Percy Jackson

Word spread fast about the bathroom incident, and as Annabeth showed me the last couple of places around camp, kids were staring at us. By the time wee made it back to the canoe lake, I was over the looks.

"I have training to get to," Annabeth told me. "Dinners at 7:30. Just follow your cabin to the mess hall, they'll show you."

"Annabeth I— I'm sorry about what happened in the bathroom," I apologized, sensing that that's why she'd been less snarky since we left the latrines. "It wasn't my fault, but I'm still sorry."

She gave me a skeptical look as I started to realize that maybe it was my fault. I don't know how I did it, but I'd become one with the plumbing.

But it wouldn't be the first time, right?

Is that how Nancy ended up in the fountain?

"Whatever," she pushed the topic aside. "You need to talk to the Oracle."

"Who?"

"Not who, what. I'll talk to Chiron about it."

And once again, I felt a familiar sense of frustration rise in my chest.

Why can't anybody give me a straight answer here? What's so hard about just answering a simple question with a real answer.

Looking out at the lake, I was shocked out of my frustration when I saw a face in the water that wasn't my reflection, and realized there was a whole... Not quite person in the water. She waved, so I did the polite thing and waved back.

"Don't encourage them," before I could even process what I was seeing, Annabeth stopped me. "Naiads are terrible flirts."

"It's not like I found her attractive, why would you—" i started before my brain decided that it had reached its weirdness threshold for the day. "naiads?"

I paused, taking a breath.

The girl in the water was gone.

"That's it." I decided. "i want to go home."

Annabeth frowned like that statement made no sense.

"Percy, don't you get it?" She asked, when it should've been obvious that I didn't. "This is home now. This is the only place on Earth that's safe for people like us."

"Who? Mentally disturbed orphans?"

She sighed.

"I mean not human." And once again, she really knew how to make me feel better about everything. "Or at least, not completely. Half human, half not."

"Half human and half what?"

Like she'd tell me.

"I think you know."

And I didn't want to admit it, mostly because of how vague Annabeth had been all day, but I had an idea. A tingling feeling surfaced in my limbs, a feeling I'd sometimes get when my mom talked about my bio dad.

"God." I spit it out. "half god."

"Your dad isn't dead," she reminded me. "He's one of the Olympians."

And yet he still couldn't pay child support?

"That's crazy."

"Is it?" She challenged. "What's the most common thing they did in the old stories, Percy? Run around and fall in love. Do you think that's really changed in the last millennia?"

"But they—" I stopped myself before I called them myths again. "But if all of the kids here are... Half-gods..."

"Demigods."

"Hm?" I hated saying the term half-blood, but the correction still caught me off guard.

"The technical term is demigod. Or half-blood"

"Okay. Then why didn't you say that earlier? Who's your dad or... Parent?"

Annabeth looked at me as if I'd just called her a slur.

"Are you really assuming that it's my dad that's a god?"

"I— no!" I insisted, catching myself balling my fists again. "i said parent and I... You haven't said anythung about it until just now and my bio dad is the one that's not involved in my life so it's just like... Easier for me to default to dad. Who are your parents? Is that better?"

She clenched her jaw.

"My dad is a professor at West Point," Annabeth answered. "He lives in Virginia, I haven't seen him since I was little. He teaches American History. My mom is Cabin 6."

I gave her a lost look, and realized that she greatly overestimated my memory.

"I... Who? I don't have the cabins memorized yet. I've been here for less than a day."

She rolled her eyes.

"Athena. Goddess of wisdom and battle."

So that's why she's a smartass.

Got it.

But fuck it, I figured. Why not try.

"And my dad?"

But again, she shrugged.

"Nobody knows besides him and maybe your mom would've known," the daughter of Athena reminded me. "you're undetermined. So until one of the gods claim you as their kid, it's up in the air. We just have to wait to see if he sends a sign claiming you as his own. Sometimes it happens."

That last sentence caused a weight to drop from my chest down to my stomach.

"So you mean sometimes it doesn't?"

I thought about the kids I'd seen in Cabin 11— not the really excited ones, but the sullen ones. They must've been undetermined kids who have been here for a while. Gave up hope on ever hearing from their godly parent. On waiting for a message that would never come.

I'd known kids like that at Yancy Academy. Rich kids who were sent away by their parents to get a phonecall once a semester, twice if they were lucky. Shuffled away to boarding school because their parents didn't have time to deal with them.

Their parents weren't gods, though.

