Silence is Golden (Percy Jackson AU)

Chapter 11- Frank

The air was damp with morning fog. A smell of recent rain and upturned earth. The sounds of civilization, of cars screeching, people yelling, even kids laughing at this early hour sounded like they were a million miles away.

The walk was cement looking so much like a normal side walk it hurt. On either side were rows and rows, of other people. Dead people. But other people. Some had flowers, weather bent and mushed, others had little flags which had been soaked and collapsed. Real patriotic.

Frank tried not to think, about anything. His throat already tightened so he wasn't sure if he'd be able to even speak once he got there, and the petals were fluttering off the flowers in his hand like flecks of snow. He'd only seen one other person in the entire graveyard. A girl in a yellow flower dress with frizzing long hair, held back with a flower pin, and golden eyes, staring with a watery gaze at another tombstone.

Frank had never felt more alone in his life.

His feet left the sidewalk, and his sneakers sunk into the most ground. It made a sickly squishing sound as he walked the last couple steps.

He knew exactly where this grave was. And in the year that it had been, he'd never visited until today. The memory of the burial didn't fade, it didn't even leave his mind for a second. You don't forget putting flowers on your mother's grave.

Frank stood there.

"Hey."

He didn't get an answer not that he expected one. His voice was tight, and he had to force the words out.

"Mom." He gazed down at his feet. His chest hurt.

"Oh, Damnit!" Frank just yelled. He fell to his knees splattering his jeans with wet, cold, mud. He was never good with words, or actions or anything for that matter. Tears began falling and he let them go.

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm so so sorry." He chanted brokenly. "I'm sorry I didn't look up when you went out. I'm sorry I didn't cry at the service. I'm sorry I punched your cousin's, uncle's, brother's, daughter's cousin or whoever that guy was at the after service. I'm sorry I haven't come till now."

The flowers lay covered in mud, discarded. His mother never liked Lilacs anyway.

"I just couldn't do it." He whispered, "I couldn't bare to know that you really are gone."

"They're never really gone you know."

Frank felt as another person at next to him. The girl he saw earlier, in the yellow flower dress that must have cost a fortune sitting next to him in the mud.

"Everyone keeps saying that." Frank sniffled, "That she's still with me, in my heart. That she's watching over me. How do you know?"

"I think, sometimes, you can just feel it." She said.

"I never even really said goodbye." Frank choked, "She left to go grocery shopping, I barely looked up from my book. Four hours later, two guys appeared on my door step telling me she wasn't coming home. Like it was the worse Christmas present ever."

He it all so clearly. It felt like it happened yesterday. A shard of his own heart killing him from the inside out. She left with a smile on her lips her dark hair pulled back in a flawless pony tail, and purse in her hand. She'd been buying for Christmas dinner, and Frank had been reading in depth a book on the French revolution.

He remembered looking up at the clock half an hour later and shrugging his shoulders. Two hours later and he'd brought out the gift he'd bought for his mother, the newest book in the romance series she liked to read in her spare time and wrapped it in golden paper with a green bow on top. He placed it under the tree next to the present she had for him.

He could still feel his heart breaking from when the doorbell rang, and he opened the door. The grim faces of the police officers. "I'm sorry sir, but she's not coming home. Your grandmother has agreed to take you in..." They said as if that would make it all better.

Frank had ripped the Christmas tree over, the glass ornaments and tinsel, crashing to the ground the Angel on top of the tree, the one his mother loved so much having been passed down for generations broke. It's face shattered into the carpet, one wing snapped off.

Only one thing survived from that, the present his mom left for him. It was still sitting in the drawer of his desk wrapped and untouched, because it hurt too much to do anything else with it.

The police officers had told him to calm down, not to freak out. They looked so...so...robotic. So unsympathetic.

"People suck, don't they." The girl mused.

"Yeah. Sometimes they care too much. Sometimes not enough. They say the wrong things at the wrong times, and do stupid things. They forget the important things. They move away, they go away, they... die. Stupid people. They do suck." Frank agreed.

"They say mean things, or they don't say anything at all. They stand and watch things they should be stopping. They laugh at things that are serious. They Talk about things they can't even begin to understand. They pretend like everything is alright in a world that's not...Life sucks."

They looked at each other.

"Was your mom a war veteran?" She asked softly, a ray of sun catching through the fog and hitting her in a beautiful golden aura.

Frank nodded letting his head drop. "She was home for the holidays. She died in a car crash of all the stupid things..."

The girl pulled the flower from her hair and placed it gently on the grave.

The girl lay her head on his shoulder. It wasn't like she was leaving on him. Almost like giving her support. Frank didn't know how, or why, but he didn't move. It felt...nice. This girl was nice.

Frank didn't feel so alone anymore.

He could imagine his mother leaning on top of her own grave stone, smiling at him. Not angry because he hadn't visited, not sad because he was crying, not disappointed because he was failing English.

But smiling because her little boy was sitting here with a little girl, and for the first time in a year he felt at peace. He hoped she was at peace too. And he kinda just felt it, for a brief moment a rifle of calm wind blew through the air almost like a hand ruffling his hair.

Then the calm the was ruined with a sound of a ringtone. A couple lyrics of some absurd song, that made the girl blush extremely hard.

"Sorry!" She squeaked. She quickly pulled out her phone an age old, slide key board type. "How did she even get my number?!"

"Who?"

"My...friend, Piper." She said, "She wants to take me and her crush to the movies. Would you...Would you like to come?"

"Uh... I don't know. When is it?"

"Probably eight o'clock, nine-ish." She said nervously playing with her hair.

"Sure I guess." Frank said, checking his watch to see if he still had time to study at the diner afterward, like every night.

"Awesome!" She typed back on her phone, rapidly, before looking down at her clothes. "I should probably change."

Frank smiled slightly.

"I'm Hazel," She said, with a small smile, standing up.

"Frank." He said. Her smile flashed a little bigger.

"I'll see you at the movie theater, Frank." She said and then she disappeared into the fog.

Frank turned back to the tombstone in front of him and he couldn't help but think of how beautiful the name Hazel was.

~~~

FRAZEL-BERRY FLUFF!!

Did anyone make the connection yet? His mom was a war veteran....