The Story of Roxy Earl

by Hungergames3

Roxy is the demigod who lost her mortal parent. She's the one who's been at Camp since she was seven and has always been that little kid sibling of Terra Hyde. But now is her time to be Roxy- normal teenager. Will she sink or swim? And how will her friend's and mother's past affect her?

Disclaimer: I don't own PJO

So I started this story, then stopped- but after a long, long time I'm starting again. This is the sequel toThe Adventures of Terra Hydeyou don't have to read that to read this, but it would help, and this chapter alone spoils some of the end of Terra's story. Constructive criticism is okay, my writing is nowhere near brilliant and I want to improve. BUT PLEASE NO FLAMES. Hope you enjoy Roxy's journey.

Very vaguely I remember my mum once telling me that courage is not something you are born with, but something that you learn. You learn to make courageous decisions sometimes from others, sometimes from yourself and sometimes, maybe, both. She also taught me that you could be courageous in many different ways. Courage is standing up to monsters and it is standing up to friends. Courage is being able to move on with one's life after losing someone special. Courage is admitting you're wrong, knowing that no one is perfect. Courage is opening up to people, even after being hurt.

"Real school?" Terra asks, staring at me as if I'm insane.

"I want to go. Once summer's over."

The Iris messages flickers a little and I shuffle my feet on the ice cold tiles.

"Why?" she asks, her eyes wide, with her hands on her head.

I cross my arms, "I've been stuck, in this camp since I was seven."

"Then have a break. You don't have to go to school." she argues.

"But I want to! I want to be normal, Terra! A normal freshman! Or at least as normal as I can be."

She rakes her fingers through her hair, "What about your friends at camp? And training, how can you defend yourself?" I glare at her and she shrugs, "Okay, maybe not the second. You're perfectly capable of the second. But your friends!"

"My friends are only here for the summer anyway." I retort.

Terra sighs, turns her head slightly and yells out, "Nico! Gimme some help here!" With the two of them living together, Terra attempts to use him to gang up on me often, whenever she thinks what I want is a bad idea. Like the time I wanted the recipe for the super glitter bombs, to give the Ares cabin a small surprise one evening.

He walks up behind her and shrugs, "I think it's a good idea." Nico generally takes my side.

She turns and glares at him, "Help me! Not her!" she points at me, or at least what must be the image of me.

"Please." I bite my lip, "Just, I want something normal."

"Where do you want to go?" Terra sighs.

Gulping, I shrug and Nico laughs, "You didn't think that far did you?"

There's silence for a few seconds, then I raise my eyebrows and smirk, "Texas."

Terra's eyebrows shoot up, "No. No way! No way are you going to school in Texas!" she spits out the Texas like the word's poison.

Nico silently shakes his head behind Terra and I know that there's no way I'll end up in Texas, something tells me there's no point trying. Fact is Terra's touchy about some subjects, and her opinions on certain things will never change. Never.

"Okay. Texas is a no…" I murmur.

Sighing Terra says, "It's just… not Texas. Why would you want to go there anyway?"

"So she can flee to Mexico if necessary." Nico answers. In response Terra hits his chest and I nod my head laughing.

"California?"

"Too far away."

Pausing, I hear the dinner bell, "I have to go. At least think about it." I smile and cock my head, my eyes pleading.

Terra rolls her eyes, and Nico lightly pushes her shoulder as if to say Come on, "Okay." She concedes.

"Thankyou!" I smile, then hear banging on the bathroom door, "Okay I really have to go now. Bye!" the both wave and I swipe my hand through the iris message.

When I unlock the door, I find Ben kneeling down, picking the lock. Prue's standing behind him, her hands on her hips.

"What where you doing in there?" Prue asks, Ben stands up awkwardly, "Thank gods your brother was here." Prue's had a crush on Ben since the day she arrived and since she's my closest friend and Ben's two years older, he of course hasn't even had a second glance at her. She's always making googly eyes at him. It's actually kinda gross.

"I was Iris messaging Terra to ask her about school… is that okay, mum?" I smirk.

Prue scoffs, "Whatever." Ben walks off, obviously not interested, "Thanks Ben!" she calls out after him. I roll my eyes and make my way out of the cabin. The old wooden floors creak as I walk down the aisle, between bunks. "So," Prue catches up and sticks her hands in the pockets of her shorts, "how'd it go?"

"Ehh." I open the door and step out into the sweltering heat, "pretty much how I expected. Terra's not too convinced"

Prue and I wonder up to dinner. When we arrive there's a commotion, "Hey, what's this about?" I ask Sunny, a daughter of Apollo, "New kids, two of them. They're eleven I think, but they both look like they could be kids of Poseidon."

My eyes widen and I turn to Prue. The big three can have kids now, but these two will be the first ones in a long time, that are actually 'allowed'. "If they are, we get them on our team for capture the flag, okay?" Prue whispers in my ear. I can't help but laugh. We stand around a bit, and then I give up waiting, starving for food. "I'm gonna wait. So we can get them on the team." Prue says when I tell her I'm going.

