A/N: Hi guys! As some of you may know, my name is Riley, and I'm the author of Elena's Story. If you don't know what that is, let me fill you in: it was a story I wrote when I was 13, about a 16 year old demigod named Elena Westlie, who fell in love with the god Apollo. It's on this account, and you can read it if you'd like!
But that was 6 years ago, and so my best friend Whitney (author of Emilie's Story, also on this account) and I decided that we'd do something great: we'd rewrite our stories (the stories of who we'd be if we lived in the Percy Jackson universe, as demigods) to reflect who we are now- and in honor of the new book about my boyfriend, Apollo!
But the whole story is in 2 parts: Rolling Waves, Turning Tides, and the story of her best friend, Accidental Affair. So if you want to get the whole picture of Elena's life, read that too!
This story takes place, like Elena's story, a couple of years after the books have ended, where Percy is older and away at college.
Disclaimer: I do not own the PJO series, but I DO own Elena Westlie! There will be no spoilers for the new books.
Up until my twelfth year, I always felt like I was waiting for something. Not consciously, of course, but there. Right under my skin, like the feeling just before a wave breaks, you know it's coming, but it hasn't happened yet.
So I like organic cookies. Okay, that didn't really have to do with anything, but it has everything to do with my mom. She's one of those self-proclaimed "hippy-dippy" types (Emilie's mom's words, not mine. My mom loves it.) despite being born in the late seventies. She was a little late to the party, but never quite got that memo, so she still dresses like her mother did when she was born. Very new-age, organic foods, long skirts, and during my entire third grade, dreadlocks. She's one for cooking, and when we lived in Seattle, it was really easy to find organic markets, she really fit in there.
Donna "Opal" (legally changed) Westlie was not someone who looked like they belonged in Manhattan. But to my friends, she was always known as the "cool mom." She was a little spacey, which is why no one ever actually paid much attention to the slightly bizarre things she sometimes said. We were pretty sure it's because she smoked a lot of weed around the time I was born, so she didn't always remember the things she got up to back then, and I figured she felt bad about not remembering my father, so she kinda made one up. She called him Poseidon. Like the Greek god? Yeah, like the Greek god. That's how we knew he was made up.
She said I had his nose, which was a little obvious, because I certainly didn't have hers. It's one of my most defining features, she liked to say, and that I should be proud of it. I also got my hair from him. Black and thin, I wore it short for a long time, until the past few years, when I decided that I wanted to be able to do things with my hair. So just before leaving for camp after the 11th grade, I bleached it blonde, and've kept it that way since. It's long now, wavy strands down my back. My mom likes to braid glass beads into it when we drink together, she said it reminded her of my dad, when I looked like that. Her hair was much lighter than mine is naturally- it's a thick mousey brown, matching her hazel eyes- the one thing I really inherited from her.
Everything else was a little mix-and-match with me. I didn't know what my father really looked like- Mom said she didn't have any pictures, but that I looked very much like him. I always thought she was just pointing out the parts of me that didn't look like her so I'd feel closer to him- my Greek nose, my black hair, my ability to tan without looking like a lobster.
I spent most of my early life on beaches in Washington. The rocky shores are like no other beaches I've ever seen, and as much as I like Florida or California or New York beaches, Washington rocks and sand will always seem like home to me. My grandparents used to take me to Whidbey Island for parades, and my mom and I would spend hours splashing in the chilly water, as the wind ran through her hair.
When I was in the third grade, she moved us to New York, claiming it was to be "closer to family" which didn't make any sense at the time- my grandparents lived in Snohomish. Of course it made a lot more sense after my twelfth summer, since I discovered I had about five hundred cousins all living just outside Manhattan, and a few on a cloud just above it.
It was actually a huge coincidence I met Emilie at all. Out of all the schools in all the cities she could have moved to with her family from New Jersey, she moved five blocks away from me and my mom, and enrolled in the same class I did. Maybe it was divine intervention, or maybe it was just the draw of genetics, but Emilie and I hit it off, and she became my best friend for life. I didn't know until much later that she was actually my cousin.
