#it's leah

[hannahssimblr]

“Jude,” minutes before the bell rings for the end of lunch, Evan calls me over to him as I pass him, lurking by his locker as he so often is. 

“Yeah?”

“You know Alison Littler, right?”

I saunter over to him, intrigued, and lean against the locker next to his, “Yeah? Why?”

“Do you know where she is?”

“No. Is there a reason I should know?”

“Are you not, like, fucking each other or something?”

I laugh awkwardly, because he doesn’t have to say it like that, and so loudly that at least three passers by heard him. “I dunno, I haven’t seen her since this morning, but we have maths together in an hour. Why?”

“She was supposed to meet me here, that's all, I’ve been waiting for the whole break for her.”

I find this amusing, “How do you know Alison Littler, Evan?”

“Oh, well, you know… everyone knows her.”

“Yeah but I didn’t realise you were on hanging out terms with her. Since when?”

“We’re not,” he says, “and if we were, so what? Would you be jealous?”

“No, I’m just a bit curious about what’s happening here.”

“Is Alison’s business your business?”

I grin, “No, but I’m nosy.”

He gives in reluctantly, “I have something for her. I said I’d give it to her, and she hasn’t turned up. That’s all.”

I shrug, “Okay well, I don’t know what happened, sorry. Can I pass on a message?”

He chews on his lip, “I’d text her again but maybe her phone is dead. If you see her later will you tell her you saw me? Let her know I’ll be here after school until about a quarter past four.”

“Yeah, sure,” I pull back to lightly punch his arm but it makes him flinch and then I feel like I should apologise for frightening him. He’s a bit skittish, and these typical, aggressive boy things I’ve become accustomed to doing likely won't to go over well. “Uh, sorry about-” I say, and my words are clipped short by the abrupt wail of the bell through the narrow hallway. I turn to head toward German class, “Um, so Alison, yeah, I’ll tell her. Quarter past four.”

“Thanks,” He says, and slings his bag over his shoulder as he walks the other way. 

Later, Alison is missing from maths, and now I am distracted by her absence. My eyes keep drifting toward her empty desk, where she is usually perched right in front me, hair draped over the back of her chair and wafting vanilla scented shampoo my way. From where she sits she is right within range for my flirtatious torment, for me to kick the legs of her chair while she tries to draw straight lines with her ruler or poke her with a pen when she’s trying to ask a question, but not today. She’s gone, and I have this strange, niggling feeling that something isn’t quite right. 

I smuggle my phone out of my pocket and text her under the desk. 

You go home sick today? 

“Jude, phone please,” The teacher says, because she’s the type that watches me all class long for even a hint of wrongdoing. She barely lets me away with anything, so usually I have to act out when her back is turned or when she’s gone to the toilet or something. She stands in front of me now and snaps her fingers at me like I’m some kind of unruly feral dog, so I hand my phone over without protest and let her store it in her drawer until we’ve completed our calculus lesson. 

I spend the rest of the class wondering if Alison has texted back. 

“Hey,” before the last class of the day I block Tara Neary’s access to her locker with my body and note the look of utter delight on her face. It is because I am giving her attention, and I’m not blind to the effect I seem to have on these girls. It’s because I’m tall, I think, but so often they shrink back timidly like Tara and gaze up at me through lashes, trembling nervously at their own imaginings of the things they want me to do to them. Her expression quickly turns to crushing disappointment the moment I start quizzing her about Alison. 

“She’s in some of your classes, right?”

“Um, yeah but I don’t know her that well or anything.”

“Really? I thought you hung out.”

“Sometimes,” Tara says reluctantly as she nudges me out of the way to swap the books in her bag with those in her locker, “But I don’t know where she is. She was in chemistry this morning, and she wasn’t in Irish this afternoon,” A shrug, “sorry, I don’t know anything else. She probably had her period and went home or something.” Tara glances at me with some measure of optimism, as though this revelation that Alison does in fact, get a period may have frightened and disgusted me enough to put me off her, but she can try that one with lesser boys. I’ve been so inundated by girls and women my whole life, platonically, familially and romantically that periods of all things do not shock me. There are far scarier things about women. 

“Okay, thanks, well, if you see her tell her I was asking for her.”

“I will.”

She won’t.

Evan is standing forlornly by his locker at the end of the day, and as I pass him I give him the nod. “No sign?” 

“No, I suppose she went home sick.”

“Yeah, I’d say so. See you tomorrow, Evan.”

“Yeah, see you.”

Out by the gates in the hazy light that girl I used to know is there again. She sees me and waves, and this time I cannot pretend that I haven’t seen her back, so I wave too, and there is nowhere to go but past her, so I approach her. 

“What are you doing here?” I say, and I had hoped that my words would come out sounding a bit less accusatory but it’s difficult. 

Leah smiles and wraps her arms around herself to shield from the cold. She’s wearing a coat, but it isn’t thick enough to protect her from this cold snap. “I’m just waiting for someone.”

