"He what!?!?" I asked in disbelief, standing up so fast that I almost knocked over the breakfast table. Sunshine had come running into the pavilion and started shouting like a mad person, stopping everyone.

"Right into the canoeing lake! I swear!"

"The sun?" I asked, still unsure.

"Uh-huh!"

I shook my head, not believing this. "Honestly! Your dad is a—"

Everyone at the Apollo table looked at me, raising their eyebrows and fingering their bows. I stopped just in time.

"…Great guy!" I filled in hastily. Suspiciously, all the blondies turned away.

Sunshine came and plopped down next to me at my table. "That's not even the half of it! You'll never guess who tagged along with him," she said, lowering her voice and looking around cautiously, as if she were about to tell me what she did last summer.

With that scary thought in my head, I blinked and asked, "Who?"

Sunshine looked around dramatically, catching Sarah and Amy's eye before giving a wicked smile and turning back to me. "The huntresses!"

"What?!"

"Totally, I just saw them coming out of the sun, and I was all, 'who are the goth chicks?' and they were all, 'oh, excuse me?' and so I shouted louder 'WHO ARE THE GOTH CHICKS?!?!?' and they were all, 'we are the huntresses, bitch,' and I was all 'I thought they had a cure for that,' and they were all—"

"Okay! I get it!" I said, stopping Sunshine in the middle of her never-ending story. "So what are they doing here?"

"Dunno," said Sunshine, shrugging.

I knit my eyebrows, confuzzled to the point of no return. I was kinda curious. Huntresses? As in, girls who've been around since before the toilet? And Amercia? AND THE INTERNET!? I could not seem to get my mind around that. But Sunshine could see it written across my face.

"You wanna go meet them, don't you, Rainy?"

"What?" I asked, laughing a little, sliding my tongue across the bottom of my two top teeth. "No…"

"Yes you do," she said. "And I'm gonna take you. You know, to make up for that time you dressed up as a guy with me and staked out in that dude's only gym." She laughed, and stared dreamily at the sky. "Those guys had some awesome shoulders…"

By then, I had tried a head-to-table type thingie, and ended up with a faceful of cereal. Sunshine suppressed a smiled and grabbed my hand. "Come on!"

The huntresses were really scary. I mean, you'd think they'd be cool, having been around for hundreds of years, but in truth, I wanted to turn and run. Sunshine and I were looking into the windows curiously, finding them completely redecorating the cabin. There were things on the walls that freaked me out. I mean, maybe I just have different taste, but I think I'd rather hang up a poster of Diversity on my wall than the head of a werewolf. Where do they even keep that thing?

They also had no taste in clothing. Not to say that I'm a big fashion nut, but a seaweed blouse seriously does not go with a tree bark skirt. Sunshine wrinkled her nose next to me. "Losers," she muttered.

Behind us, a twig snapped. Sunshine and I turned around with lightning fast reactions. "Who's there?" I demanded.

Behind us were two girls: one tall and dark with thousands of tiny curls in her brown hair, and one shorter, stronger, and a whole lot meaner. "Thou hast spied upon our secrets! Thy sucks!"

"Whoa, wait. What?" asked Sunshine, trying to figure that out.

"Get them!" she screamed, and the bushes around us exploded with girls. How they got in there without us knowing, I will never know.

Sunshine jumped up and socked one of the girls in the face, her falling back just long enough to break free. They watched her go for a millisecond, and then all closed in on me.

"Rainy!" shouted Sunshine, but they had me. One of them twisted my arm behind my back, and two others bounded my feet.

I was screaming. "SUNSHINE! AMY! SARAH!" Then they brought me into the cabin and closed the door. One grabbed me by a pressure point, and I was out.

I woke up in a closet. It was dark, dank, and empty. I squirmed around for a few seconds. About 5x5 feet, or in other words: small.

"Okay," I muttered to no one, looking around. On the other side of the door, I could hear someone moving around, but I guess the rest were at activities. Dang it! I was gonna miss my canoeing class. I love canoeing…

My arms were tied behind me, but with what? Vines? How pathetic. I grabbed at the knot and pulled it off all in one. Then I untied my feet by taking off my shoes and slipping out of the loop. Finally, I faced the real problem: The door.

I grabbed the knob and jiggled it. The movement on the other side of the door stopped, and so did I. After a few seconds, the shuffling of feet on the other side started again, nervously, and I pulled out a hairpin and felt for the lock. The knob was solid; the lock must've been on the other side.

Finally, I stood back, my palms pressed to the wall, and flew at the door top speed, knowing for sure I'd break it down. Wrong! I hit it full force and slid to the ground, the door undamaged.

"Ow," I muttered, feeling the bruises beginning to form already.

Slowly, someone on the other side of the door opened it and peered in. I looked back, and our eyes met.

She seemed to be hiding under a floppy green hat, not sure of what to do. After an awkward silence, I said, "Hi!"

She seemed to be shocked that I actually had the nerve to speak to her. "Hi…?" she said back kinda slowly.

"Are you here to make sure I don't escape?" I asked, sitting up.

She nodded meekly, opening the door a little wider. "I'm supposed to."

"Are you gonna let me out?"

After a brief pause, the girl seemed to choose her side of the border. "Yeah…" she said, and stepped back. I could've hugged her.

"You seem a bit more civil than the rest of them," I said, coming out cautiously, making sure they didn't have some plan to shoot me down as soon as I stepped out.

"Umm… I guess… Well," she blinked hard and seemed to find the words to say. "I'm new here. I mean, to everything. Hunting, being a Half-Blood, all that jazz."

"You need some help adjusting?" I offered. Then I swept back my hair and nodded like I was answering for her. "I'm Rainy."

"Bianca," she replied. "And you have no idea how many people have offered that."

"Oh, you're lucky," I said. "When I was new here, there were like 200 campers, all of them pumped up on Coke to help the new 9-year-old girl find her way to the bathroom."

Bianca seemed to imagine this, and she paled a little. "Oh…"

"Yeah," I agreed, laughing and nodding. "Oh…"

She laughed right along with me, pulling the floppy hat a little out of her face, shifting a few strands of her auburn hair.

I looked around at the empty cabin. "Are you gonna stay here all day?"

Bianca pursed her lips like she smelled a toxic waste dump. "I'm… uh, I'm supposed to, you know, guard the cabin for my paranoid sisters."

I cocked my head to the side. "And you agreed to that?"

"I guess I didn't have a choice," she admitted, sitting down on a bunk.

I came and sat down next to her, silently thinking what to do next, wanting so badly to help her. Finally, I smiled and grabbed her hand, pulling her up. "Come on," I said, going towards the door.

"Where are we going?"

"Canoeing."

"Huh?"

"Yep!" I nodded and smiled at her. "I'm teaching you how to adjust to camp life. Rule one: Camp life does not include guarding a cabin."

She smiled and pulled the floppy hat completely out her face, her eyes sparkling.

"Rule two," I announced, leaving the cabin. "Always stick by a friend."

She smiled even wider, showing her teeth now. "I think I've got that covered," she said, pulling the door closed behind her.

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Thanks for reading! I worked hard on this! This is written by Amy, btw, for Rainy for our summer fic exchange program. Please review! And thanks Rainy, for being an awesome friend! HAPPY SUMMER EVERYONE!