Gods should behave better.

Would I be one of those sullen cabin 11 kids in two years time?

"So I'm stuck here." I concluded. "This it it? For the rest of my life?"

She shrugged.

"It depends," Annabeth decided to actually answer the question. "some kids are only here in the summer— if you're a child of Demeter or Aphrodite you're probably not a super powerful force and could get away with training in the summer and surviving the rest of the year in the mortal world. For the rest, though, it's too dangerous to leave. Camp has borders so monsters can't get in. Sometimes you can go on quests, but... They're rare."

"So you're a year-rounder?"

She looked down.

"I've been here since I was seven." She said, playing with her necklace. "every year, at the end of summer, you get a bead for surviving another year. I've been here longer than most of the counselors, and a lot of them are in college."

"Oh." And sue me, I'm nosy. "What made you come so young?"

She looked down.

"None of your business."

"Oh. Alright." I took the hint. "So I could just walk out of here if I wanted to?"

She chuckled.

"It'd be suicide, but you could," Annabeth told me, looking back up. "If you had permission from Chiron and Mr. D, which they have no reason to give a newbie with no training. No offense, but you don't even have a weapon and you don't look like you throw many pinches."

"It's more than you'd think," I corrected the daughter of Athena, who looked surprised. "Um, it's usually bratty rich kids, though, not people like Clarisse, so... My parole officer's cool, though."

"You have a parole officer?"

"When teachers label you as troubled, it doesn't take long. When would Chiron and Mr. D give permission to leave, though?"

"Just... For a quest." Annabeth said, refocusing. "But it doesn't happen often. The last time..."

Her voice trailed off.

"What about the summer solstice?" I questioned.

"Huh?"

"When you fed me that uh... Ambrosia? In the infirmary," I went on. "you mentioned something about the solstice, like you thought I'd known something about it."

"Yeah, so....you do know something?"

"Well... No." I admitted. "Back at Yancy, the school I went to with Grover and Chiron, I overheard them talking about a deadline and that we didn't have much time. Something about the solstice, but that was it. What do you think it meant?"

Annabeth clenched her fists.

"I wish I knew." She told me. "Chiron and the satyrs know, but they won't tell me what it is. Or any of the counselors for that matter. Something is wrong in Olympus. Something major. The last time I was there, though, everything seemed normal."

"You've been to Olympus?"

"Some of us year-rounders," she filled me in. "Luke, Clarisse, me, plus a few others— took a field trip during the winter solstice, when they have their big council."

"But..." I was having a hard time taking this in. "How did you... Get there?"

"The long island railroad, how else?" The daughter of Athena responded. "Get off at Penn Station, walk to the Empire State Building and go up to the 600th floor." She looked at me like I was a dumbass. "You are a New Yorker, right? From Manhattan?"

I decided not to point out that the Empire State Building only had around 200 floors.

"Yeah, from the Upper East Side."

"So you're familiar with the area." Annabeth said. "anyways, not long after our visit, the weather started getting weird. Closest we can figure is that something important was stolen and if it's not returned by the solstice... Things will go sour. I was hoping you'd know something. Athena gets along with almost everyone— well, besides Ares and the like, longstanding rivalry with Poseidon, but I thought if we could work together and get a quest..."

I also decided not to point out that she was contradicting herself by saying we should get a quest after saying that they'd never give me, a newbie, a quest.

Smelling the barbeque smoke in the distance, my stomach threatened to complain as I realized how hungry I was. Annabeth told me that she'd catch me later and we parted ways.

Walking back into cabin 11, I started to notice similarities between a lot (though not all) of the campers: upturned eyebrows, sharp noses, and mischievous smiles. All kids that would've been pegged as trouble makers as a kid.

I didn't fit the mold.

Thankfully, nobody paid me any attention as I sat down in my space with the Minotaur horn. The counselor, Luke, came over holding some stuff in his hands.

"Hey, I got you a sleeping bag," the older demigod said, setting it down in front of me as he sat down next to me. "Also stole some toiletries from the camp store for you."

I wasn't sure if he was serious about the stealing part, considering his dad.

"Thanks."

"No prob!" He told me, pushing his back against the wall. "Tough first day?"

"I shouldn't be here." The words fell out of me. "I don't... Want to be here. I don't even know if I believe in gods."

"Most kids don't when they arrive," Luke reassured me. "It doesn't get any easier once you do."

