Percico: Stories to Be Rewritten

Chapter 4

The next day, Nico went on a search for Elizabeth. He checked everywhere he could think to look, The Big House where they had a councilor room that the Aphrodite girls would console with other campers, the lake where the other Aphrodite girls would show off, the cabin where they would take hours to do their hair and makeup, even the Apollo cabin where the Aphrodite girls would go gaga over the hot guys. Finally, Nico decided to just ask one of the first girls he ran into if they had seen her.

A girl about the same age with blond hair and green hazel eyes was running from the forges, her orange camp shirt completely covered in soot and charred in a few places. It took Nico a second to recognize where he had seen her before it hit him hard in the face. The girl in the black and white sketch in Elizabeth's notebook. "Hey!" Nico called, running to catch up to her. She stopped, turned on her heels, and faced him, a worried smile on her face.

"Hello Mr. Di Angelo! What do you need?" The girl, now able to see her not as a blur, was nice looking. Tan skin that made the girl look hispanic, forest green eyes, and what he had mistaken for blond hair was actually more of a white. 'No wonder Elizabeth likes this girl.' Nico thought.

"Have you seen Elizabeth?" The girl's face fell, her mask of happiness darkening into horrible worry.

"No, sir." She said, her hands starting to play with the burnt seams of her shirt. "No one has seen her since last night." She looked up at him, her eyes not even hiding the depth of her worry. "I'm really starting to worry. She disappears sometimes, but she never misses our little get togethers or snack breaks by the beach."

Nico's brow furrowed. "You two are-"

"Best friends! Maybe even like sisters!" She interrupted, a little too quickly. Even as she faked a smile, Nico was growing suspicious of this girl. "She always has my back! We even went to the same orphanage for years!" She said, trying not to sound like she was nervous... or hiding something. "Who knew she would turn out to be a demigod like me! Sure, she's Aphrodite's kid and I'm Hephaestus'."

"Uh, hu." Nico stared at her, his whole body completely numb. This was starting to get really mysterious, and not look good for Elizabeth. "What was your name again?"

"Alex! Alex Scorchbur!" She stated, her hands shaking a little. "I'm gunna be late for my class, can I go now?"

He nodded, watching as the girl took off at a run towards another area of the camp. 'She is hiding something.' He thought. But he decided to keep asking more of the campers if they knew anything. After a few hours, he learned a little about the Elizabeth Walker that had been bugging him and Percy for the last few weeks. She was a shy, anti-social, and very the only daughter of Aphrodite who didn't care for any of the campers that was at the camp. She was the freak out of all the daughters of the Goddess of Love, not flaunting her good looks, showing off her beauty with short shorts and modified camp shirts, or even flirting with any of the hot guys in the camp. She would always wear her baggy jeans, her frumpy oversized camp shirt with the sleeves cut off and a black long sleeve shirt underneath, and her hair in bland ponytails or just down in messy ways like she just got out of bed. Somehow, she still looked good like that.

She was a no one in the camp, the mysterious girl that no one really knew. The only thing the other campers knew about her was that she was the one who does the night shift on the counseling room at the Big House, and that she could always be found with a notebook or sketchpad in her possession and a pencil or pen in her ear. Nico found it disturbing how the girl the campers he asked were describing the same girl that was keeping his relationship a secret. He would have thought that she would at least be a little more outgoing, maybe be the chatterbox of the Aphrodite Cabin, but even they didn't really know about her.

"She disappears a lot." A blond with blue eyes and a bikini tops said. "She doesn't really like us I think."

"Yeah!" A curly haired burnet said from the other side of the cabin. "But she is an amazing writer! I once stole one of her notebooks and read it!" She pouted a little. "She didn't like that too much. She almost broke one of my nails trying to rip it out of my hands."

"And oh my god, the sketches!" Another girl gushed. " I once caught her drawing some of us on the rock over the lake, and it looked of fetch!"

"Shut up, Gretchen! Fetch isn't going to happen! You can't bring that back, it is soooo dead!" The blond screeched.

"Fuck you, Ragina! YOLO!" The girl shouted back, and started rummaging though her stuff. Nico arched an eyebrow as she emerged from under her bed with a piece of paper in her hands and a big smile on her face. "I have the sketch right here!" Coming up in her miniskirt and low cut camisole, she handed the Nico the sketch. "See? She is gifted beyond belief!"

Nico already knew this, but looking at the colored sketch was like looking actual photo. The deep green-blue of the lake water, the boys tan skin and wet hair as they splashed the girls on the realistic rock, the highlights, the shadow. If he didn't know better, he would have said it was a photograph. But, when he looked around the picture, he saw a small signature in the rock, almost hidden in the shadow in black pencil.

"See, he is sooo impressed!" The girl said, clapping.

The blond rolled her eyes, ignoring the black haired girl as she flipped through her magazine. " I wouldn't worry about Elizabeth, Mr. Di Angelo." She said, not even glancing up at him. "She always comes back, usually she just pops out of nowhere for dinner." She gave Nico a glittering pearl white smile. "Always."