Not Quite Mortal • HoO

I. Andrew Kerr

When one of your closest friends goes missing for eight months, most people would see it as a cause for concern. And, please don't get me wrong, I do care about Percy, but when when he went missing, I honestly wasn't too surprised. I've only known the guy for a few years, but in that time, he's gone missing tons of times. It only started to concern me when I realized a month had gone by. Then, it was two months. Then I started to worry he wasn't coming back this time.

Theories on why he had gone ranged from a simple move, to being arrested, to kidnapping (it's already happened once apparently). You'd think that with Percy's stepdad as a teacher here at Goode, someone would have gotten a piece of actual information, but Mr. Blofis either was very good at keeping secrets, or didn't know any more than we did.

So now that you've read my point of view, you can understand why I didn't expect Percy to be there when I came back for the second semester of my Junior year.

I got to school that day a bit early, so I took my time going to my locker, stopping to talk to a few people, and searching for my friend Miri. She was nowhere to be seen - and neither were our other friends, Leah and Henry.

By the time I got to my locker, I was starting to wonder if all my friends had disappeared, and if I would be the next victim of some mysterious monster that ate highschool kids. But just when I finished shoving a few books(and some extra snacks) into my locker, a girl grabbed my arm and started pulling me down the hall.

"You won't believe what's happened! I've been looking for you all over! Where were you?" hissed Leah. She was chewing a piece of gum like normal, and her frizzy dark brown hair was pulled back from her face in two braids.

I was about to remind her that she was the one who hadn't been in any of the normal meet up places, when I saw why she was so excited.

In the midst of a small crowd of students ahead of us was the one and only Percy Jackson. He looked mostly the same. The same ruffled black hair, and sea green eyes. He still had way more muscle than I did. But he was different, somehow. He didn't seem as laid back as before, and standing the the crowd he looked tense and uncomfortable.

I shoved my way through the crowd. I think I may have pushed some of the smaller students over, but they were probably freshman and had never known Percy anyway.

When Percy saw me, he smiled, and said, "hey."

"You come back from being missing for months and all you say is 'hey?'" I respond.

The guy has the nerve to laugh a little. But it's a sad laugh. A meaningless echo of how Percy used to be. I wanted to spend more time finding out what had happened to him, but he shook his head. He wasn't disclosing anything in front of the crowd.

It's about then when Henry joins us. "Well, well, it's Percy Jackson, back from the dead, is it?" he asks sarcastically. Although Henry and I are on pretty good terms, though we're not close, he and Percy were... well let's just say for the moment that they were frenemies.

"You wouldn't believe how accurate that statement is," Percy says. Murmurs rippled through the crowd at that. I'm sure everyone was eager to hear the follow up to that, but fortunately for Percy, and unfortunately for everyone else, the warning bell rang, and reluctantly, the crowd dispersed.

"You have a lot of explaining to do Perce," Leah told him.

"I know."

Those two words 'I know' aren't promising. Percy has never given us a good reason for his disappearances before, and I doubt he will this time, or he would have done so already. I can only hope that one day we'll find out on our own. Somehow.