Surviving

Twenty Questions

POV: Jason

I don't understand what's going on.

We go to school on Monday and Annabeth and Percy are strolling down the halls hand in hand.

Percy has a FUCKING stab wound. Everybody seems to have forgotten about that. He was stabbed by someone or stabbed himself or was accidentally stabbed and nobody seems to care. He went to football practice for Pete's sake.

I'm not trying to be nosy I just want to help him.

I've known him since we were 10 (or he was 10 and I was 9 and a half). In 5th grade when stupid Octavian pushed me off the swing Percy punched him in the face and gave him a nose bleed in my defense.

Gods, I had almost forgotten about that. Octavian was suck a fucking asshole, too. He was so whiny and such a tattle tale. He never did quite know when to shut up. Well, anyway, the point is Percy has always been there for me and the rest of the group. Maybe his ways aren't always great and neither are his plans, but most of the time they work.

Even after Percy found out about Leo and Calypso, even though he was livid and hurt at all of us (rightfully so) he had heard that Leo and his mom were having some financial issues and he stuffed some coupons in their mailbox. He also added 20 bucks. He technically did it anonymously, but one of the coupons was for blue food dye (who needs a coupon for blue food dye?) He had also given them a full magazine of coupons that had the name Jackson on it and his address. Not very smooth, Perce.

I've never really known anything about Percy. I mean, I consider myself one of his best friends, but I never really knew where he lived or how well off he was. He always seemed so comfortable in Piper's or my mansion, so I just kind of figured he lived a similar lifestyle. And, yes, I do realize how incredibly douchy that sounds.

He's never invited us to his place, but I always chalked it up to him maybe having strict parents or just not liking people in his personal space. Which I guess to a certain extent is true.

But the part I feel worst about is that I never even knew that he didn't have a dad. Especially not that he was dead.

My mom isn't a very present figure in my life, but she's there sometimes.

My dad works a lot and is pretty hard around the edges, but overall he tries. And I've always had my sister Thalia to lean on no matter what. She's always taken care of me. I sometimes feel guilty about that. She has a different relationship with our parents than I do. She remembers what it was like when my parents were married. She remembers how my mom was when she still lived with us. I have tried asking Thalia about it, but she always tells me that we should just be happy she's tropesing around the world. Apparently my dad was an especially bitter man towards the end of their marriage which made his relationship with Thalia bad.

When I told Thalia that Percy's dad was dead she said she already knew and figured I did too. His name was Poseidon and he was close with my dad and Nico's dad. And the weirdness of the fact that the people in a friend trio's names were Hades, Poseidon, and Zeus has not gone past me. Thalia said that she'd even met him before he shipped off to join the Navy. She was the only one who met him out of the group besides Percy. The only thing Thalia knew about him was that he'd died at sea, he'd saved a shit ton of people, and he loved the ocean/water. He died when Percy was really young. And the fact that a man named Poseidon was obsessed with water, was in the navy, and died at sea also did not go past me.

As it turns out Nico and Hazel knew to a certain extent about Percy's dad and so did Calypso, so I guess the shock that I saw on everyone's faces when Percy told us was just in my head. Or it wasn't a shock because it was new news, but because they felt bad and we're shocked that he brought it up. Or maybe I was just so in shock. I don't know.