Freak || Percy Jackson x OC

One Hundred and Sixty-Two: RED is not showing very good things

SEN

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Sen dreamed Rachel Elizabeth Dare was throwing darts at Percy's picture.

She was standing in her room... well, Sen remembered that Rachel doesn't have a room. She has the top floor of her family's mansion, which is a renovated brownstone in Brooklyn. Her "room" is a huge loft with industrial lighting and floor-to-ceiling windows. It's about twice as big as Sally's apartment, and about twelve times the size of Sen's corner on the patio of Cabin 11.

Some alt rock was blaring from her paint-covered Bose docking system. As far as Sen could tell, Rachel's only rule about music was that no two songs on her iPod could sound the same, and they all had to be strange.

She wore a kimono, and her hair was frizzy, like she'd been sleeping. Her bed was messed up. Sheets hung over a bunch of artist's easels. Dirty clothes and old energy bar wrappers were strewn around the floor, but when you've got a "room" that big, the mess doesn't look so bad. Out the windows you could see the entire nighttime skyline of Manhattan.

The picture she was attacking was a painting of Percy standing over the giant Antaeus. Rachel had painted it a couple of months ago. His expression in the picture was fierce- disturbing, even- so it was hard to tell if he was the good guy or the bad guy, but Sen knew he'd looked just like that after the battle, only a little bit better. Rachel was a great artist, but nobody could capture the true beauty of a human being in just one painting.

"Demigods." Rachel muttered as she threw another dart at the canvas. "And their stupid quests."

Most of the darts bounced off, but a few stuck. One hung off Percy's chin like a goatee.

Someone pounded on her bedroom door.

"Rachel!" A man shouted. "What in the world are you doing? Turn off that-"

Rachel scooped up her remote control and shut off the music. "Come in!"

Her dad walked in, scowling and blinking from the light. He had rust-colored hair a little darker than Rachel's. It was smushed on one side like he'd lost a fight with his pillow. His blue silk pajamas had "WD" monogrammed on the pocket, which was an instant red flag and told Sen he was a grade-A asshole.

"What is going on?" He demanded. "It's three in the morning."

"Couldn't sleep." Rachel said.On the painting, a dart fell off Percy's face. Rachel hid the rest behind her back, but Mr. Dare noticed.

"So... I take it your friend isn't coming to St. Thomas?"

Rachel knit her eyebrows. "I don't know."

"We leave in the morning." Rachel's dad said. "If he hasn't made up his mind yet-"

"He's probably not coming." Rachel said miserably. "Happy?"

Mr. Dare put his hands behind his back. He paced the room with a stern expression. Sen imagined he did that in the boardroom of his land development company and made his employees nervous. It didn't make Sen nervous; just irritated. She really disliked industrialism, and this guy was walking industrialism.