The entire room was quiet, save the tapping of the pencil perched between my left index and middle fingers and the ticking of the wall clock. I looked out the window to the New York City skyline. My chin rested against my right hand as I tapped away at my notebook with my eraser. My teacher was silent. She simply sat at her desk and looked over our final exams once more while we all waited for the sound that would signal our freedom. It was the last day of school, and I'd managed to make it through my freshman year without incident. From what I'd heard, that was very difficult for people in my particular position.

Tick, tock, tick, tock, tick, tock, ring! The bell was a lifesaver. I scooped up my belongings, haphazardly shoving them into my backpack before standing to join the flood of students heading out the door, well, all of the students except one who was sitting in the back of the room for some reason, but I didn't care enough to question his reasons for staying. I thought I was finally free, until I heard my teacher's nasally voice call my name. She cleared her throat before speaking. "Miss Jackson, may I have a word with you for a moment?" she asked, thought I knew it wasn't really a question. I had no choice but to turn and hear what she had to say.

"Yeah, Mrs. Blofis?" I asked, taking a seat toward the front of the class. I couldn't just ignore her. She was grandpa's sister-in-law, after all. If word got to dad that I disrespected her in any way, I would have had it.

"Cassandra, it's about your grades. You do know that they were slipping all semester, correct?" she asked, again not a question. Anyone who had access to my records knew I sucked majorly.

I took a deep breath and sighed. "I know, I know, I had too many D's this time. Again. But I tried, I really did!"

"I know you did, Cassandra. That's why I wanted to speak with you personally rather than let it go. You're a bright girl, I know you are. Your father is my nephew, I know your family is bright yet...academically troubled. That's why I think it's best if you take a few summer school courses throughout the next few weeks. You have the opportunity to make up for these grades," she explained.

"But, Mrs. Blofis, I can't. I have camp this summer, I've been looking forward to that all year!" I said, leaning over the desk. My expression was pleading.

"I know, and I'm sorry, that's just what I think would be best for you. You can always go to camp next year. Your camp allows children up to age eighteen correct?" she asked. She knew, of course. It was the same camp she knew my dad went to at my age.

I sighed in defeat and laid my head on my desk. "Don't I have any other options?" I asked.

"Well, I could allow you to retake your final, but the summer school and tutoring would do a lot more good for you," she said. She shuffled a few papers around before pulling out my final exam. "But, if you think you can pass this time, you can retake it. You'll need at least an 80% to bring your grade up."

"I'll do it!" I said without hesitation. I didn't think before I spoke, but honestly I didn't care. I wanted to go to camp, to see my friends. Gods knew they were the only friends I even had!

"Okay, Miss Jackson. How does first thing tomorrow morning sound?" she asked.

I did some math in my head. If I took the test tomorrow, I would still have enough time to gather my things and make it to camp in time for check-in. "That sounds perfect, thank you Mrs. Blofis."

It was only then that the student in the back of the room came to mind. Why was he still here? I looked back to him. I realized he was staring at me. It kinda creeped me out, honestly. The longer I thought about him, the more I realized he didn't look familiar at all. Had he always been there?

"Alright, I'll see you tomorrow then, Miss Jackson. You have a good day and please, be safe." That final warning seemed strange. It kind of came out of nowhere.

"Okay, see ya," I said, finally claiming my freedom. I walked out of the room as quickly as I could. The halls were empty except for myself; my footsteps echoed in the silence. Did everyone have time to go home already?

I was just about to enter the restroom when I heard a woman shriek from down the hall. "Mrs. Blofis?" I asked out loud. My mind immediately was brought back to that student. I dropped my bag and ran as fast as I could back to her classroom to find her backed up against the wall, a figure looming over her. The papers previously on her desk were strewn across the floor, her desk upturned, and her glasses lay shattered on the floor. The look in her eyes was sheer terror. And the student, well, I could tell now he wasn't actually a student. He still wore the same clothes, a worn leather jacket with a large Canadian flag on the back and ripped jeans, but his appearance had changed. He was taller, more muscular, and smelled a lot worse than I remembered. It was a bizarre mix of maple syrup and body odor. Mrs. Blofis screamed again as he took a few more steps closer. "Hey leave her alone, ugly!"

He turned to me, looking me straight in the eyes with pure bloodlust. "Miss Jackson? Cassie, you have to run!" Mrs. Blofis said as she tried to stand to her feet. The giant turned and smacked her away with the back of his hand, knocking her out in the process.

"I thought I smelled half-blood," he said in a gravely voice, opening his mouth to reveal his rotten yet incredibly sharp teeth. "It wasn't easy to pick you out, you smell different...probably still taste good though!"

