His Lifeline

Chapter 7: Civil Conversations

The next few days passed without too much happening. Well, the usual happened. I got up sore from the previous nights' beatings, went to school, did tutoring with Annabeth. Occasionally got a pre-beat down by my regular bullies and went home to get the main beat-down by Gabe.

Sometime on Wednesday, this kid named Leo came up to me. But that was it. He came up to me in my personal space and stood there, looking up at me with a stern glare. When I didn't do anything for a few minutes but looked surprised and uncomfortable, he grinned, introduced himself, and ran off into the crowd.

Something similar happened on Thursday, but instead, it was a girl. She came up to me, smiled, and introduced herself as Piper. As soon as she dropped my hand from the handshake, she began walking circles around me, kept her hand on her chin, and just looked at me. I was even more uncomfortable than when Leo just stared at me in close proximity. Thankfully when Piper stopped, she nodded, which made me feel a little bit better. But then she grinned at me almost mischievously and bounded off into the school rush.

Hopefully, I looked to the ceiling crossing my fingers; hopefully, nothing weird like that would happen today. Tuesday, I got punched by Jason, Wednesday I got stared at by Leo, and Thursday, Piper watched me like she was designing some kind of dress. It was weird, and I prefer knowing what was going to happen.

Sadly, my hopes were dashed, like they always were.

As I left math, another girl came up to me. She had caramel-colored hair tied in a loose braid hanging over her shoulder. She wore a whitewashed pink t-shirt and high waisted jeans with black converse. Thankfully, she didn't come to stare at me.

"Hey there, I'm Calypso" I wasn't off the hook yet. Piper started with a cheery greeting before making me more uncomfortable.

"Uhh, hi? I'm Percy?" I'm seriously getting over all these people coming to say hi; I'm the loner, and I like being the loner. Leave me alone!

"Sorry about the past couple of days, my friends can be really weird" she was apologizing, for who? I don't know, maybe those three teenagers from before.

"You see, whenever someone starts hanging out with Annabeth, they get really weird, like, I-need-to-make-sure-this-guy-cant-hurt-her kind of weird. But that's only for the guys. Piper has another kind of weird going on" as Calypso tried to explain why my week has been a rollercoaster, I saw a group of people. I recognized them as Leo, Jason, Piper, Annabeth, and a few others I didn't know. They were talking loudly with their hands, but I couldn't hear them.

"Anyway, unlike them, I like to have civil conversations instead of making someone uncomfortable."

Ok, good thing, she wasn't going to start getting into my personal space and making me rethink not hiding in the restroom for the passing period.

Bad thing, she's still a girl, and girls make me uncomfortable when I talk to them anyway.

"Uhh, thanks for that. I guess?" I wasn't sure how to respond as my hand scratched the back of my neck. "Um, I should probably be heading to class."

"Oh! Sorry about that, I'll talk to you later then" she turned to wave to me as she walked over to the group I saw earlier.

I gave a sigh of relief; no weird, uncomfortable invasions of personal space today. Yet.

I walked to my locker and went to my next class, trying not to think about why Annabeth's friends would want to make sure I wouldn't hurt her. I mean, I would never hit a girl.

As the day trudged on, PE was finally ending. I had been tripped at least three times throughout the period, both by being clumsy and by jocks in class. Honestly, I don't think my knees will heal because of how often I scrape and fall on them.