Ode to my love

Ballad

Artemis POV

"Well students, I can't say I'm disappointed. Actually, yes I can. The students of OMC should be idols to the rest of the musical movement, but the grand majority of you has FLUNKED IN EVERYTHING MUSIC RELATED. The only chance you may have for raising your grade is the final project, which as I have already told you, is to compose a song of different genres. If you fail to do this, you will be expelled" Mrs. Olmedo explained

"But this is our senior year! You can't expel us!!" Eros tried to reason with her

"Mr. Amore do you have any idea the severity of this situation?"

"No but-"

"Then do not interrupt me and say what we can and can't do. Now I'm going to give you all your report cards, and what I can tell you is that the only students who did not fail were Apollo and Athena" I wanted to stand up and cry for the injustice. It was possible that Apollo had a better grade than me, I won't deny it. But Athena?! She is only good at the actual school part, not music!

"Wait what?" My mouth blubbered without thinking

"I'm as disappointed as you are Ms Galanis. In fact, you were doing well up until two months ago. Come talk after class about it" I nodded, staying quiet because I didn't trust my voice.

Profesor Olmedo began to give out the report cards in alphabetical order.

"Eros Amore, Aphrodite Belcher, Dionysus Chopin, Phoebus Galanis" I could feel my breath hitching

"Phoebe Galanis" the world seemed to stop when she gave me my report card. I couldn't do like Cher in Clueless and make two teachers fall in love...only one teacher was single!

I opened the card and almost fainted out of shock. I got a C in COMPOSITION and an F in Music Theory. That's just impossible.

The rest of the class seemed unimportant when I compared it to my report card. I could feel Apollo glancing at me, but I didn't want to pay attention to him.

The bell rang and everybody left quickly.

"You coming Artemis?" Apollo asked me from the door. I shook my head

"Wait for me outside please. And tell Paolo to take us to the studio today" He nodded with a white people smile and headed out.

I turned around and faced Mrs Olmeda, the scariest teacher in the known universe. Her face was old and she had moon glasses, the kind librarians use. She had short blonde hair, the kind of blonde that it's obvious that is just there so you don't notice her grey hairs.

"Phoebe, sit down." She said kind of calmly, making me even more uneasy. I sat down directly in front of her and started twitching with my hands

"Phoebe, I know I'm a tough teacher, but I really care for your wellbeing. Your grades were spectacular up until two months ago. Now I've heard that you and Percy broke up around that time. Did that break-up take such a severe turn?"

"It's more than the breakup. I don't know, I feel that ever since then, I haven't been able to be me. I want to pursue happiness, but it seems impossible. I've been having family problems since then and overall I've felt kind of alone. Hermes has been acting weird and Apollo only talks to me about either music or love advice; Athena is always talking about school work and Aphrodite seems to only talk about ways to mess with my love life. I don't know, I think I'm just unhappy and that has been affecting my school performance" I released all my feelings

"I see. Tell you what. I'm not here to make you miserable, so instead of having these final grades I'm going to give you a bonus work. If you are able to confess your feelings through a song and that song makes it to the Billboard top 100, I will put you a 100/0, which will bring up your total average. If you do a song but it does not become popular, you will still get 50/0. How does that sound?" I wasn't completely in love with the idea to be honest, but I had to do something to not fail this year.

"Thank you so much Mrs Olmeda, I promise you, you won't regret giving me this chance."

"I hope not. But most importantly Phoebe, I want you to be happy." She smiled "now go, I believe your brother is waiting for you outside" I nodded and picked up my bag. Outside stood Apollo talking with Aphrodite.

Something weird had been going on between them. Neither of them would tell me of course, but I kinda knew what it was. My love life may be a literal mess and as depressing as one can imagine, but I still knew when two people were feeling something for each other.

"Apollo!" I yelled at him, interrupting the uninteresting conversation the two of them were probably having.

"Artemis. Let's go to the studio. Talk to you later Deity" he bid goodbye and she waved back.

There was a lot of traffic on our way to the studio. A route that usually takes twenty minutes took us an hour. Of course it wasn't all bad. Apollo was peeing himself, so being the good sister I am, I started doing things so he could relax.

"Rain. Waterfall. Glook glook. Water dropping. Shhhhhhh" I began telling him

"Lalalalalal shut up shut up" He was yelling with his hands on his ears.

Finally we arrived at the studio. It was a small grey house with a black mailbox in front of it. Nobody would look twice at it, there was nothing special to it. But it was cool in the way that, inside a useless and average house, the future of music was being made.

"BATHROOM" Apollo yelled, running in between both Leto and Poseidon. Percy laughed a little and Leto stared at me in confusion.

"He has been peeing himself since around 45 minutes ago. I would expect him to be back in fifteen minutes"

"Alright. Well nice of you to finally join us. Today is the day where the twins and Leto will start their song." Poseidon said exited for the 'song of the year' as he liked to call it.

"Wait what will I do today then?" Percy asked

"You and I are going to talk about your report card." Poseidon said sternly, even giving me chills.

"Oof roasted" I laughed at Percy

"Look who's talking! Even the teacher had to talk to you after class!" Percy ratted me out. Poseidon looked at me with shock while Leto looked disappointed.

I was about to pounce and choke Percy to death when Apollo came back from his trip to the bathroom.

"Yo who died?" He laughed "so boss, what are we going to be doing today?"

"You guys are going to be starting your song with Leto while Percy and I talk" Poseidon said while Apollo nodded and grabbed my hand.

"Let's go Leto! Wow I'm so excited" I'm times like this I really felt like the older twin. From what our father has said, I am seven minutes older than Apollo.

We entered a room in which a grey circular table stood with three plastic chairs. There were many loose leaf papers in the middle and three mechanical pencils.

"Dibs on that chair" Apollo said and ran towards the chair that was literally identical to the rest.

"Why are you acting so weird today? Did Aphrodite say she was gonna go out with you?" He blushed a deep shade of red and I laughed

"Artemis don't mess with your brother that much," Leto told me in a motherly way.

"Fine. Now let's get down to business"

"To defeat the huns" Apollo said

"If you say one more thing that isn't related to the song I'm going to tell Aphrodite you have AIDS" he shut up and glared at me.

Both Leto and I sat down on the remaining chairs and we began to discuss different ideas for the song.

"We can do a song about unconditional love." Leto suggested

"That's a good idea. Have you ever had unconditional love?" Apollo asked her

"Yes, and I lost it as quick as it came." She said in a sad tone of voice. She turned to me and then to Apollo "I'm going to tell you a story that I haven't told anyone else, but I believe that if someone were to know the story, it should be you two. So please no interruptions" I nodded and Apollo showed a thumbs up.

"So, my unconditional love started with my pregnancy..."