Natalie's POV

I sighed as I walked up the front steps of my school, at the start of a new year. I had been kicked out of every school since kindergarten, and this was the start of the tenth grade and the eighth school I had gone to. It was the only one I hadn't been kicked out of the previous year.

My best friend since preschool and the best boyfriend in the world walked on my right, and his name is Trevor. My other best friend walked on my left, and I had met her in first grade. Her name is Alexis. I'll tell you now; she is the girliest person you'll ever meet. She does stuff like play with her multiple Gucci bags when she should be doing her homework, to braiding her long auburn hair in class.

"Why so down daffodil?" she asked. Daffodil was her pet name for me. I don't know if she thought it would make me a brighter person, but there was no chance of that. I was paler two times paler then a Cullen, and had long blond curly hair. But what stood out most about me were my gray-almost-black eyes. Oh, and that I was semi-gothic. I wasn't in to all that Edgar Allan Poe stuff, or acting like the world is so drab.

"You know she doesn't like to be called that," said Trevor. I looked into his bright green eyes and mouthed Thank you to him. He winked at me in understanding. His black hair shone in the sunlight, and his lightly tanned skin glimmered in surfer-guy radiance. He was the number one surfer in New York, in my opinion. I leaned over and pecked him on the lips. Now, you always hear these stories of how people have "true love" and you may not think it exists, but Trevor and I loved each other.

You see, Trevor and I both only had moms. Our dads had left when/before we were born. Alexis had a similar situation, except she only had a dad. We were all also dyslexic and ADHD.

Trevor smiled at me, and Alexis rolled her eyes at me. Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted some new kids I hadn't seen the year before. A tall blond girl with deeply tanned skin, maybe around sixteen or seventeen was arguing with a crippled gangly boy with curly brown hair, a taller boy with messy black hair who greatly resembled Trevor, a short Italian gothic boy with black hair and pale skin, and a big beefy girl with stringy brownish-blond hair.

"What's up with them?" Trevor mumbled, half under his breath and half to Alexis and me.

"I dunno," Alexis shrugged. The tall blond girl looked our way, and stared at us.

"Creepy," I said. She pushed the curly brunette boy around so he could see us. He started limp-walking towards us, and I grabbed Alexis and Trevor by the wrists and towed them away as quickly as I could.

"Wait!" the boy called after us.

"What?" I asked him, twirling around and fingering the hunting knife I kept in my pocket.

He looked the three of us over and said quietly, "I just wanted to get to know you guys. Would you like to come meet my friends? We're all new here."

"Uh…" I said, looking to my friends to see if we should. Trevor shrugged, and Alexis nodded her head enthusiastically.

"Let's go!" she said, pushing me after the weird new boy. I grabbed Trevor's hand as I was towed towards a bunch of kids that I didn't know.

The tall blond girl smiled at us, the big beefy girl scoffed, the boy with green eyes and black hair stared at Trevor, and the gothic boy stared right at me. I looked away, blushing. I mean, what was up with this kid? Or correction: these kids. They were all so strange and out of place.

"Hi," I said, stiffly smiling. "I'm Natalie. This is Trevor," I said, gesturing to him, "and this is Alexis," I said, pointing to Alexis, who was smiling and waving at them.

"I'm Annabeth," said blondie. Her eyes creeped me out, they were a stormy shade of gray that was very different from anything I'd ever seen.

"Sup, I'm Nico," said the Italian gothic kid, still staring at me. I smiled warmly at him; he seemed so much like me.

"Hey, I'm Percy," the boy who I thought looked a lot like Trevor. As if on cue, Trevor wrapped a protective arm around my waist. I looked over to see him staring at Percy. Gosh, Trevor was so cute when he was jealous… but back to the point.

"I'm Clarisse," the big scary girl said. Note to self: stay far, far away from her. She looked like she could pulverize you just by looking at you.

"And I'm Grover," the boy who had come over to us said. I noticed he smelled a little bit like a farm, maybe he lived on one.