Emilie's mom didn't really like my mom. Her mom was from Cuba, and spoke English perfectly- she was a banker, which is how she met Emilie's dad, and also her father- but she was a little bit uptight. I suppose our moms were kinda on the opposite extremes on the mom scale, which is why my mom was so chill with Emilie's, and Emilie's so not with mine. None of the stuff we did, like underage drinking, really happened until after the big reveal and high school, so at the time she couldn't really protest Emilie hanging out with me, and after the big reveal, she was kinda stuck with us.
Emilie's dad and her father aren't the same guy. She has an older brother, Sam, who's actually her half brother, on her mom's side. He was ten years older than her, born three years before her mom and dad even decided to get married. Emilie was born ten years later. It turned out that her mom had had an affair with a man she met at the bank, whose real name she never even learned.
Nobody but Emilie's mom knew that, not until we were twelve.
Emilie Reynolds, my best friend, didn't look much like me, despite similar descriptions of us. Emilie was shorter than me, by a good few inches, her own dark hair cropped at the shoulder. Her eyes were much darker than mine, and after the few seconds I had meeting her father years later, I can say one thing: if she'd inherited anything from him, it was his eyes. Her face, like her mother's, was round, and she had the same complexion as her mother. I suppose her father had a thing for darker women.
This is all the stuff before. And after? Everything changed.
My name is Elena Westlie, and I'm a daughter of Poseidon.
The summer before my thirteenth birthday, there was a really big storm that hit New York. It also hit California, and a lot of other places too, but it was really concentrated in my city. For the most part of the summer, people were really worried, and even my mom urged us to stay inside. What I didn't know, for most of the summer, was that it wasn't really a big storm, but demigods like myself, and gods, like my father, fighting to stay alive against the forces of the titans. But my family won that war, and in the last two weeks of that summer, Emilie and I were summoned to this place called Camp Half-Blood, for people like us, we were told.
Satyrs were sent for the kids of parents who knew- like me- and camp counselors were sent for the kids who's parents' didn't know their child was half Greek god, like Emilie's, in a story I never quite got to hear. At first I didn't believe it- my mom must have gotten one of her friends to come play a trick on me- but as soon as Gwartney showed us his cloven hooves, I was a little more inclined to believe what he said.
He explained that as part of some demigod agreement, the time had come for me and all of the other children of Greek gods to come to camp to be claimed as children of our parents, and I'd find out who my dad really was. When my mother told him that Poseidon was my father, he looked a little skeptical, but just nodded along with her, and on the way down to the van taking all the Manhattan kids to camp, he explained that sometimes lesser gods told mortals they were someone else to impress them, so don't be surprised if my father was like, Hypnos or Deimos.
When I climbed into the van, to my eternal surprise, I saw a very dazed Emilie. She'd just been told through a big reveal that her dad wasn't her biological father, and that by coming to this camp, she'd find out who he really was. There were a bunch of other kids in the van- two of the older kids, maybe in high school, were in bright orange shirts and had bead necklaces around their necks- mostly people our age, but a few younger or older.
After three or four more stops, we started the trip to Long Island, where we'd spend the next two weeks of our summer, and the next five summers till now. The eighteen of us piled out of the van and into this place they called "the Big House" which was just that- a large farmhouse with lounge chairs on the porch, rooms we weren't allowed into, and more than a dozen bizarre sights. We were all shuffled into a large room with a projector, where we watched an orientation video that left our heads spinning.
Then, the two guides popped up, introducing themselves as Will Solace, and Malcolm Pace. Malcolm was a son of Athena, and Will a son of Apollo. It still felt unreal to me- the grumpy-looking man in purple that had been sitting in the front of the bus was a god? My own father was a god?
