νεκρός || Annabeth Chase x Fem!OC

Vol. 3-37: I visit the birthday boy

TEMPEST

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The rest of the summer seemed so weird, because it was so normal. It was the kind of summer I'd experienced for eighty years since I died.

I was drifting again.

All of my stuff was in my car, which was parked on the base of the hill. I got in it and slammed the door and sobbed silently as I started my car up and moved. I wasn't even sure where I was going. Anywhere but New York.

I tossed the picture of Anne into the glove box and slammed it shut. I didn't need to see her face. Not after what happened. That wasn't how it was supposed to happen. I was supposed to fake my death, first. Then, I was supposed to calmly tell her in private. Instead, I was killed in battle. I tried to pretend I was dead dead. It wasn't the fake death I wanted, but it would have to do. But Ethan tried to kill her and Percy, and I couldn't sit idly by and allow that to happen. That meant the last thing I did was save her. That also meant the last thing she saw me do was murder someone.

I pulled off the road and ran into a gas station bathroom to scrub Ethan's blood out of my hockey jersey, but it was already stained. Luke's blood was still on the bottom of my shoe, staining the cloth part of it. I got angrier and angrier and my tears clogged my vision as the disgusting sink ran, and the blood didn't come off.

I screamed, broke the sink in two, and went back to my car, and I continued to drive.

And drive. And drive. And drive. The only time I stopped was to get gas. I didn't eat or drink anything. Why should I? I'm dead. I didn't stop for hitchhikers, I didn't consider turning around and begging for forgiveness. I knew they wouldn't forgive me. I could see it on their faces. The evening turned to midnight, the midnight to dawn, and I never let my foot off the peddle. Rarely did I go lower than ninety miles an hour. Often I went over a hundred.

I didn't stop for good until I got to New Orleans. From Manhattan, that's about a twenty hour drive. The speeds I was going made it more like fifteen. I parked my car on a residential street and shapeshifted to look like some random thirty-year-old woman going shopping. I pretended I was mute so nobody talked to me. I bought myself some new clothes and changed into them before changing back into myself.

I stared at the mirror. I looked like I did at Camp Half-Blood. My hair was very short, my skin was pale and angular, my eyes were the color of the blood that no longer flows in my veins. So, I changed it. I made my hair longer. Gave myself some piercings. My eyes were green and my hair had no white.

I could pretend I wasn't evil if I didn't look like the other version of me.

The next few days, I partied a little bit. I pretended I was happy. New Orleans is great for parties and drinking and getting high. I can't do those last two things, though, despite how much I wanted to. I wanted the Xanax I took to actually do something, but it didn't. Because I am dead.

I kept opening my phone and hoping to see Anne message me or call or leave a voicemail, but she never did. The only other numbers in my phone are her family. I tried sending her a message, but it didn't go through. She blocked me. I didn't try contacting her family. They didn't need to know anything.

I left New Orleans after a few weeks, deciding it was too much, and I went to Jackson, Mississippi. I never went to the place I used to live as a girl. The place I was delivered to my dad, where I grew up, where my siblings were born, where all of us died. I didn't want to see it. It was just too much to deal with for now.