The Half-Blood Project

10- Overlapping Shadows

Annabeth Chase 

Percy's idea of a 'Free Day' is not my idea of a free day. 

The warehouse is extremely noisy, in the second it's utter chaos and I start to enjoy it. A game of Death Ball is going, paintball but without the thick protection and a couple of kids strip down to just their shorts and socks, running through the course barechested. 

I could never do it and I cringe. 

Leo, the wiry, curly-haired Latino boy who likes to berate his sister Nyssa in Spanish was currently building what he called 'family room'. Two large U shaped couches over a soft throw rug in front of a 90-inch plasma with a variety of gaming systems piled up. 

Shaking my head I walk around the compound, catching the young kid named Harley from falling from the ropes course and I think he got a concussion but waved it off like it was nothing. 

I think he's Leo's little brother. 

Now it makes sense. 

"These days are the best." Hazel nudges me with her shoulder as we watch the game of Death Ball. Jason is one of those running bare-chested and is smothered with paintballs and bruises across his disgustingly hairy chest. 

"Yeah? I don't think Death Ball is my type of game." I mutter and Hazel snorts with laughter. 

"Me neither, Jason invented it a while back and he leads the red team against Percy sometimes who refuses to be on any other team. It has to be blue." 

"I thought I was hallucinating when I saw him eating a blue cookie, he told me the story. Kind of funny." 

Hazel nods. "Yeah Percy is a character, he's been doing this for a long time, but I'm surprised that you've been doing this for fifteen years." 

I sigh and cross my arms over my chest, hugging my waste. I despised most people even know my name, but if this team was to trust me, I had to trust them with who I was. 

"Nearly sixteen. I left not long after my seventh birthday. Never looked back." 

Hazel's golden eyes flickered around the Death Ball area and there were some gruesome shouts from inside, the popping of paintballs and a crash, someone falling to the ground. Probably Jason. 

"What made you leave, if you don't mind me asking." She adds in quickly. I feel my eyes darken with the thought of my evil stepmother and horrible father. But I also think of my twin brothers. Do they even remember me or am I just a ghost of a dream they had when they were little? When I was seven, they were two. With a startling realization, I do the math, and my brothers, little Bobby and Matthew will be seniors in high school soon. 

I've missed most of their life. 

I'm a horrible sister. 

"My dad and stepmom neglected me. There was a lot of...I just had to getaway. I don't even remember the last time I've talked to my father." 

"Well if it makes you feel better, I was tormented for years by kids at school because of my mom and she took her anger out on me." 

I snort. "That doesn't make me feel better Hazel, but that kind of sucks." 

"Maybe you should go back, once this is all over, visit your dad, it's been fifteen years Annabeth, things have changed." Hazel puts her hand on my shoulder, she's a lot shorter than me but her gold eyes are full of this strength I've always yearned to have on the inside. Being mentally strong is much more useful than being physically strong. 

"No. I can't, there is too much pain there. To much...if I go back, everything I built over the past fifteen years vanishes." 

I won't go back to my father, I won't look him in the eyes and tell him that his only daughter is a murderer because he let me go. If he has just filed a police report the moment he found me missing from my sheets, this wouldn't be happening. I'd have a stable, normal life at home. Maybe be at college, maybe be in love.