Nico woke up the next morning, heard the spirits whispering. They were angry, so angry.
He decided not to go to the mines that day.
He went to school, smelled like dirt, everyone stayed away from him. They stared at him as if they knew what he had done, knew the spirits he had never seen.
He stayed far away from the teenagers that looked alike, far away from the ones with the same names. They all looked alike.
Except for a select few.
Leo Valdez sat on his left. He smelled like fire, looked like a steelworker. The steel mills had been closed for years.
Percy Jackson was a couple desks over, his eyes staring out the window at a lake that wasn't in sight. He stared, he sighed, he smelled like the green lake itself.
Nico hated him. Hated that Percy didn't remember.
In front of Nico, a girl sat with her fingers tapping the desk and her golden eyes unnerving. The Planter, they called her. The Planter. They never called her Hazel anymore.
Her fingertips were stained red, her nails were painted rust. She smelled like iron, looked like a hazard.
Nico never saw her outside of school.
The school was always the same. Beaten down walls, graffiti filled bathrooms, the smell of textbooks heavy in the air. Half his class was missing, but nobody questioned why. The teacher didn't do roll call.
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Hell is Real
FanfictionThe crows gather on the trees and buildings. You start counting, 1, 2, 3, 4, but there are too many to count. They gather as one, they fly off as one. That is why they will survive and you will not. Their feathers block out the light. X X (Plot base...