"You all have very… unique names. Did you all come from around here? I mean, are you on a study program?" I said. I wasn't the type of person to hold back in my comments, but that was probably the ADHD part of me. Alexis elbowed me in the gut, and I grunted in pain, but I ignored it. The majority of the new kids rolled their eyes at my cockiness, but her, what do I care?

"Uh, yeah, we all come from around here," Annabeth said, walking towards the front doors of the school. The enormous school sign passed over our heads, but all I could tell it said was Yacny Admceay.

"Ugh," I groaned, squinting my eyes in pain. Trevor and Alexis's twitched next to me, alerting me that they were having the same dyslexic problem as me. Big words just didn't work for me.

The new kids (I decided I'd call them that caus' hey, they can't read my thoughts so what do I care?) stared at me and I said, "Sorry, I'm dyslexic. So are Trevor and Alexis. The school sign was bugging my eyes."

They exchanged a glance with each other before Grover asked, "Are the three of you by any chance ADHD also?"

We nodded. Poor Grover almost jumped out of his skin, and he started twiddling his thumbs. "I, uh, have to go make a call," he said, and hobbled away. Annabeth and Percy nervously looked at each other, while Clarisse and Nico had a thumb-war. Our principal, Mrs. Dodds walked out from behind us a laid a hand on my shoulder. I was a pretty good student, other than my occasional temper issue. She looked all of the new students over, and she paid extra attention to Percy and Nico. They seemed afraid and angry that she was here, and Percy nervously fingered the pen in his pocket.

"Hello there students," she said.

"Hi Mrs. Dodds," we mumbled.

"Hello Alecto," Nico muttered under his breath. She stared at him, obviously annoyed.

"You should get to class," she said, still staring at Percy and Nico.

"Yes ma'am," I said, hitching my backpack up on my shoulder, and taking Trevor by the hand. The new kids and Alexis hovered closely by my shoulder, and Alexis struck up a conversation with Percy.

Grover hurried back over to us from wherever he had been making a call and whispered something to Percy and Annabeth that sounded like, "He said to take them now."

Annabeth nodded and said something like, "I'll come up with something." Then (I sort of expected this) she tripped. Of course… "Ow, my ankle!" she moaned. "I think I need to go back to my home for today," she said, whacking Percy and Grover in the skins.

"Listen," I said. "If this is about taking us to wherever we have to go, then we'll just come with you." They looked at me quizzically and I said, "You need to learn how to whisper quieter."

"Fine," she sighed. "We need you guys to come to camp with us. We can explain why while we're going."

"Okay," I said. We followed them out to the street where there was a strawberry van waiting. "Is your camp a strawberry picking camp?"

"No," Percy said. "It's just how we make the money for our camp, and we also use it as cover."

We all hopped into the van, Annabeth, Percy, Clarisse, Nico, and Grover more nervous than the rest of us. "Chillax you guys," I said. "It's not like there's monsters out to kill us."

"Don't be so sure," Nico said. The van noisily started up and drove to a tall grassy hill, with a big tree on top. The weird part: There was a big golden blanket on the tree, and a small dragon wrapped around the tree.

"Whoa," I said. "Uh, that's… different." They towed us out of the van and over the hill. There were lots little cabin-ish things, and tons of other buildings. I whimpered: my brain was starting to collapse under the weirdness of the situation. Trevor and Alexis gasped beside me.

"Now we should probably explain," Percy said. "The Greek gods are real. All of the myths about them are real too. The monsters are also real. You three are children of the gods, along with all of the rest of the kids at this camp. Your parents will claim you, but they already should have…" he said, trailing off. "They should have claimed you when you were thirteen. How old are you all?"

"Fifteen," Alexis said in her high girly voice.

"Same here," Trevor and I said in unison. "And the gods are really real?" Percy nodded.

"I'm the son of Poseidon," Percy said.

"I'm the son of Hades," Nico said, shuffling his feet on the soggy grass.

