Getting chased home by a chimera was not how I wanted to start off summer vacation.
I was just waiting, cooking in those little ovens they call classroom. I am pretty sure I had already sweated through my shirt and probably could have soaked another one. Honestly they should have just canceled school when the AC went out.
I was absent mindlessly tapping my pencil on the desk, which I had already gotten in trouble for loads of time, but today I was too bored to care. Then a scream rang out from down the hall. It could just be the school councilor who saw another bug on her desk. But I had other ideas.
Pretty much the entire class was already crowded around the tiny door but I somehow made my way to the front and ran out down the hall. When I got to the doors I saw him, the chimera, a monster that was part lion part snake with a random goat head sticking out of his back. It was the same one that had already come after me 4 times this month, I had already started to call him Jerry. In front of him was a little girl screaming GOAT EVIL GOAT.
I started walking slowly staying close to the wall. I made it to the street before Jerry saw me. I started a dead sprint toward my house. I checked back over my shoulder, I was losing ground. One more block I thought. I swallowed my doubt and ran with everything I have.
The ground flew by as I made the last turn. I zipped up the front steps of my house, grabbing my bow in one hand the doorknob I the other. I opened the door grabbed an arrow and let it fly. I stepped inside closed the door and slumped down catching my breath.
"Hey Dad" I managed to get out through my panting.
"Selena how was your last day of school." he started cheerfully. Then he saw me and sighed.
"Again. Selena, that's the fifth monster this month." He said it in the way most parents would nag about a failed test or office referral. He looked at me with deep intent.
" You have to go this year, Selena, you need training." I had been hearing this talk now for three years. He is always going on about camp, you have to go to camp, camp will help you, camp this, camp that.
But I had no interest in this camp. No interest in leaving my home, my woods. I've been pushing it off for awhile now, but I dried my brain out trying to think of an excuse.
I spent the day avoiding my father and did a pretty good job. But he came into my room and found me laying on my bed, completely awake. He leaned in and whispered.
"I called the camp. We're leaving in the morning." I tried to protest but he just closed my bedroom door and I was too exhausted to do any thing but just lie down and think.
They'll hate me I just know it. I knew camp couldn't bring me what it does for most demigods. There wouldn't be a missing parent reveal themselves. I already knew mine. There wouldn't be an uncover of a special power. I knew that too. I had to, to survive. I couldn't tell anyone these things. I would be an outcast, even at camp half blood.