But then the two campers had the other sixteen of us lineup in alphabetical order, and as the man- no, god- known as Mr. D, our new activities director, read off our names- somehow, miraculously, not getting a single name right the first time- glowing symbols appeared over our heads, washing us in colored lights. The symbols, not always incredibly obvious, were somehow known to all of us. Apollo, Demeter, and then, finally, me. It didn't come as a shock when the glowing symbol over my head was a trident.
Emilie, who was a few campers before me, was still staring at the symbol over her head, a skull that somehow radiated black light, giving her a shadow-laden appearance, and she looked lost. Hades. Racking my brain, the best I could come up with was, he's the god of dead people, right? But after a moment, I realized that wasn't what was bothering her, not at all. I'd met her dad, I'd been over to her house a million times. Only, the man she called 'Dad' wasn't actually her father. Not anymore.
It was in that moment I realized- not in finding out gods were real, or seeing a half-horse man walk from the porch, or even getting into a van with a bunch of weird kids, but in that moment- that nothing would ever be the same for us.
At first, we didn't really understand what it really meant to be a child of the big three. How could we?
But quickly we realized that even among other demigods like the two of us, we were… different. At first, people stared at us a lot, even when they knew we were looking back, whispering as we were escorted into our new cabins. The camp was what I always pictured a summer camp would be like, cabins in the woods, a lake, and activities dotted around the property! Only, this camp had swordfighting and rock-climbing-with-lava under standard activities.
My cabin, I was told, was home to only one other resident, my new- brother, technically- a sixteen year old kid named Percy Jackson, who would also be my camp counselor. Though we never really got close before he moved out three years ago when he turned eighteen and went to college with his girlfriend, he was always there when I needed help. I always had the feeling that he resented the fact I existed, like he was upset Dad did that to him. I don't really blame him, it's an only child kind of feeling.
The cabin- number three, already attesting to my somewhat importance on the godly food chain- was a grey sea stone on the outside, with abalone walls on the inside. There were a few scattered beds, grey with blue sheets, with only one looking slept in, and a broken fountain in the corner. Despite everything, it felt like… home. Not the home in Manhattan, my bedroom at my mom's apartment, but the beaches of Washington, with the dying light of an afternoon spent in the water.
We spent the next to weeks learning everything we could about our new life as a demigod, training with swords, and meeting everyone we could. It's one of the best times I've had in my entire life. It was also one of the only times I've ever met my dad.
I've met my father three times. Once was that very first summer, the day before the cleaning harpies were to come, and everyone was saying their goodbyes. I'd met a lot of people that summer, and for once in my life, all I felt like doing was avoiding them all. I was normally such a calm and collected person, even at twelve, but there was something about finding out all of these things in such a short time. They'd had to tell us everything we needed to know in the two weeks we had that summer, the two weeks they extended it because of the big battle they said happened in downtown Manhattan. It ran right up to my new brother's birthday, and a lot of the campers stayed up with him and his girlfriend by the campfire.
But I just- needed to escape, so I followed the now-familiar path to the lake, and just, sat. I don't know when he showed up, or when he left, actually, but for a while there, my father sat beside me, and I saw, in him, what my mother saw in me sometimes.
The second time I saw him was right after my sixteenth birthday party. I was in Snohomish with Emilie, at my grandparents'. As my birthday present, we took a train across the country to see them, and we were to spend the week climbing mountains and swimming in the pacific ocean and visiting all my old favorite beaches. After three days of Emilie absolutely wanting to murder me, and my grandpa twisting his ankle- causing him to sit out the rest of the trip, making it just the three of us for the final four days- went back to my grandparent's farm (which was mostly just a garden and a bunch of goats on a few acres) and I went swimming. Flowing Lake was a bit far, but that late in the year it was nearly empty, and it had always been one of my favorites.
At that point I'd been breathing underwater for a few years, and when I finally surfaced, he was sitting there on the dock. We exchanged a few pleasantries, and he finally he said something along the lines of, "Look what Percy could do at your age, why aren't you saving the world?" I mean, my mom was always incredibly supportive in whatever I did, so I suppose one parent had to be slightly disappointed just to even it out, I mean, I'd seen it in Emilie's parents.
