DEMIGODS. (Percico/Pernico)

˚‧º·Chapter Nine‧º·˚

"C'mon, man," I sighed. "What did you do to them?"

"Well... I changed Ethan's ringtone to the Veggie Tales theme song because he keeps making fun of me, and I called him during class and got him in trouble."

I smiled. I could not be mad at Leo for too long because all those stupid stunts he pulled. "Okay, okay. Don't get too involved with them. They are bad news."

Leo nodded in understanding. "Gotcha. Will leave Scarface and Patchy the Pirate alone from now on."

My smile widened as the bell rang for us to get to class, and we parted ways.

I stood at the gates of Hell, peering in to see if Thalia switched spots or just was gone that day. It was strange, as she usually did not send me a good morning text when she was going to be absent. I shrugged and practically threw my stuff on my desk. The few hours of sleep I got were starting to catch up with me. I lounged back in my plastic chair and stared at the whiteboard, which was scribbled in Mr. di Angelo's cursive all the words we were supposed to learn. I winced, as I forgot to study them.

"Hey, Percy," I heard a familiar voice call.

I looked behind me to see Nico di Angelo waving at me. He usually sat alone in the back of the classroom, so I never really noticed him. I waved back before gathering my stuff and joining him in the empty seat next to him.

"I forgot to study," I confessed.

He rolled his eyes with a slight smile. "Of course you did. Want to borrow my notes until the quiz?"

I nodded, as his notes were probably better than mine, anyway. He handed me his black notebook—I took it gratefully—and I began to flip the pages to the vocabulary words for that week. His handwriting was unusually dainty for a guy's, but he seemed like the kind of guy to have nice handwriting.

"How do you say this one, again?"

"Per piacere," he read. "It means 'please'."

"Ah," I said. "It sounds so much nicer when you say it."

His cheeks flared a little, so he avoided my gaze. "Not really. I just..."

"What did you say yesterday?"

"About what?"

"When you spoke to your dad in Italian when I was at your house."

"Oh, yeah. I apologized to him for having you over without asking him first."

"Yeah, he doesn't seem to be the biggest fan of me."

Nico rolled his eyes. "I know, it's ridiculous. He'll get over it, probably."

I nodded as the tardy bell rang and Signor di Angelo walked in the room. My gaze stayed on Thalia's empty seat for too long, but I soon paid attention to what he was telling us as he took attendance.

"No Percy or Thalia?"

"I'm back here," I told him.

His eyes looked up and found me in the back of the classroom. He never minded when people changed seats since he never assigned them any, but I could tell he was considering telling me to return to my seat. To my surprise, he remained silent, his dark eyes returning to his computer. He clicked something else before standing up and grabbing a stack of papers off his desk. He hit the short ends of the paper against his desk to straighten the stack before collecting them and resting them against his forearm.

"As you all know, we're going to do the quiz for the words this week. Once the papers are passed out, you are all to be silent." His emphasis on the word was directed at me, I could feel it. "Hope you studied."

He promptly began handing them out to the students sitting in the front. Oh God, I hoped I was not going to fail this. Nico cast me a look of reassurance as he pulled out his mechanical pencil, also black. What was with this kid and the color black? Black bed, black shoes, black notebook, black backpack, black pencil... It was almost an obsession.

I returned his smile before gazing at the paper that sat before me, my fate resting in its blank answer spaces.

♩     ♪     ♫     ♬    ♭    ♮    ♯

Nico sat with us at lunch that day. Thalia showed up second period, too. She said she and Jason were forced to go to a lame breakfast meeting with their dad and his coworkers. I sympathized with her.

Nico was a lot more vocal than yesterday, as he was contributing to our conversations with his own thoughts and explaining them a little. I liked Nico a lot better now that he actually spoke, and his smile was nice to see.

He allowed the others to see the recordings he showed me the night before, assigning their individual parts and describing little pieces he wanted them to notice. I noticed how he kept the vocals off, and how he seemed embarrassed to let me hear them. Was he self-conscious of his voice? It was pretty good, so he shouldn't have.

"You should let them hear the vocals, Nico," I suggested.

His gaze avoided mine, instead finding its way onto the tiled floor. "No, I think it's fine without them."

"They're good, though. You sound really nice," I encouraged.

"Thank you, but there's too many people around," he said nervously. "It was fine when it was just you."

"It's okay, Nico," Leo reassured. "I bet you sound fine."

"Yeah, we won't judge. It would be nice to hear the vocals, too," Thalia contributed.

"Yeah, to hear when we play and stop," Jason added.

He hesitated, weighing the options in his mind, before he pulled up the vocals and started the recording over.

"I'm sorry if they're bad."

They listened to the music for when their parts mixed with the words, for when they played and when they stopped. They complimented Nico's tenor voice. He was modest, as usual, but he did not completely refuse.

The bell rang, so he told us we could listen to the rest at practice, which was at 6 o'clock that night because of Jason's basketball practice.

♩     ♪     ♫     ♬    ♭    ♮    ♯

I smiled at the B I got on the math test. Paul was helping me with it a lot more, since after Annabeth broke up with me. I was sad that she still did not want to talk to me. She was upset because she thought I replaced her, so I told her I just needed another keyboardist, and Nico fit the bill. She seemed to understand, but I could see she was still upset.

I was fine with it, but the real thing that worried me was Luke and Ethan's threat. Would they go out of their way so they would win? I hoped not.

At practice, it was the only thing I could think of. But, after we attempted to do a run-through of Nico's song, I knew. After Nico smiled at one of Leo's jokes, I knew. When we came together, we made something beautiful. We were a band, and we were pretty good, too. No matter what Luke or Ethan could say or do, we were going to hand their asses to them. I knew we were.