out who it was, but she still turned to study Gwen’s joyful expression, who was watching her a few steps away. “Good morning,” her friend told her, quickly approaching the girl and continuing to walk down the school hallway with her.
Reyna reciprocated the greeting by smiling slightly, while, her eyebrows frowned, she rummaged inside of her backpack to find her notebook: she still had a few minutes off before the biology test, so she walked at a brisk pace towards the common room down the hall, the one where almost no one went because it was too close to the school tennis courts. The girl shrugged her shoulders; once you got used to the constant noise of the ball and crashed to the ground with a solid bop, that place wasn’t that bad.
“Listen,” the friend insisted, stopping her at the entrance to the common room, “I’ll only ask you one thing, and then I’ll let you go,” she said, taking a look at the notes that Reyna held under her arm. “Are you free on Saturday afternoon?”
Reyna arched her eyebrows, looking at her friend in the eye. “I think so, why?”
“Dakota and I thought we’d go for a walk downtown. Do you want to come?”
The girl sighed. Dakota. Surely, she would third weel again between those two who, it was obvious, had been liking each other for quite a while. “We want to make the flirt thing last as long as possible. It’s fun to go out with someone with no commitment,” Gwen herself had told her one night, after drinking a couple of Kool Aid more than necessary. “Am I really that indispensable?” The tone of the question was supposed to be sarcastic, but from Reyna’s lips came a sigh so painful that she sounded almost to mean it.
Despite this, Gwen did not seem to be intimidated. “You’re my best friend, Reyna,” she warned her, pointing her cell phone at her which, even that day, had the cover paired with the color of the girl’s lipstick. “Then? What do you say?” She looked at her staring into her eyes without any hesitation, grinding them slightly with an intimidating sight.
Reyna sighed again. After all, she didn’t think she had much choice. “At what time do you want me to come?”
“How was your biology test?” asked Nico, taking her by surprise, as he sat next to her at their usual table in the school canteen.
Reyna waited for Hazel to sit in front of them too, and for everyone to lean on their trays, before opening her mouth and answering Nico’s question. “It went well, thank you. It wasn’t too difficult,” she murmured, thinking back to how, during the assignment, she was surprised not to find the technical questions that Professor Athena had threatened to put into the test. Better so, she had thought, while, resting her pen on her desk, she had bent forward on the sheet to double-check her answers. “You?”
“Mhh, all right.” Hazel bit one of the fries on her plate, being careful to avoid the burnt parts - which was quite difficult, to tell the truth. Their school may be famous for being one of the best high schools in all of New York State, if not in all the States, but, for sure, food wasn’t one of its excellences. The girl put her curls behind her shoulders, so that they could not bother her while, abandoning her fries, she tasted the usual potato leek soup, which certainly did not look more inviting. “I met Percy today,” she said nonchalantly, casting a fleeting glance at Reyna before lowering her gaze back to her plate.
In front of her, her friend made an involuntary face that, thankfully, no one seemed to notice. It wasn’t unusual to meet Percy Jackson through the hallways of the school, whether he was rushing to the pool for practice, or just chatting with Grover Underwood and Annabeth Chase. I mean, he wasn’t a shy, lonely guy, quite the contrary. But, with the particular unfolding of events and the situation in which she found herself at the moment, Reyna found that coincidence too strange to be one.
Confirmations of her theory was not long in coming. “Apparently, he came looking for me,” Hazel murmured as she carried the second spoon filled with soup to her lips - perhaps it wasn’t that bad after all. She slipped her right hand into the pocket of her denim jacket, and pulled out a tiny bluepaper note someone had folded perhaps eight times on itself. “He gave me this.” She shrugged her shoulders. “He asked me to give it to you as soon as I saw you, so here it is.” She passed her the note while, faking total disinterest, she glanced at Nico and tried to hide the sly smile that Reyna had seen appear on her face only a few seconds earlier.
The girl took the note with her fingertips and carefully opened it by placing it on the surface of the table while, without even realizing it, she held her breath. At her side, Nico held his head down for a few seconds on his lunch, but, as soon as he noticed his friend’s slight gasp next to him, he did not think twice about abandoning hypocrisy and leaning over Reyna’s shoulder to read the mysterious message: with a handwriting halfway between the elegant and the messy, Percy had traced the words Try No.2, PROM? Know that I will continue if you ignore me again. P.
“What?!” Nico simmered, wresting the message from her hands and showing it to his sister without the slightest discretion. He turned to Reyna with grainy eyes and arched eyebrows. “Try no. 2?” he asked her, “So he has already asked?”
She nodded insoothing, looking him in the eye.
“When?” added Hazel, who, unlike his brother, to say the least, had a giant, toothy smile plastered on her face. “Why didn’t you tell us before? I’m so happy for you, Rey! At last he decided to…”
“I’m not going,” Reyna cut short, interrupting her friends’ nonstop questions. “I’m sorry to disappoint your expectations, Hazel, but I can’t accept Percy’s invitation.” The girl watched her friend frown and cross her arms on her chest, in full disapproval of her decision.
“And why would you refuse?” said a voice behind her. Reyna turned around. Percy Jackson, his hair still a little damp and his Jupiter High uniform slightly unfolded and in disarray, stared at her from above, a few steps from her table, standing in the middle of the school canteen.
The girl looked him straight in the eye, but did not bother to get up from the table to confront him face to face: she waited for him to sit in front of her, next to Hazel who, still in shock, made room for him on the bench. She watched him throw his gym bag at the foot of the table, lean with his elbows on Hazel’s tray left empty, and lean toward her with a questioning look, before she hatched her lips and talked. “I can’t come to the prom with you, Percy. Please don’t insist. Have a good day,” she concluded, then looked down on her coleslaw plate and pretended to be very focused on observing the pale color of mayonnaise.
“Hey, wait a minute!” As she expected, Percy didn’t want to give up. Reyna didn’t know him that well - they had spoken a few times, chatting here and there before classes started, but nothing more - but she knew perfectly well that he wasn’t a guy who let go so easily. “Reyna?” he called her, but didn’t wait for a reaction from the girl’s part before asking her, in a genuinely interested tone, “May I know why you just don’t want to come to prom with me? If you don’t want to go, I’m not going to oppose your decision, okay?” he quickly added, “But may I at least know why? Please.”
For a few seconds, Reyna remained silent to stare at him, asking herself if, if she told him the truth, Percy would understand. He did not seem to be an unreasonable boy; in the end, it was precisely because of that, that she liked him so much. Still, was it really worth the risk? The girl bit her lip and rose from the bench, grabbing her backpack and ignoring the questioning looks from Nico and Hazel, who had been staring at her with their mouths open since they discovered the contents of the note. She looked Percy straight in the eye, thinning her eyes, while inside her mind she prayed that he would not insist, and that he would accept what she was going to say. Then, she hatched her lips, and those seven simple words rolled over her tongue with an agility that surprised her too.
“I am already going with someone else,” she lied, and walked away.