His voice turned bitter at that last statement, which surprised me because he seemed like such a nice guy. An easygoing guy, more accurately. I wondered if watching kid after kid lose hope of being claimed had something to do with that bitterness.

"So your dad is Hermes?"

Luke took out a switchblade and at first I thought he might cut me with it, but he just scraped some mud off of his sandal.

"Yeah. Hermes."

"The uh, wing-footed messenger dude, right?"

He nodded.

"Messengers, medicine, travellers, merchants, thieves," Luke listed off. "That's why you get to enjoy the hospitality of the Hermes cabin. He's not all that picky about who he sponsors."

Taking it with a grain of salt, I tried to tell myself that Luke didn't meant that in a way that was supposed to make me feel bad about being here.

After all, he seemed to have a lot on his mind.

"You ever meet him?"

There was a three count of silence.

"Once."

I waited for a story or any sort of elaboration, but Luke didn't provide any. Either it was a bad memory, or it just wasn't worth telling— like all they did was say hi or something.

Maybe it had something to do with how he got his scar.

Looking back up, Luke managed a smile. He put his guard back up— his mask, if you will.

"Don't worry about it, Percy," he tried to reassure me once again. "The campers here are mostly good people. We're all extended family, right? We have to take care of each other."

With that sentence, it seemed like Luke understood how lost I felt, which I was grateful for. Even being an older demigod, he should steer clear from dumb middle schoolers like me, but he actually welcomed me to the cabin. Put in effort to make me feel comfortable.

Or at least, more comfortable. He stole toiletries for me, which was nice.

Not having any other filler questions, I decided to ask him the one that's been bugging me since I'd woken up, more or less.

"Clarisse, from the Ares cabin." I spoke up. "She was joking with her friends about me being "Big Three" material, and then Annabeth was talking about... She said I might be the one and then started talking about an oracle and... What was all or that about?"

Luke folded his knife, tucking it away.

"I hate prophecies."

"What do you mean?"

Luke's face twitched around his scar.

"Let's just... Say I messed things up for everyone else." The older teen told me, glancing down for a moment. "The last two years, after my quest to the garden of Hesperides went sour, Chiron hasn't issued any quests. Annabeth's been begging him for one so much he finally told her that he knew her destiny and that she wasn't meant to go on a quest yet and she had to wait for somebody special to come to camp, so every time we get a new camper..."

"Somebody special?"

"Don't sweat it, kid, she thinks every kid who comes in is the one," he told me, as if she were talking about crushes Annabeth's developed and not about her key to leaving camp. "Now, come on, it's dinner time, and I'm starving."

As soon as he said it, Luke stood and a conch horn sounded from outside.

Luke yelled. "Eleven, fall in!"

I flinched at the change in his voice, then mentally scolded myself for letting myself flinch, then stood up as the rest of the cabin joined us.

He wouldn't hurt you.

The whole cabin— about 20 of us in all, filed in line as we walked towards the mess hall. We had to line up by seniority so I was dead last, but once we got to the hall and had to line up by cabin, I wasn't in the very end. It turns out Mr. D had two kids— Pollux and Castor. They were a year, maybe two, older than me.

"So you're the newbie who's been in the infirmary all weekend?"

"Hm? Oh, uh, yeah. Hi. Are you guys the only kids in cabin 12?"

The one closer to me nodded his head.

"It's not like our dad really has time to have more kids right now," he told me. "Name's Pollux. Castor and I here are twins, our dad is Mr. D."

"Your... Oh."

"Yeah," Pollux responded. "He's not as bad as he seems, I promise, it's just... A thick skin."

But then I realized that I might've casted a slightly incorrect message from my tone.

"Wh— oh, no! I get it, my step dad is like... Similar, that's wasn't..." I said, stumbling over my words. "I just wasn't sure how long he's been here so I wasn't sure he'd have kids. I know that like, the first three cabins are empty, but others all seem to be empty so..."

"Yeah Zeus and Poseidon can't really have kids because of some weird pact they made with Hades after World War II," they filled me in. "so those cabins are empty, and Hera never had demigods being the marriage goddess and all so.... Artemis doesn't have kids, obviously, but sometimes the Hunters stop by to visit and kick our asses in Capture the Flag so the cabins not always empty."

"Oh. Interesting.'

"Mhm." Castor hummed. "Also, we heard that you doused Clarisse with toilet water? Nice one, man. Grover was right about you."

"He..."

Was Grover talking about me behind my back?

"What did Grover say about me?"

