My name is Jake Sander. This is the true story of how I, a mortal, found Camp Half-Blood.
I've read and re-read and re-re-read the Senior Scribe's stories of the Camp. And I've loved them for years. Then my parents died in a freak car explosion on the 91 in California. I was an 'orphan', though I was sixteen, and I decided to travel cross-country, hitchhiking and walking, to try to find some way of surviving.
I was not poor. Even before my parents' money was divided, I had saved a few thousand dollars in my bank account. Then I received a few more thousand in their will. Any and all saleable things I received I sold, and then with that money in cash, a change of clothes, a first-aid kit, and a laser pointer (one of the really strong ones,) I began to travel across America.
Now, this story is not about my journey, but I will speak of a few minor things that led me to realize Riordan's stories were true:
In Utah, I came across, or rather, came across me, a group of huge men. They attacked me, but being smaller and faster, I managed to evade them until a pickup came along.
The driver was slightly drunk, just enough not to notice me jump into the flatbed. This truck took me a good 180 miles east. When the truck began to enter a more populated area, I jumped out, and slept for the night.
But as I continued my journey the next morning, I realized: I had looked into their faces, but I could not remember what their eyes looked like.
Another thing that happened was this, as I was walking through Ohio, a trio of people attacked me. They seemed to be women, their hair covered firmly. But they seemed to slide on their feet like they were beginners on ice skates.
I avoided these people, since their strange way of walking slowed them down just enough for me to find a pole dropped out of a truck. I fought them off for a few minutes, and then a caravan of black vans pulled along the road.
They stopped in a circle around the three women and I. Some seventy people poured out of the vans, and in no time at all the women were destroyed. I didn't see what happened, though. The people blocked my view, and when I could see again the women were gone.
One of the people, a boy of seventeen or eighteen, came toward me.
"Who are you?" I asked, understandably.
"My name is…" he looked back at the group. "Uh, my name is…Jason."
"I am Jake Sander," I said. "Thank you for…doing whatever it is you did."
He seemed unsure of what to say next. "Um, yes, well…Hazel!" he called. "Hazel, could you come here."
Another girl came over, probably the same age, holding hands with another boy.
"This is Hazel…" Jason said, then paused and whispered something in her ear. She nodded. "Hazel Levesque," Jason continued. "And this is Frank."
I almost passed out. Hazel Levesque. Frank Zhang, obviously. And Jason Grace. This was the caravan taking the Romans to Camp Jupiter…but no. This was much later than that. And they were going…east…
Hazel was saying something. "…you're okay?"
"Um, yes," I said. "They didn't hurt me."
"Alright." She said. "Now look at me…"
I did.
She snapped her fingers. "None of this happened." She said. "When we drive away, you have no memory of any of this."
She was using the Mist! No, no. If I forgot…
She stopped. Frank and Jason looked at me, waiting for something.
Then Jason said something to Frank that I didn't hear. Frank shrugged. "Where are you going?" he asked me.
I decided to say where I really was going, if the Mist could be avoided. "Camp Half-Blood," I said.
Jason jumped. "Camp…Half-Blood? Where's that?"
"In Long Island," I said. I didn't have a plan, at the moment, of what to say next. Looking back, I probably should have told them how much I knew. How much Rick Riordan had given away.
Jason asked Hazel something. She said, "As soon as we drive away."
"Are you a demigod?" Jason asked me.
Now I was stuck. If I said 'yes', they would soon find out I wasn't. If I said 'no', they would drive away.
"Yes," I said.
Jason glanced at Hazel.
"Who's your godly parent?" he asked me.
Whoever I said, now, they would expect me to show some of that god's power.
I thought of my best talents. There weren't too many. I enjoyed playing the guitar, but not on a son-of-Apollo level. I can sort of write a story, but there's no god of writing, as far as I know. I can fight, but a two-year-old son or daughter of Ares would beat me into the ground.
I crossed out Demeter, Athena, Hephaestus, and Nemesis… Am I lucky? You could say that.
"Tyche," I said. "Goddess of luck."
He stared at me for a few minutes. Did I take too long to answer?
"Do you have any powers?" he asked.
"I'm fairly…I mean, very lucky," I said, hoping he wouldn't test me.
Of course I was wrong.
He pulled out a drachma. "Heads or tails?" he asked.
"Heads," I said. He flipped it. It landed Zeus-side-up.
He asked me again, flipped it, and I was right. Twice more, and each time Tyche really did favor me.
He looked at me for a few seconds. "Frank, hand me a pack," he said. Frank reached into his backpack and pulled out a…deck of cards.
"Pick a card," Jason said.
I thought. "Seven of clubs," I said, mentally promising to sacrifice an extremely large amount of food to Tyche.
He drew a card, and looked at it. Then he looked at the deck's faces.
Then he looked at me. I tried not to let my feelings show. He shuffled the card back into the deck.
"Get in the car, Jake," he said.