Honestly, what did I hope to accomplish, though? Going up against him without even a weapon. I backed against the wall as he approached me, not taking my eyes off him. "If you know what's good for you, you'll stay away." I knew what he was called, but I couldn't think of the name. Last, no. Laistromboli? No, close. He was Canadian, at the very least.

He was standing right over me now. I felt his hot breath on my face. I was screwed if I didn't think quickly. He reared back before diving face first toward me, teeth bared to tear my throat out. I ducked, causing him to take a bite out of the drywall. I rolled over to Mrs. Blofis to check up on her. She still had a pulse, that was good, and so long as he had me, he would probably leave her alone. Monsters loved Demigods best, after all. I looked around for anything I could use as a weapon. My hand was drawn to Mrs. Blofis' bottle of water. I unscrewed the lid and poured some into my hand, forming a long icicle in my hand. "Water, oh you're a daughter of the sea god!" he said with a hint of wonder in his voice. "There hasn't been a child of Poseidon born in decades!"

"Close, granddaughter actually," I said, not wasting time as I stabbed at his stomach. He dodged, of course. They always dodged the first hit. It's like they knew I was coming. Still, I wasn't a novice fighting monsters, just remembering their names. Mom would kill me for sure. I stabbed at him again, rolling under his guard as he sent a swipe of retaliation that would have broken my neck in one hit. I stabbed at him a couple more times before my icicle broke inside him. It didn't seem to be doing any good, though. All I did was make him even more furious. I needed to find a way to actually kill him.

The giant picked up Mrs. Blofis' desk and hurled it at me. "Oh crap!" I leaned back, falling back onto my elbows as the large desk passed just over my body. It grazed my nose, stinging a bit as it raked the skin, but it certainly beat taking the entire desk to the face. The wooden table shattered into splinters behind me and I rolled backwards, regaining my footing to a crouch. The giant charged me, every footfall threatening to shatter the windows around me. I had to think of something quickly. I reached beside me, grabbing a long, sharp piece of desk. I raised the broken plank just as the giant was on top of me and it pierced his stomach, causing him to howl in pain as he exploded into a fine mist of gold dust and monster parts.

My chest heaved, sweat pouring down my face and mixing with the monster dust. "Laistrygonian...why couldn't I remember that earlier!" I said in exasperation.

Mrs. Blofis groaned as she sat up, rubbing her head as if she had the worst headache ever, which I wouldn't have been surprised if she did. "Miss...Miss Jackson? Are you...are you okay?" she asked.

I rushed to her side, helping hold her up. Here she was, concerned for me when she could barely keep herself sitting up. "Yeah, I'm fine. Look, you need to get to the hospital. Get your head checked out."

"That boy...where did he go?"

That's right, The Mist prevented her from seeing his true form. That mystical veil that kept regular mortals from seeing the supernatural really did come in handy sometimes. It even fooled us demigods half the time. "He got away. I scared him off. Hey, I'm gonna call an ambulance," I said as I reached for her cellphone. I didn't carry one of my own. It was a monster magnet, just another way of saying "Nice tasty demigod! All you can eat buffet!" and that wasn't exactly something I wanted to become. But I figured if I didn't stay on very long, it wouldn't make much of a difference. I quickly dialed 911 and held the phone to my ear. "Hey, yeah I need an ambulance at Goode High School, room 231. My teacher, I think she's got a concussion. She was just assaulted. Thanks, bye."

I handed Mrs. Blofis her phone and sighed. "They'll be here in a few minutes. I'm gonna go try to find that guy again," I said, knowing full well she would believe me since she didn't see me actually kill him.

"Be careful out there, Miss Jackson. Don't do anything stupid," she warned, still leaning against the wall.

I could already hear the ambulance sirens approaching. "Don't worry, I will." With that, I turned to retrieve my backpack before heading back home. Hopefully I would get there before news came to mom and dad. I scooped the bag over my shoulder, not even missing a beat as I rushed down the halls and out of the school.

I only lived a few blocks away, close enough to walk without any real effort or delays. I was still rattled from my previous fight with the Laistrygonian. Would Mrs. Blofis be okay? I shook my head and concentrated on positive thoughts. Yeah, she would be okay. The ambulance would have been getting to her just as I was leaving. Still, though, it was strange that one Laistrygonian would be alone. There was usually at least four or five of them in a group. I sighed and adjusted the strap over my shoulder. It wasn't like that was the first time I'd ever been attacked in broad daylight, it was just odd. Maybe it overslept and lost its group? I had no way of knowing, really.

I was snapped back into reality as a pair of slender, yet strong arms snaked around my waist, causing me to jump and rear my fist to strike. "Whoa, Cass! Chill out!" the voice said from behind me. I recognized that voice, turning around to see the familiar face of my girlfriend, Cleo Madison.