"Oh, just that if anyone could take on Clarisse, you could." Castor clarified for me, which was relieving to hear. "he thinks you're really cool."

Now, Grover's told me that I'm cool before, and is that true? It's debatable.

But hearing somebody else tell me that Grover thought that I was cool made me feel really good about myself and really happy about the fact that he wasn't lying when he said he was my friend.

If nothing else, at least I have Grover.

Marching into the pavilion, I noticed a bronze brazier in the middle the size of a bathtub that was currently lit. In total, there was around 100 or more campers, a few dozen satyrs, and then around the same amount of naiads and nymphs combined. Grover was seated next to Mr. D at the Mr. D table, Chiron to the side of the table as there wasn't room for a centaur to properly sit (which felt like an oversight, since Chiron runs the camp). When he saw me, Grover smiled and waved at me. I smiled back, seeing Pollux roll his eyes as he was seated next to Grover.

Annabeth was sitting at the cabin 6 table with around 10 other kids. She wasn't the only blonde, though most of the kids had darker hair and all of them seemed to have grey eyes (gods genetics must be insanely strong). Clarisse was at Cabin 5 with a bunch of kids that just... Looked mean. She must've gotten over being hosed down, though, because she was laughing and joking around with her siblings.

Though most of the cabins tables seemed fairly empty or at least suitable for their size, my ass hung halfway off the bench the entire time. I noticed an empty chalice in front me, which felt oddly formal.

And empty. With no pitchers in sight.

"Speak to it," Luke whispered to me. "It'll give you any drink you want. Non-alcoholic, of course."

"Cherry Coke?" I felt felt talking to a cup, but before I knew it, the liquid materialized.

Which gave me an idea.

"Blue cherry Coke."

Ignore the fact that that would technically make purple, because it worked. The drink turned a dark shade of cobalt.

Finally, Chiron stood and pounded his hoof on the marble floor and raised his chalice, calling for a toast. "To the gods!"

"To the gods," everyone repeated as the nymphs started to walk around with serving platters of food: strawberries, rolls, apples (no grapes), asparagus, and yes, the barbeque I smelled earlier.

I took a sip of my blue drink, a silent toast to my mom.

She's not gone. Not permanently, not forever. She's in the Underworld, and if that's a real place, then one day...

"Here you go, Percy." Luke said, handing me the platter of smoked brisket, which felt weird to take after living with Grover all year.

You see, Grover's vegetarian, and while he never asked me to give up meat, I slowly ended up giving away the ones that have a stronger smell to them. Barbeque being one of the more obvious ones. He always tries to hide it, but he doesn't like the smell of it and I think it makes him nauseous. I still ate the occasional hamburger or if he had cheesy enchiladas, I'd have chicken or beef ones, but I didn't realize how long it'd been since I had something like barbeque until Luke handed it to me and the smell overwhelmed me.

Don't get it twisted, though: I was still going to eat it.

Loading my plate up, I was about to take a bite when I noticed other kids all getting up and walking towards the central brazier like they were going to get flambee for dessert.

"Come on." Luke said, standing up and motioning for me to follow.

At the brazier, Luke explained the burnt offerings to me, and while I didn't know who to give my offers to, I still did it. Afterwards, Mr. D spoke to the camp about capture the flag on Friday and introduced me to the camp (which I hated) before dismissing us for campfire.

Campfire was the thing I'd needed all day to get my mind off of everything that's happened since I left Yancy. We were able to sit wherever, which meant that I was able to sit next to Grover. Even Annabeth sat by us for a few minutes, though not long.

Overall, the tone was light. Everyone was laughing and singing and it finally felt like people weren't staring at me anymore. The only people who i noticed occasionally looking at me were people that i knew were doing it to make sure I was okay, not because they were weirded out by me.

It was one of the rare times I felt as if I belonged somewhere.

That night, once we all returned to our cabins, I curled up in my contraband sleeping bag with the Minotaur horn and drifted asleep easily, positive thoughts about my mom lulling me to sleep.

And that was it. That was my first day at Camp Half Blood.

The rest of the week was fairly similar to that afternoon. I started to fall into a schedule that I liked. Chiron had originally suggested I do both hand combat and a weapons class, but between the fact that Clarisse and one of her brother's teach hand combat, combined with my jumpiness, made Chirons hopes go down the drain.

I won't even lie, it was fun. Once I allowed myself to have fun, it was fun to be at camp and be in Cabin 11.

If only I'd known how briefly I'd get to enjoy my new home.