No Strings Attached

CHAPTER ONE

"Nico di Angelo, you are not missing school again," Hades scolded me. Shadows settled on his face, almost as if he were pulling them to him. His words seemed to deflate him, softening him in an instant. "Nico, this is a chance to find who you love, okay?"

"Yeah, I know," I looked down, finding my pale face reflecting off the marble floors. "I won't miss school again. I swear it."

"On the River Styx?" my father cracked a smile. Ever since I had learnt to play Mythomagic, my father graced me with references as much as he could. The River Styx was an inside joke shared between us. One of the few.

"On the River Styx." I put my hand on chest and patted it. I grabbed my bag, sitting on the first stair, and hung it over my right shoulder. The window from the side bathed me in sunlight, making me look less like the ghost of the night and more like someone who eats like they do homework: not often.

"Bye, Nico," Hades waved me. I dashed out the door and checked my watch. 8:05. I have twenty-five minutes to get there on time.

I bolted out of the metal gates, avoiding Mrs. Demeter from across the street. She was as strict as she was green. I always saw her with a hose or flower in her hand. There wasn't one plant she hated. She treated them like her children. I was, to her, a weed. Our mutual distaste for each other hadn't jeopardised my relationship to Persephone.

Ms. Persephone was her daughter. She had just as much as a green thumb, but running past her garden, like I did today, would've told you she was one for the flowers. She was kind to both her flowers and the children.

I arrived at school fifteen minutes later. Kids and classmates poured in, arm around each other's neck, and the occasional shout or laugh released into the air. Greenery in the form of an overgrown lawn and a few bushes surrounded a brick building, with an opened wooden door that I'd never seen closed. A sign, worn down by weather and my middle and high schoolers, read: OLYMPIANS COLLEGE.

One look at my surroundings, and I could tell I wasn't normal. I was deathly pale (the sun is way overrated), never combed my hair (it's so short), and I wore black (it goes with everything). Bright shirts and a rainbow of jean shorts ran into the building.

I walked in the hallway, which smelt like a combination of gym socks and Mountain Dew, and I opened my locker. Bottom locker. Just like always.

I squinted at the timetable and groaned as I read that it was English. It was easily my least favourite subject. The grammar had me in a knot, the books we read had the floweriest English and absolutely no point in them, and the worst, the pronunciation made no sense.

I grabbed my English folder and scurried to class, taking note of all the conversations around me. There was Drew and her girlfriend drama, Clarisse with her unusually loud voice and aggressive manor, and–

"Hey, Nico," the voice flooded my senses, my head, and my heart.

Oh. And Percy.

"Nico!" He grinned at me, cutting the crowed like a knife and stopping right in front of me. "My man! What's up?"

He held out his hand in a high five, which I granted him. No one rejects a high five from Percy Jackson. Well, at least, not me.

Percy Jackson was an entirely a high school stereotype and somehow, completely different. He had a sort of air to him that meant everyone respected him. No one knew him, no one didn't. Oh, Percy Jackson? They always said. He's cool. Nice dude. Totally stand-up guy. But Percy was more intricate than that. He had a certain sincerity in his eyes, which were the colour of sea glass, and impossibly smooth black hair, which reflected light like those filming tools.

"Hey, Perce." I smiled for the first time since the sun rose. "I'm good. Nothing special. What about you?"

Percy smiled and wiggled his eyebrows. "Any special red-stringed-to-the-pinky-fingered someone's?"

"Haha, very funny."

"I'm serious, Nico!" Percy exclaimed. "You've gone through the entirety of middle school without a single crush. Come on, I'm sure there's someone." His eyes lit up. "Ooh, I know. Silena?"

"Definitely not."

And there came the questions of crushes. In the five years we had known each other, I hadn't been able to tell him perhaps my second deepest, darkest secret. That I'm gay.

I hadn't not told him. I never talked about girls, always referred to any future spouses as 'they' but still, being gay had never come up in a conversation, just like him being straight doesn't.

My biggest secret was that he was my crush, and also my realisation.

"Ah, well, man, it's all good." He patted my back and then his chest. "I gotta go to class, dude. I'll see you later?"

"Later it is. Bye, Perce!" I yelled out as he become just another figure in the crowd.

I walked into Mrs. Daniel's class and thanked the lucky stars she wasn't here yet. I sat in a seat in the middle-to-back, a seat to the right. My meticulous calculations had told me that there was where I was most invisible. The only downside was a certain blond-haired, blue-eyed nuisance.

"Nico di Angelo, fancy seeing you here," the nuisance said, followed by laughter from him and his friends.

"We're in English, Octavian," I said. I, on my days off, had taken time to learn not to react to Octavian and his minions. Told myself that he only wanted a reaction out of me. But it seemed no matter if I had a reaction or not, he laughed anyway.

"Exactly why, di Angelo," he sneered. He cackled like a crazed duck but shushed the moment Mrs. Daniels entered the room.

Mrs. Daniels wasted no time. Every English lesson, she'd lay out her lesson plan on her desk, her laptop facing her at an angle, and brought in her own rainbow coloured whiteboard markers, so no one stole any. But this time, instead of introducing the topic, she introduced someone else.

"Class, today we have a new student from the student exchange program. Please be friendly." Mrs. Daniels took her seat as a boy walked in, a bounce in his step that rung through his whole body. He flashed a smile.

"Hello, my name is William Solace."