Half-Blood High

XXV

      Frank

I gotta say, the Half-Blood High football game was interesting.

Leo and I were walking around the football field, keeping an eye out for any suspicious activity. Well, I was. Leo was busy eating a churro.

"Where did you even get that?" I asked as we passed the cheerleaders. He winked at one of them before saying: "The concession stand. Duh." He took a bite of his dessert, ending the discussion.

I rolled my eyes, but let it go.

We were over near the bathrooms, watching the crowd carefully, when one of the cheerleaders walked up to us. She had long, German-blonde hair tied in a high ponytail, and a face that would have been pretty, had she not been scowling, like someone had stolen her pompoms. I didn't know her, but Leo did.

"Hey Tammi," he tried, and failed, to smooth his dark curly hair. "How's it going?"

Tammi looked at him like he was an annoying fly. "I'm sorry, who are you?"

Leo wiggled his eyebrows flirtatiously. I noticed he had a smear of powered sugar above his lip. "Come on, you know me! Leo Valdez. I sit three seats behind you in English class! Yesterday you called me an idiot!"

Tammi didn't look convinced. "There are, like, a lot of idiots at this school. It's, like, super hard to tell all of them apart." She snapped her gum. "Can you, like, move out of the way? I need to fix my hair." Without waiting for an answer, she shoved past us into the bathroom.

Leo sighed dreamily and rubbed a hand across his face, which didn't help with the powered sugar situation. "She wants me."

I glanced at him. "Yeah. I'm sure her calling you idiot is real endearing."

He rolled his eyes. "Oh please. What do you know about romance?"

I frowned. "Enough to know that she is so not into you."

We would have argued further, but a scream, high and shrill, echoed from the bathroom. We both jumped and spun to look at the door.

"What was that?" Leo peered around the door, but went no further. "Is everything okay in there?"

A pause. Then, Tammi called: "Yes. Everything's fine. Just girl stuff."

We both turned back to the crowd, until I heard a small yelp. A quiet voice whisper-shouted: "HELP!"

I looked at Leo. "Did you hear that?"

He nodded. "I don't think everything's okay. We should check on them."

He put one foot inside, but I grabbed his arm. "Are you sure we should go in the girl's bathroom? Maybe we can get Hazel to come check. Or Annabeth."

He shook his head. "No time. What if someone's hurt?" At my hesitation, he added: "Do you want to help or not?"

That stung. I glared at him, and followed him into the girls bathroom.

I tried not to look at anything, but kept my gaze resolutely on the back of Leo's shirt. I was pretty sure boys going into the girls bathroom violated an unspoken universal rule. Like the Don't put your moth on the water fountain spout rule. Stuff like that.

The bathroom was small, so we didn't have to go far. About three stalls down, we saw Tammi, leaning against the corner.

Something was different. For one thing, she had one goat leg and one metal leg. Her skin was paper white, and I'm pretty sure her eyes were scarlet. She turned and saw us coming, and grinned.