The Academy

Thirty Five

Rose:

On the car ride back I look at Jace, “She never told me it was only seven months! She made it sound like he was going away for years and years!” I exclaim throwing my hands up, “Nobody told me so how was I supposed to know!” Jace sighed as if tired by all my yelling (he probably was knowing Jace.) He pulled the car over and looked at me, “Calm down Rose, alright?! Don’t throw this on Peter or Tink. You didn’t know, they didn’t tell you. It’s nobody’s fault so stop making it sound like you’re the victim here!”

For a moment I sat there looking at him.

“I never said I was the victim here.” I said quietly and turned to look out the window, “Let’s just go back to the Institute. Wait, scratch that. Tink’s mad at me and Peter’s leaving. Take me to the Academy.” I told him with a sigh.

I’d never seen Tink and Jace so angry, more specifically at me. It felt like there was a pit in my stomach and every moment of silence it became deeper and there wasn’t any way to fill it.

“Fine.” Jace grumbled turning towards the Academy.

He dropped me off at the dorms and I looked at him, “Could you tell Logan he won’t have to worry about looking over me any more? I’ll be staying here at the Academy from now on.”  He didn’t even look at me but nodded stiffly before putting the car in reverse and driving off.

When I got back to my dorm it felt empty, all except a few spare pieces of clothing that I’d left behind and some pictures. Most of them consisted of Nathan and I, bringing back a stab of guilt from earlier.

“Hate to admit it but she’s right.” I muttered before flopping onto the bed and sighed before flicking on the light switch next to my small twin size bed and watching the lights around my room turn on. I have a lamp, some Christmas lights that I strung up around my window because I was bored but now I felt homesick looking at them.

The phone rang thirty minutes later and I picked it up, it was Logan. “Rose-” “Logan, did Jace pass off the message I gave him?” I asked quickly wanting not to become an emotional mess tonight and not go through this guilt trip again.

“All he told me is that you didn’t want to stay here anymore and that you and Tink butted heads.” he said with a sigh and I looked up at my ceiling. “Well he wasn’t wrong, anyway, love you...but I don’t think I’ll be seeing any of you as much…” I whispered hanging up. I twisted my emerald ring on my finger absentmindedly.

The rest of the night was a blur of tears and looking at pictures.

When I woke up the next day I went to all of my classes, ignoring all of the questions about where I’d been these past couple of weeks. The one class I actually wanted to go to was sword fighting.

Jason and Percy were fighting as usual but as soon as they saw me they became silent, then grinned, “Rose!” They said still smiling i rolled my eyes suppressing a grin. “Calm yourselves boys, don’t let Piper and Annabeth hear you say that.” I told them with a laugh.

Percy walked over and then looked at me, narrowing his eyes, “What’s wrong? Seriously? You’ve been gone for weeks, we saw you somewhat at the wedding with Jace, now you’re back and look downright depressed.”

Geez, seaweed brain is pretty smart.

“Yeah I guess, anyhow I wanted to practice.” I told him as I rubbed the emerald on my ring and it elongated into a sword. Percy raised an eyebrow, looked like he wanted to argue more but stopped himself.

Sword fighting took my mind off of everything, as I hoped. It was sort of like a drug though, the more I became into the fights the more I forgot. But when I stopped it all came back crashing around me.