"I'm a daughter of Athena," Annabeth said, brightly smiling.

"I'm a daughter of Ares," Clarisse said. Well, that would explain her mean-looking-ness.

"Then who is Grover's godly parent?" I asked.

"I'm a satyr," Grover said, taking off his pants.

"Whoa whoa," I said, shielding my eyes. "Keep your pants on big boy." He rolled his eyes at me and continued to take his pants off, revealing big shaggy goat legs. "Dude, get a razor."

Then, just to add the weirdness, a horse-guy trotted up the hill. "Ah, I see we have our new campers," he said. "And what are their names?"

"Uh…" I said, slightly dazed that I was talking to a pony guy. "I'm Natalie."

"I'm Trevor."

"And I'm Alexis."

"Hey," I said. "You're a centaur! I remember reading about them in my Greek mythology books. You must be Chiron, because Chiron was the only centaur interested in teaching. Right?"

"Yes, that is correct. I'm very impressed that you know that," Chiron said. I beamed with pride. "Well, Percy and Annabeth will take you to the Hermes cabin to get set up in there. I'm sure Connor and Travis Stoll will get you some supplies to use."

"How long will we be in the Hermes cabin?" Alexis asked.

"Until you're claimed," Percy answered. "Which hopefully won't be long."

As they led us to the Hermes cabin, they explained what had happened since Percy came to camp a few years ago. They told us about how this guy named Luke had gone to the dark side (I wonder if they had cookies…) and let Kronos use his body to almost take over the world. But in the end, Luke saved everyone by committing suicide. Personally, it didn't sound like this guy Luke killed himself. It only sounded like he had expelled Kronos from his body, but his soul was still alive in spirit. (No pun intended.)

"And you're sure he's dead?" I asked as he pulled open the door to let Trevor, Alexis, and I inside.

"Well, no…" he said uncertainly. "But there's no way he could be alive. I shrugged and muttered a whatever at him. The inside of the cabin was bigger than the outside. The bunk beds lined the walls, and there were twice as many campers as there were beds. Every head in the cabin turned to look at us, the three new campers.

A lot of the kids had a freaky mischievous look to them, but we were the only semi-normal looking people in the room. And probably the oldest normal looking kids too. "Well, good luck," Annabeth said. "You'll need it."

Two boys that looked like twins hopped over to us and introduced themselves as Connor and Travis. So these were the guys that were supposed to help us. Too bad I didn't trust them. They disappeared for a few minutes, and came back with their arms full of sleeping bags, tooth brushes, and weird orange shirts that said Camp Half-Blood on the chest.

"Ugh, it's orange," I said, disgusted because I look horrible in orange.

"You'll live, or you can dye it," Connor, or Travis (I can't tell which is which) laughed at the corny joke. "So this is where you'll be staying for a while," they said in unison.

"Lovely," Alexis sniffed, cradling her designer bag to her chest protectively.

"Hey, how come there are so many cabins out there?" I asked them.

"Well," one of them started, "after Percy made the request for each god and goddess, even the minor ones to have a cabin, all of the campers have been getting claimed. He made the gods claim each of their kids by the time that they turned thirteen, so you three have been a little pushed out of the circle. What are you guys, fifteen? Sixteen maybe? Anyways, you three are probably children of more minor gods, so don't worry about that. Except for this one," he said, gesturing to Alexis, "is probably a daughter of Aphrodite. None of the more major gods have had any kids since Percy, Nico, Bianca, and Thalia. They're the children of the big three."

"The big three are Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades, right?" Trevor asked.

He nodded."Yup, that'd be them. Percy told you about the oath thing, right?"

"Yeah, he did. You guys should get set up. There's some room over there for you guys," he said, pointing to an open spot in the corner of the room. "Um, by any chance would you have shaving cream with you?"

"No," we all replied reluctantly. Percy and Annabeth had warned us that if they got their hands on a bottle of that stuff, it would probably end up in our sleeping bags.

We set up our stuff and prepared for the long experience ahead of us.