"Gods, Cleo, don't scare me like that!" I said, lowering my fist back down to my sides. I smiled a bit as I looked at her warm, brown eyes. She always had that effect on me. No matter what mood I was in, Cleo would calm me down in seconds. She brushed a bit of her long, black hair from her face and laughed. "You could have just tapped my shoulder or something."

"Yeah, but that's nowhere near as fun!" she said as she kissed my cheek. "You smell like rotten beef. Did you go to that one diner without me again?"

"No, I just got into a fight with a crazy, cannibalistic giant nut job that tried to kill my great aunt." I leaned against her shoulder and she put her arm around me as we walked. "Just one, though. First time I ever saw a Laistrygonian all alone," I explained.

"That explains the gold in your hair," she said, flicking bits of Monster dust from my hair. "I hate Laistrygonians. They stink too much."

"And they're hard to kill without a weapon. I wish my sword was as portable as dad's." My father, Percy Jackson, was kind of famous among demigods. Years before I was born, when he was around my age, he'd beaten Kronos and Gaea in two separate end-of-the-world scenarios with quite a bit of help from his friends, including my mother Annabeth Chase. I was an oddity among the other demigods in that I wasn't the child of a god and a mortal. I was the child of two other demigods. It wasn't anything strange at the Roman Camp Jupiter, but there were so few others like me at Camp Half-Blood, and it was really a pain trying to figure out how to sort me initially. Poor Chiron had to decide whether to stick me alone in the Poseidon cabin that had lay empty since dad became too old to stay at camp, or to throw me into the Athena cabin with my dozens of aunts and uncles. I chose for him, deciding I'd like to have an entire cabin for myself rather than have to share a cramped space with all of mom's half-brothers and half-sisters.

Cleo didn't have much of a problem sharing space. Her mother was Hecate, goddess of Magic and Crossroads. She didn't have as many brothers and sisters as the children of the twelve main Olympians. She had about fifteen siblings while the children of the twelve Olympian gods shared cabins with several dozen others. "Yeah, but your dad's a special case. Not that you aren't great, you are. But you know what I mean."

I reached into my pocket for my house key as we approached my apartment. "Yeah, I know what you mean," I said, turning to kiss her as I twisted the key in the dead bolt.

Before I pulled away, the door swung open, but I hadn't actually turned the knob yet. I peered from the corner of my eye just in time to see my mother standing there, blonde hair pulled into a ponytail with paint stains on her orange Camp Half-Blood t-shirt and jeans, grinning with a hand on her hip. "Okay break it up, you two," she said, a light tone in her voice. I wasn't out as a lesbian to many people, just my family and my friends from camp. Cleo and I went to two different schools. She went to a public school while I attended Goode on the recommendation of grandpa Paul. Nobody ever really saw us out together, and the ones who did were just random people who honestly had more to worry about. At least my family and friends were open-minded about it.

"Ugh, mom," I said, drawing it out in exasperation. I turned back to Cleo and hugged her. "I'll see you at camp later. Love you."

She kissed my forehead before pulling away. She was about five inches taller than me, so she had to bend down slightly. "Love you too, Cass. See ya." Cleo turned on her heels. "Later, Mrs. Jackson! See you all tomorrow at the camp!"

Once she was gone, I walked into the apartment right behind mom, immediately being hit with the smell of paint and turpentine. It was a rare occasion that mom didn't have some project going on. This time, she'd moved all of the junk out of our storage room to paint the walls. Previously, it had been a flat gray. Mom was now in the process of applying an egg shell white with intricate textures in the paint layers. "Looks gorgeous," I said, knowing she was about to ask what I thought of it. She always did.

"Thanks, Cassie," she said, an appreciative smile on her face. Her gray eyes, identical to mine, gleamed in the light through the window. My mother was beautiful, I thought, especially for her age and for all the hard times she'd gone through in her life. She had a single gray streak in her hair, a remnant of the time she'd held up the sky when she was younger. It had disappeared for several years, returning in the same place just a few years ago. "I didn't start dinner yet, sorry."

"It's fine, I'm not hungry. I'll eat later. Where's dad?" I asked. Surely he'd come home from work already.

"He's in the den watching TV. He offered to help me, but there's no way I'm letting him touch this masterpiece," she said. "I told him to just sit tight and he can help me move all this junk back when I'm done."

I tossed my backpack beside the sofa and hopped over the back, causing dad to jump. "Cassie!"

"Hey daddy!" I said, hugging him before relaxing into a similar sitting position as him, leaned back with my feet propped on the table. My eyes directed to the TV. "Clash of the Titans?"

"There's nothing else on," Dad said with a groan. "They got so much wrong."

Mom rubbed his shoulders. "Then don't watch it if it drives you crazy, Percy," she said. She walked around the edge of the sofa and sat down on his other side, putting her arm around his shoulder. He kissed her gently and it warmed my heart. I was happy my parents were still so much in love as they always had been after all the years they spent together. They had, literally, gone to Hell and back with each other. It was so romantic and I hoped that Cleo and I would have that kind of life.

