"It's so strange how life works: You want something and you wait and wait and feel like it's taking forever to come. Then it happens and it's all over and all you want to do is curl back up in that moment before things changed." - Lauren Oliver, Delirium

For the Book Quotes Competition

For the Taylor Swift (theme) competition: 12. invisible [alternate choice: flashback]

Slight AU.

Invisible

You curse it. Everything has changed, and at the same time, nothing at all has changed. You are still invisible. No, not invisible… more like a shadow.

And now, everything was for the worse. Percy; unhappy. You; shadow. Annabeth; angry.

You love Percy so much, so all you could do was watch from afar and watch him be happy with Annabeth.

Annabeth knew. You knew that she knew. But she didn't care. She pretended not to notice it.

And then, all of it changed.

Annabeth got into a fight with Percy. Oh how you'd wanted for this day to come. You had waited and waited, forever. And it felt like it would never, ever, come. Then, it came. It happened, but nothing good came out of it.

Percy was unhappy and was constantly in a bad mood.

You couldn't stand to see Percy being like that.

When you tried to talk to Annabeth about it, she just brushed you off angrily. "Why are you even doing this? Don't you love him?"

Yes, Annabeth knew.

Why did you have to wish so bad for something like that to happen?

I really have no chance with him.

You realize it. You don't realize it happily, but you do realize it.

But once you're in love, you can't just fall out of love. The only thing you can do is hate them. Despise them. Ignore them.

It doesn't really help. It doesn't work, but what can you do? Putting space between you and him is the solution.

He's confused, of course. He thought that you had a friendship.

But you wanted more. More than a friendship. But he would never know.

You don't want him to be miserable, but there's nothing you can do about it. You just melt into the shadows some more.

The only person who can comfort you is Hazel. But… she's your sister. She's going through her own problems, and you have to try to help her.

How did you get into this mess?

You want to just go back to when everything was happy and everyone was safe. When Percy and Annabeth were together, when Gaia was stirring up trouble…

Then, you tell yourself that it's all your fault, you tell yourself that repeatedly, so many times that you actually begin to believe it.

"I'm sorry," you whisper, but no one hears.

And you curl into a corner and begin to cry.

A/N: I'm sorry this was so bad. But I tried to incorporate the quote with the 'invisible' concept and this is what I came up with. Hope you enjoyed! Review please!