“A sibling?”

“No.”

I peer at her, wishing I didn’t feel so guarded and suspicious, but my body reacts to her long before I do. Always. “Do you ever think it’s weird that you’re nineteen and you’re still hanging around your old secondary school?”

She scoffs, and I shrug, “Just wondering, like.” 

She fixes her face so that it is soft despite my offensive remarks, nostalgic, affectionate, even, the one she always makes when she looks at me and it annoys me. “Just an acquaintance is all, I said I’d be here at the gates.”

“Right.”

“How’s your friend Jen?”

“She’s doing fine.”

“Oh, that’s good. She was such a nice girl.”

“Yeah, she is,” I almost turn to go before I spin back to her “She’s actually doing really well. She’s sorting everything out and she’s happy.” I’m not sure where this sudden burst of childish venom came from, or whether it’s really true that Jen is sorting things out or if she’s expressly happy, but I say it anyway in defence so that I can prove that she hasn’t turned out the way that many people expected her to.

“Did you hear Pete was put in a psych unit?”

I falter, “Pete Lee?” 

She nods, “He went crazy, apparently, and his dad had to wrestle a knife out of his hand.” 

I remember Pete Lee. He was a quiet, but nice guy. A little weird, sure, but relatively harmless. He liked dance music and always wore these really bright, neon coloured runners. I used to talk to him about games we both played on the playstation and he taught me how to huff deodorant fumes until I felt like I was floating through time and space above the little dingy park where we used to hang out. We were thirteen. Now we are seventeen and Pete Lee is in a psychiatric facility, which makes him the second boy from that small group of peers to have a psychotic break. 

I want to say that Pete didn’t deserve this, that if we’d all been more careful back then with the things we used and the things we developed a taste for then all this wouldn’t have had to happen. But we were barely teenagers, we didn’t really know what we were getting into, someone else should have known better, like Leah, maybe. She was there. She should have warned us that solvent abuse turns to substance abuse so easily that you don’t really see it happening, but I know that it is too much to expect from her, so I don’t say this.

Or anything else aside from, “Oh, that’s really sad.” 

She sighs unhappily, “Yeah, that’s how it goes sometimes.”

“I suppose,” I reply, and begin walking away from her. 

“Will you tell Jen I was asking about her?” She calls after me, and I don’t turn around. 

“Yeah,” I say, though she probably already knows I'm lying.

Beginning // Prev // Next

[thecollectibles]

Art by Leah Gardner

[daenerys-targaryen]

[h0rsegirlpercy]

Percy age 12: And if the mission required someone to push me down a flight of stairs for it to succeed… you’d want someone who won’t hesitate when they do it

Percy age 17:

[mydairpercabeth]

Everyone holding Annabeth to an impossible Standard

And then there’s Percy

[ayo-edebiri]

#Something something about Annabeth expecting help from her mother because she was always the perfect kid but getting sent to her own death and Percy expecting nothing because he doesn't believe in his dad and despite everything being saved from death by him

[andrew-garfielld]

Bonus:

“Percy, you can't ship Medusa's head to Olympus.” “Why not?”

PERCY JACKSON AND THE OLYMPIANS (2023-) S01E03 | “We Visit the Garden Gnome Emporium”

[hideyoosh]

Stardew's Finest Market ☆

bachelors + bachelorettes

[3amandimstillawake]

while we're on the topic of talking about changes the pjo show made that i love, im glad they didn't push the whole Annabeth saying she and Percy *have* to be enemies because athena and Poseidon have beef. Instead she's just this cryptid autistic strategist 12 yr old who stalks Percy and pushes him into the water. She's like "hmm this white boy will perfectly serve my purpose and schemes" and she's so real for that

[stevenrogered]

Percy Jackson and the Olympians | 1x07 "We Find Out the Truth, Sort Of"

[retquits]

winter leah!! wife wfie wfie fwife wi

[crispyanonart]

SDV x Chaotic Youtube Thumbnails // AKA: you're on Farmer's homepage

[thecollectibles]

Art by Leah Gardner

[daenerys-targaryen]

anyways take heat waves seriously. heat strokes and heat exhaustion are real. drink water. wear sunscreen. stay covered or in shaded areas if you can. pay attention to your skin - if it’s super flushed and your face is redder than usual, get under some shade and cool down IMMEDIATELY. pay attention to kids and elders too.

[leahberman]

green rush

instagram - twitter - website

[festus-eats-tabasco]

gotta say hearing luke tell percy that annabeth is head counselor of the athena cabin and the cut to annabeth herself—my mind instantly went “what??? how??? she’s twelve???” like I KNOW she’s head counselor. I’ve known since I was in second grade. but actually SEEING a twelve year old child being put in charge of a cabin full of teenagers rewired something in my brain. and that’s how I know seeing these kids fight is going to break me