The Hate Between Us (Percabeth&Solangelo)

Chapter Two: Wise Girl

Percy POV:

The first time I saw Annabeth Chase I thought: wow, she's perfect.

She was hands-down the prettiest girl I've ever seen, with her Californian tan and princess-like blonde curls that swirled around her face. She was taller than most girls our age, and she had an athletic build that shows she worked out a lot. But by far the best thing about her was her eyes – they were grey, intimidatingly sharp, incredibly bright... I was distracted by them even from afar.

I remember catching sight of her down the far end of the corridor as I entered Goode for the first time. I turned to a guy on my right and asked who she was, but all he did was snort and say, "in your dreams, dude". I didn't care. I was about to go up to her and introduce myself, but then I saw her laugh at something her friend had said, and I completely froze; mesmerised by her smile. She seemed so friendly and genuine.

And then two days later I spoke to her for the first time, and it went downhill from there.

She was rude, assumptive, arrogant, and annoying. She recoiled from me like I was contaminated, just like everyone else in this stupid school. The first time I saw Annabeth Chase I thought she was perfect, but when I got to know her, I thought she was intolerable.

Let me back track a little. Monday morning roles around, first day of my new school. I wasn't excited, or nervous, or happy, or feeling anything about it at all really. Why? Because I was too busy arguing with Smelly Gabe, my Mother's husband, and all-round pathetic excuse of a man.

Gabe doesn't love anyone apart from himself, and probably whoever invented the first bottle of beer. Gabe also loves poker, and money, and smoking cigars because he thinks he looks like a character in a James Bond movie (he definitely does not). He likes tortilla chips and cheap guacamole, he loves his armchair that looks depressed under the weight of hiss sweaty ass, he loves having the TV on all day long, even if the Real Housewives of New Jersey is playing. Gabe loves baseball, and constantly coughing, and eating with his mouth open, and getting crumbs caught up in his unshaven stubble, and stained grey t-shirts that could be smelled all across Manhattan.

Gabe also likes shouting at me and my Mom. He likes getting angry if things don't go his way. And by that I mean; if the beer took too long to get from the fridge to his hand, if the guacamole bowl wasn't full to the brim, if the TV choked on a little static, if his baseball team didn't win, if his friends beat him at a round of poker... he would remember all of these things, store them into his brain so that late at night when his friends had finally left our apartment... he could yell and yell until his throat is raw and my Mother's face is stained with tears.

Now, I can say with a hand on my heart that he has never been physical – this much I count my blessings for. I can also be honest and say that were he ever to put an unwanted hand on my Mother's body, I would kill him. That's not an exaggeration, it's a promise. But that's not to say that he doesn't terrify me – he does. He is terrifying. With his deep, rough voice, angry words, rage in his eyes... his fury comes as a promise that the night will end with an empty beer bottle thrown across the room just above my head and my Mother curled up on the floor in tears. It breaks my heart to see how much he can scare us.

It's got to the point where just the sound of his voice will make us tense up. Will his words be neutral, or a threat? What have we done wrong now? But this was just a way of life for us now – there was no changing what we have. See, the problem was: we needed Gabe to survive. We needed his apartment, his money, his job that he always called in sick for. Our refrigerator may always be full of beer bottles, but they were beer bottles that - as he liked to remind us - were provided from the cash in his own pocket.