The last time I saw him was a little under a year ago, just after the year had started. Here's the thing: me and my dad have a thing about letters. It's something Percy and I don't share, maybe it's because I've always liked writing more than him, but anyway, it is something that my dad and I have in common: we like writing letters. So we do. It isn't more than once a month or so, and they travel by snail mail, and we love it. We've been writing letters since I was thirteen, and instead of writing my mom like the camp counselors suggested, I wrote my dad on a whim, since I knew, knowing my mom, she'd forget to write back until after I was already home. And we'd been conversing ever since. But that year, I jokingly asked him to come to dinner one evening, and much to my surprise, he came. That made for a very interesting dinner party, a story for a different time.
In truth, we didn't actually have many run-ins with monsters much, growing up. Not until the big war, and even then every monster had its hands full with the experienced demigods. Hell, we didn't even know we were demigods yet!
But we were lucky. By the time the following summer came around, Zeus had gone back on his word and a lot of gods had stopped claiming their kids, and little ones started piling up in the Hermes cabin again, or so we're told.
Over the years, they've gone back to claiming their kids, so most kids don't spend too long in the Hermes cabin. Emilie, actually, spent her first summer, those two weeks, in the Hermes cabin herself. Back then, they were still building all of the other cabins, including Emilie's, the Hades cabin. Now it's a big onyx building, completing the large rectangle of a buildings.
I excelled at camp. I got better at sword fighting, thanks to Percy and the other instructors, and I was always good at swimming, so I spent a lot of my time on the beaches, or canoeing with the Nereids. I'm not a big fan of heights, so I've never spent much time climbing the lava wall, even though I loved to hike with my grandparents, and while I liked archery, I tended to be bad at aiming, so over the years I gravitated towards a sword, and at fifteen, I built my own with the help of the Hephaestus cabin.
This summer, it'll be my sixth summer at camp. Which all leads me to where I am now: graduation day.
Graduation was at sunset, the sun lowering over the water as we all crossed the stage to start the first chapter of our adult lives. By the time I crossed the stage, I'd already cheered for Emilie in the R's, and received my diploma to the sound of my mother's hoots and cheers, ready to start the rest of my life.
After dinner with Mom at our favorite hole-in-the-wall place, we went home to our apartment and I started to pack. Emilie and I were both registered for college in the fall. We decided that unlike my brother, Percy, we weren't going to try to go to the Roman college, but attend a normal human university. And instead of living at home, we were going to live a bit closer to the school, in the one other place that really felt like home: Camp Half-Blood. It would practically be like living on our own, since Percy moved in with his girlfriend Annabeth when they both went to college a few years back, and since Emilie's brother, Nico, lived more with his boyfriend Will than he did in his own cabin, she'd mostly be on her own.
It wouldn't be the first time one of us decided to live at camp full time- a few years back, when things started to get tough with monsters, we tried living at camp full time. The only problem with that, though, was that Camp Half-Blood didn't actually offer any real education, so after half a semester without a tenth grade education, we decided it was worth fighting monsters on the way to the subway.
But two years later, Emilie and I had managed to survive our childhood and graduate high school. But as celebration, I- I mean we- decided we wanted to go to a nightclub to party, and so I changed out of my graduation gown into something a little more revealing: a sparkly blue and gold tank top, and tight white shimmering shorts. I wasn't exactly a stranger to the party scene, though the particular club we'd picked was a little more upscale than what I usually dragged Emilie to.
Grabbing my dark green duffle, I kissed my mother goodbye and headed to the corner subway station to meet Emilie at the next station uptown.
Coming soon: additional chapters with actual dialogue! And starting next chapter, introducing the boyfriend, Apollo! I should be posting by this time next week, we already have most of the chapter written. :)
I'd really love to hear from you guys, so comment in addition to following this story, and check out the other half of this story, the story of Elena's best friend, Emilie Reynolds: Accidental Affair (also on this acount!) (not Emilie's story)