Dad sniffed a few times. "Uh, Cass, why do you smell like sweaty Canadians?"

I swallowed hard, my eyes shifting. "Um...well...I have a perfectly good explanation for that," I said, stuttering every other word.

"Cassandra, what happened today?" Mom asked, leaning up with her arms crossed.

"Well, I kinda...sorta...fought a Laistrygonian that almost killed Mrs. Blofis," I said. "Don't worry, I took care of him. He's burning in Tartarus now."

"Is Aunt Yvette okay?" Dad asked.

"Yeah, I called her an ambulance. It arrived before I left. Nobody else got hurt, just her desk."

Mom sighed and leaned back. "A quiet life is too much to ask for a demigod, I suppose. At any rate, you should probably take a shower to get all that Laistrygonian residue out of your hair and clothes."

"Yeah, shower, sounds like a plan," I agreed as I stood and walked around the sofa toward my room.

"I'll order a pizza," Mom said. After all her work on the spare room, she was obviously not up for cooking. And we didn't trust Dad anywhere near the kitchen. Otherwise, everything we ate would be blue.

"Okay. Remember, extra cheese on my part," I said with a light laugh. I walked away, heading down the hall and toward my room to gather a change of clothes. I didn't plan on going anywhere else that night, so I settled for a pair of basketball shorts and an old shirt, a purple Camp Jupiter shirt given to me by Uncle Jason for whatever reason I couldn't remember. I took a quick shower, making sure to get all of the Monster dust and sweat out of my hair in particular. It was easy enough. I kept my black hair cropped pretty short, a sort of bob at my chin. It was easy to manage and, honestly, I thought I looked really cute with it.

I dressed myself after my shower and joined my parents in the dining room. The pizza had already arrived, surprisingly, and dad was holding the phone, a landline of course. "That was Dad, not Poseidon, Paul," he said in a neutral tone. I always hated dad's neutral tone. It meant he was thinking of how to word something concerning me.

"Is Mrs. Blofis okay?" I asked, hopefully diverting the conversation away from whatever was on his mind.

"Yeah, she's fine, she told him she'd be well enough for you to take your makeup test tomorrow since your final grades were so low. When were you planning on telling us?" he asked, an eyebrow raised and green eyes locked to mine.

I rubbed my arm and looked away. "Tomorrow morning when I walked to school?"

"Cassie, it's nothing to be ashamed of. My grades weren't the best when I was your age, either," he said.

"That's because you blew up every single school you attended except for Goode," Mom added with a sly grin.

"That's not true!" he added, raising a finger. "I didn't blow up Yancy. I got expelled."

"Either way, I'm sorry I didn't tell you. I really meant to, I guess I just forgot," I said, taking my seat at the table and serving myself a slice. Extra cheese, just the way I liked it.

"Well, we just want you to do your best," dad said as he picked off a bit of slightly-burned pepperoni. "You're smarter than you think you are."

I suppressed a groan. They were always telling me I was especially intelligent, being Athena's granddaughter and all, but honestly, my godly parentage on both sides was heavily diluted. I hardly counted as a Half-Blood, just on the technicality that two quarters equaled a half. I could control water like my father, but I was nowhere near as powerful as him. I knew I was smart, but I didn't have the drive to study like my mother. I was very mediocre for a demigod. I could hold my own against monsters and others alright, but I didn't come anywhere close to being as spectacular as my parents.

As dinner was finished, I decided that it would be a good idea to go to my room and make sure everything was packed and in order. My suitcase was sprawled open across my bed and I shoved the necessities inside; shorts, orange shirts, clean underwear, and of course, the picture mom, dad, and I took on top of the Statue of Liberty last year. And by on top, I mean literally on top. The three of us sat on Dad's personal Pegasus, Blackjack, about twenty feet above the tip of her crown while Uncle Jason flew up and held the camera. Aunt Thalia was more than happy to stay on the ground, of course. For a moment, I wondered how she was doing. I rarely saw her since she was a Lieutenant in Artemis' Huntresses. She was older than my parents by about five years, and yet due to her immortality and the fact she was dead for several years inside a tree, she still appeared fifteen like me. She was my favorite aunt, partially my inspiration for keeping my hair short. I made a note to send her an Iris message once I reached camp and could have some alone time in the Poseidon cabin with access to Drachmas.

Once I'd made sure I was all packed, a long and loud yawn forced its way out. My eyelids were heavy. It had been a long day after all. I kicked my socks onto my computer desk, moved the large suitcase from my bed, and collapsed face first into my pillow, falling asleep rather quickly. I was sure this summer would be one to remember, but I had no idea the full extend of what this trip to Camp Half-Blood would bring.