When I Don't Remember You (Percico)

Chapter Four: After Three Months In The Grave

Percy Jackson

Mom had a cake made for me when I got home.

It was like most other years, just a blue velvet cake with blue frosting and it just had 16 candles in the shape of a star this year.

Last year it was a smiley face.

The shape doesn't matter much, it was moreso the sentiment of the cake. Of knowing that mom made that today not even knowing that there was a really big chance that I wasn't going to come home and then she'd get a call from Chiron or a visit from Grover maybe and that would've...

That's what so many other parents are getting today. Calls or visits to break the news. To tell them their child is gone.

And yet... And yet my mom somehow has gone another year without that visit. Without that call, and without that grief.

So when I see the cake and I fully come to realize that it's my birthday, another thought plagues me while my mom and her newly wed husband come over to give me a hug and welcome me home like it was any other summer at camp.

The others will never get to experience this again.

But it doesn't stop there.

I wasn't supposed to get this.

"You're home!" Mom exclaimed as she pulled me into a hug that made me realize how long it's been since I've been given a hug. "happy birthday sweetie."

But that's the wrong word for it.

It's not happy. I'm not supposed to be alive right now and in my brain I know that, but I don't know how I'm supposed to explain that to my parents.

I mean, I don't have to. There's so many things that happened this week that I haven't even had any chance of processing yet that if they ask what's wrong, I could say anything and it's be the truth mostly but...

Like, it hasn't hit me yet, you know? Some of it has. Beckendorf's death hit my pretty fast after Poseidon told me and then he wasn't at camp and...

After hearing the prophecy, I at least was able to justify it to myself because I'd probably see him again today. He's gone and I'd die soon, too.

But I'm still here.

And I don't think I'm supposed to be.

•••

The next few days weren't better. They were worse, actually, although I didn't convey that information to my parents because they were already worried and I didn't want them to worry worse and then cancel their honeymoon and stuff because of me.

They deserve to be happy and to go on their honeymoon. I don't want to take that from them.

It hurt, though.

I was over at Rachel's a week after my birthday because I hadn't really left the apartment the whole week and I was depressed and so Rachel invited me over because we've only talked once since my birthday and that's not normal but I just don't have it in me to make that effort right now which sounds so shitty and it is, but it's true.

Mom and Paul leave tonight for their honeymoon, though, so I said goodbye to them earlier, and I'm pretty sure that Rachel timed them leaving and me coming over to be the same day because if we're being honest, me being completely alone is a super bad idea right now.

Mom and Paul don't know that, but it is.

Rachel's parents were nicer, or at least her dad was nicer to me and her mom is usually nice and I just felt really out of place for like all of lunch while we ate and they asked questions that I just had really bad answers for because when somebody asks how it feels to be 16, they don't want to hear that you don't feel like you should be alive.