DEMIGODS. (Percico/Pernico)

˚‧º·Chapter Five‧º·˚

"Percy, we need to have a talk."

Those words coming out of a girl's mouth, especially Annabeth's mouth, is never a good thing.

I froze, sighing in dread before composing myself to face my girlfriend.

"We do?"

She nods solemnly.

I took this time to think of who to leave my things to after I died. My guitar would go to Jason; it would find a good home with him. My video games and my PlayStation, to Thalia. My comic books, probably to Jason again. He would stack them so neatly on his shelf and they would never be lonely.

"We should practice a little less, don't you think?"

"No, why?"

"We are all burnt out. We don't want to practice every moment of every day."

"Don't you want to win?"

"We've got months to practice, Percy."

"That's the point! If we practice all the time, we'll be the best, hands down!"

She sighed resignedly. "That's not the point, Percy. It'd be better if—"

"No, we have to get better! We have to! Don't you want to win the scholarship?"

She hesitated. "Of course I do."

"Then we should practice."

"You're so selfish!" she shouted suddenly.

I was not expecting that. "What?"

"You only care about the scholarship. You don't care about us."

"Of course I care about the scholarship, but I care about you guys, too. I'm not selfish."

"Then why don't you think about how we feel about this? We're exhausted. We're tired of practicing. We hardly have any free time anymore!"

"I know! A real band has hardly any free time, either."

"You don't get it!" she huffed in annoyance. "We don't want to practice every day. We want to have some time to rest."

"We can rest when we go home. We have to get better."

"I hardly even have the time to do my homework anymore. You know what, if you're going to be this selfish, then I quit."

"You can't quit!"

"Trust me, I can." Those were her final words before she packed up her keyboard and left my garage.

"Fine! I don't need you! I can get another keyboardist that actually wants to practice."

She ignored me. Piper sighed and packed up her stuff as well, leaving alongside Annabeth.

"Do you guys think we practice too much?"

"A little, yeah," was the general response.

"I guess we can tone down the practices then."

"I can't be in the band anymore either," Thalia admitted sadly. "My grades are too low and my dad says I have to quit practice and focus on my schoolwork."

I looked at her incredulously. "Seriously?!"

She nodded. "I'll try to get my grades up as soon as possible, okay?"

After she packed up and left, I saw that the only ones that stood in the garage were me, Jason, and Leo. A drummer, a electric guitarist, and a bass guitarist. Pretty pathetic band, if you ask me.

"I guess the band's off, then."

The other two nodded, and soon they were gone, too.

Seppuku was history. Literally.

I sat in my garage, my face buried in my hands. My world was crumbling around me. I lost my girlfriend and my dream all in a matter of minutes. All I could do was dwell on what I had done wrong. I should have asked my bandmates when they wanted to practice except of just planning practices and making everyone attend them. The promises of improvement were empty. There could never be improvement if we don't take our time and have the ambition to want to practice. I retreated back in the house, ignoring my mother, and I plopped down on my bed, burying my face in the soft pillows that smelled of my shampoo and laundry detergent.

It wasn't long until I heard the gentle knocks on my door.

"Sweetie, are you okay?"

"The band's done for. Annabeth practically broke up with me. I'm failing Italian. Yeah, I'm just peachy."

She comforted me the way she always does: hot chocolate with blue marshmallows floating in it. I smiled at her attempts of cheering me up. She hugged me and offered to find me a tutor. I nodded.

"That sounds good, Mom."

♩     ♪     ♫     ♬    ♭    ♮    ♯

I walked down the empty hallway on my way to the restroom. I had gotten yet another detention from not paying attention in class. I wish I had picked a different foreign language than Italian. Something easier, like Spanish.

I texted my mom the news as I sat on the toilet seat. Luckily, she didn't punish me that time. I tucked my phone in my pocket and buried my hands in my hair. Italian was giving me a killer headache. Annabeth was not talking to me, so I assumed I was single now. I would not cry. I wouldn't. I let the tears slip from the corners of my eyes. I'm pathetic, I told myself.

Once I gathered myself, I walked out of the bathroom and back toward Hell, where the Devil would hand me a detention slip and have me organize the supply closet in the basement again. What a joy that was.

♩ ♪ ♫ ♬ ♭ ♮ ♯

Annabeth sat at a different table than me. That was to be expected. Leo, Jason, and Thalia sat beside me, though, and I was thankful for friends in such a hard time. Depression was a recurring thing for me. It was an unstable disease, and music was the only cure. Unfortunately, I had to suffer through this detention alone, battling with the thoughts in my mind, telling me I had no future and no chance at having a decent life because I would be struggling with student debt my whole life, as I'm terrible at managing money. Furthermore, it would probably land me some dead end job that I don't enjoy, so I'd be struggling my whole life and won't even have a crack at writing and producing music, as I had hoped ever since I was little, when I first held a bass guitar and learned a few chords.

Leo shook me out of my self-deprecating thoughts with a corny joke about drums dropping out of the back of a truck. Music jokes. What a terrible sense of humor I had. I laughed anyway, because I needed to. I needed to not be sad. Annabeth wasn't there for me, as she always had been when I was depressed, but I didn't want my mind to get started on Annabeth while it was already yelling at me that I was hopeless. She was just another weakness in a myriad of self-doubts.