"I still don't get why you want to go to school." Lily says, sitting around the smaller campfire we've made about 100 meters away from the larger one. "If I could stay here all year, I would. It's a lot better than school." Her brown hair sways in the wind and with a dainty hand she picks up a twig in the dirt.

"It can't be that bad, I mean, Prue loves it. Right?" I shrug.

Lily just looks at me, "Okay. I love Prue, she's our friend. But come on. She's popular at her school and she's a daughter of Athena. Of course she's gonna love school! It's like asking me if it's worth buying a botanical garden or something. Of course I'm going to say yes!"

I laugh a little, "What's a botanical garden?"

Lily stands up and rolls her eyes, "They're public gardens full of plants. They're beautiful."

"You have to say that." I murmur.

"Of course I do!" she waves her hand a little, "That's my point! Daughter of Dementer," she points at herself, "likes gardens! Daughter of Hermes," she points at me, "likes pranks and stealing! Daughter of Ares," she points towards Ledell, who is a year older and threatening a small Hecate kid further away, "likes fighting! That's how it works."

I smile and shake my head, "Whatever."

"David! My man!" I punch him softly on the arm as he sits down next to me, "Do you think it's ridiculous that I'm going to school?"

David scrunches his nose, "Yes. I would kill to stay here all year."

I roll my eyes and Lily looks at me like, I told you so, then throws the small twig in the fire. "You guys don't understand, I've been here since I was seven. I don't remember what it's like out there," I gesture towards the ocean. "I just- I want to be normal."

"Why be normal, when you can be us?" David asks, fiddling with something in his hands

"Maybe you just can't understand." I sigh and pull my knees to my chest.

"Well," David stands up, puts whatever he had away and dusts the sand of his jeans, "if we can't convince you to stay at camp. The least we can do is help you survive real school."

Lily's eyes widen quickly, her brown hair somehow flying everywhere without moving, "Yes! You'll be eaten alive if you dress like that. Come young padawan, you have much to learn."

"How can you breathe in here?" I ask, gagging on the smell of perfume.

David shrugs, "You can used to it after a while. It doesn't smell that bad."

Laughing next to me Lily waves a hand in front of her face, "You should get some fresh air."

"They don't like natural things." David whispers jokingly so his older siblings don't hear him. He smirks, "Pretty ironic, what with natural beauty being the best kind and all."

I make a gagging motion at Lily when David isn't looking. Fluorescent lights line the ceiling and make it difficult to see. Light music dances through the room, faint but still there. It's up beat and fast, yet calming. For a second I relax my shoulders, thinking it's not gonna be too bad. That was a mistake.

It's as if they're purposefully trying to kill me, one small pluck of an eyebrow hair at a time. To be quite honest I didn't hate the facial or the fact that they actually asked me if I was comfortable in the clothes they gave me, "No point us giving you stuff you're going to never wear," A tall Asian girl mumbled as she helped me step out of a pair of shoes seemingly too high for any human being. This though is actual torture, with every hair individually torn from my skin. The girl doing this is the same one who helped me with my shoes and the longer we're both stuck in that situation the more passive aggressive she grows. "Last. One." She says through gritted teeth as a final hair is plucked from what feels so close to my eye it might as well be a part of it.

"Thank you," I say politely to everyone while attempting to subtly run out of the Aphrodite cabin. Once reaching outside I gasp for fresh air. The warm summer air fills my lungs just like how the season arrives every year at Camp Half Blood, quickly and sure of itself.

David soon steps outside with a small suitcase, he drops it down the two steps and places it at my side. "Christmas in July for you." He teases.

Rolling my eyes I mummer, "Yes, ripping the hair from my face is Christmas for me."

"Harpies will be out soon. This is all for you." He raises an eyebrow as if expecting a thank you. Once I do say so though he stops me, "Don't thank me. Special orders." He points above and mouths the word mum. Before given a chance to question him, he slips inside so I quickly walk back to my cabin, eager to slip into bed after what seemed like a long day.

There are perks to sharing a bunk with Lizzy, like how she lets me sleep on the top bunk. But there's also the fact she enjoys talking a lot. "Life tip Rox, never prank the Ares cabin unless you are a hundred percent sure that it's their archery time and not their free time." The bunk moves a little as she does, "You could end up with some very painful bruised ribs".

"Life tip Lace, use ambrosia or nectar." I murmur, roll my eyes and attempt to drown out her voice with my pillow until finally someone whispers, very loudly, for her to shut up. My best bet is that it was Ben, the only person she'll kind of listen to, it must be a twin thing.

