If the Shoe Fits (Percabeth AU)

Chapter 9

The blaring sound of my alarm clock woke me, I was quick to shut it off since it was 4:45 am. I had swim practice this morning. I guess I should explain the situation with swimming. The swimming season had actually ended before Winter Break but since at lot of the boys still wanted to socialize and swim they kept having swim practices. It was optional but many of them said it was to stay fit for the water polo season. 

However I was not the same as all my teammates. You see I had always felt at ease in the water, it had become my place of relaxation and a place to let off a little steam on a particularly frustrating day. 

I left a quick note for my mom, Estelle and Paul telling them I'd gone to swim practice although it was more of a place to get some exercise, relax and hang out with my friends. Grabbing a light breakfast and making my lunch for later I headed out to our beautifully blue Toyota. Tossing my stuff into the passenger's seat I drove to school, enjoying the rare quiet of an early morning in New York.

I walked into the locker room dropping off my things and changing into my swimsuit. When I was done I carefully grabbed the small gift I had brought for Tyson and placed it on the bench in front of his locker, smiling. It was to symbolize all the great times I'd had practicing with him.

Practice itself was pretty short since it was early morning and I was running it. We only had to do a few sprint and we had a mini water polo match for all the swimmers who were training for water polo. I didn't do too bad but considering I'd never played in an actual match before, it was pretty good.

"You sure you don't want to join the team Percy?" It was was one of the polo kids, his name was Ed and was a really chill dude. "You'd be really good at it if you tried."

"Nah man, I have the musical to worry about now." I gently declined his offer.

"Okay well if you ever change your mind, we'd gladly take you in."

"Into the dark side." Tyson butted in, laughing manically and looking like an evil wizard who just terrorized a bunch of tiny children.

"You would know," I looked at Tyson, "Darth Vader."

"As would you, Sith Lord."  

"Okay, okay as much as I would love to skip school my mom would be upset so I'll see you guys later." I turned to walk away. "Oh Tyson, enjoy your gift." I couldn't seen Tyson's face but I knew he had a skeptical look on his face.  Over the past few years I had always gotten Tyson the same gift, an empty jar of peanut butter. 

I know I know, I really cruel but I figured since it was our senior year I would get him an actual full jar of peanut butter. Man, he was going to be fooled now. This was a prank 4 years in the making, he would never expect someone like me not to pull a prank on him on the last day of practice.

I went through the school day without much trouble. Mostly daydreaming about, ahhh I mean, ignoring Paul in Rhetoric, making dam jokes with Grover, secretly memorizing lines with Piper in Science, sleeping most of Study Hall and actually paying attention in Latin. 

Before long it was the end of the day and I had successfully gone the whole day... actually I'm just gonna keep that to myself hah hah hah.

As I was saying before i got sidetracked, today was the first rehearsal for the musical. I probably should've checked the script more thoroughly to see who I was going to be acting with but ehhh. I'd been going over lines with Piper in science because 1:the class is super easy and only Grover takes it seriously, 2: ADHD makes it very hard to focus on any task for long, 3: We finish the homework in like 15 minutes so we free time in class.

"Hey Percy."

"Wha? Oh hi Annabeth." I whirled around seeing Annabeth sanding a few feet behind me.

"So, you excited for rehearsal? I've already got a lot of my lines in my head, I'm not completely memorized but it's getting there."

"Yeah same here." I chuckled nervously scratching the back of my neck because I had most certainly only starting looking at the script today. "I'm more excited for the songs though, singing is so much fun, am I right?"

"Yeah, anyways, we should get going. Don't want to be late!"

"Of course not." Although being late was the last thing on my mind.

-----

"Hello, hello everyone and congratulation! As of yesterday you are all part of the Cast of the Cinderella Musical!" This, of course, was none other than our beloved choir teacher Mr. Pheobus.

We all clapped because Mr. Pheobus was just one of those people that thought very highly of himself not to mention he was always subjecting his students to the poetry he wrote. I'm really glad I never was one of his students.

"Alright let's get to it shall we?"*

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I was exhausted. It had been 2 hours of getting to know some people, not knowing anybody besides my friends and Annabeth, and stumbling over lines I didn't know. I managed to wing most of them but it had been a very long day. Thankfully I didn't have much homework because even though I slept most of study hall I did have time to finish most of my work. All I had left was  some math problems I hadn't done yet. 

It had been a quick drive home, my mom had picked up Estelle earlier so I didn't have to worry about her. It was already kind of late since it was 6pm and Estelle's school ended at 3. I opened the door to our apartment and I collapsed onto the couch. Our comfortable, plush, blue couch. 

"PERCY!!" a voice yelled as I felt a little cannonball land on me.

"oof" I let out a little puff of air. "Hey Elle." I rubbed her hair and before I knew it we had both slipped into the dreamworld of sleep.

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*The English language is so weird like that sentence is a command and a question yet you hear it all the time. It's like you will do this, right? You're commanding someone to do something then you ask if that's okay. I just find it funny, I only notice it b/c I'm learning other languages

Do you guys know any languages?

I know English and Spanish, I pretty good at French and I'm learning Japanese.

It's funny, my chapters are slowly getting longer and longer. Hope you like it!

-Carmen

1161 words