Within minutes the sounds of kids moving in beds and attempting to whisper to each other quieten down. I can hear what seems to be every person in the world breathing, in and out, a constant rhythm. My eye lids beg to be closed, but when they do they continue to hurt because no matter how hard I try all I can see are the same faces. They don't say anything, they don't smile or frown or look like they're conveying any emotion at all but they're there and I feel like I'm being watched. Quickly I sit up, searching the dark room for the faces of my friends and family. Those who unknowingly haunt me deep into the night, they aren't there though, none of them are here. Some are sleeping a couple cabins over, some are sleeping hundreds of miles away and some are sleeping beneath the earth unable to ever be awoken ever again.

Conversation at breakfast the next morning is surrounding the now confirmed children of Poseidon, Meredith and Lincoln. Every sentence seems to be about them and anyone not talking about them is staring intently. "Lace, we appear to have some competition in the twin department." Ben smirks as he takes a bite of his jam toast.

"I wouldn't call them competition." Lacey smirks, "We could totally make them the next us."

Ben slightly lifts his left eyebrow from across the table, "And how could we do that when they are so clearly not children of Hermes. They can't be the next us if they don't have pranking and thieving in their blood."

My eyes switch between the two, "We can teach them though," Lacey argues, "I don't see any more twins to take under our wing from our cabin."

"I would argue that Roxana's enough of a handful that she could be classified as two people." Ben retorts, using his toast to gesture and ultimately hitting an unsuspecting kid from Athena in the back of the head with a chuck of jam.

After a spoonful of cereal I say with a full mouth, "Don't bring me into this."

Lacey wraps her hand around an empty glass that quickly fills with milk, "Roxy's leaving at the end of summer you tool."

"Yep," I smirk, now willing to bring myself into the conversation, "I'm off to enjoy the mysterious world of mortal high school."

They both snort, laughing at the idea of mortal high school being mysterious. All the kids who are here for the summer go on and on for the first week about how glad they are another year has gone. But the conversation quickly dies out once the Athena kid realises the jam and begins blaming everyone from the Hermes cabin, not really knowing who did it.

"Not Texas." Terra immediately says as I bring up the topic of school.

Giving up on the idea quickly I ask, "Then where? I don't want to end up in New York, cause that's just… frustrating. It's so close it's like I'm not going anywhere at all."

"It's your decision Rox, not mine." She says frustrated from her apartment.

"Well my idea was shot down." I say through gritted teeth.

Terra picks something up and fiddles with it, "How about somewhere here on the West Coast?" My face clearly depicts frustration as she continues, "I'm not saying here in San Francisco." Nico and Terra had found their home on the opposite side of the country, leaving them just far enough away from Terra's mother for her to be happy but unfortunately so far away from camp they felt light years away. "But maybe somewhere in Seattle? It's a twelve hour drive so it's not like I can just pop in and invade your life whenever I feel like it."

I scoff, "Your boyfriend can shadow travel and is wrapped around your finger. I could be living on Mars and you would pop in whenever you like, even if he passed out for days afterwards." She shrugs admitting that it's true. "But," I concede, "it would be nice being closer to you guys."

"You could never stay away from my brilliance." Terra laughs, slowly fading to a smile "Cross country can be difficult for Nico, so you being on the same side would mean you can see us more often."

Stepping back in fake disgust I say, "You're going sappy on me Hyde. I might not be able to go- I MIGHT CATCH THE DISEASE." I step back towards the sink, pretending to faint. "Next we'll be talking about our feelings and …." Finally fake hurling, "daddy-issues." There's silence between the two of us as Terra smirks at my dramatics, Nico says we're more alike than either of us realise but I know how alike we are. I can see it when I look at photos our noses point at the same angle and we both smirk the same way. Although my ears are pinned back while Terra's eyes are rounder than mine no one can doubt we have the same father, and they can't doubt the influence she's had on my sense of humour and personality.

Although the influence Terra's had on me is a double edged sword. I mean Terra Hyde is 'The girlfriend of Death's son', 'basically Percy Jackson's little sister', 'close friend of Annabeth Chase' and of course, the thing everyone knows her for and many hate her for as well, 'the girl who slapped Aphrodite'. That small thing that Aphrodite hasn't quite gotten her back for yet.

I'm abruptly dragged out of my internal thought process, "I'll look into some schools for you, just make sure you let Chiron know. Any troubles tell me, okay?"

"Right, cause Chiron is going to say no to the two of us. That seems so plausible." Sarcasm drips from every word I say and Terra simply continues to smirk while playing with a hair-tie in her hands. "If you become friends with any more famous demigods Terra… you just might cause me to vomit a stereotype from association."

Confusion riddles Terra's face, "How can you vomit a stereotype?"

"Keep going like this and we'll find out." I smirk a little and she just shakes her head, "Better let you go, get back to your fun grown up life." Snorting Terra says goodbye and I'm left standing alone staring at a running shower.

A/N: Please review! There will be a new chapter soon, if I don't update before, I hope everyone has a Merry Christmas!