When we were driving in the car, just listening to that song by that band called Fun while I sang along, suddenly, my mother reached a tiny, pale hand out and switched the volume dial down, the singers voice fading away along with my own that was slightly deep for a girl. "Hey! That's one of my favorite songs." My mom rolled her brown eyes that didn't match up with my green. "It's not even all that great." I smiled and said with sarcasm laced in my voice "Well, it's about setting the world on fire." "Your point being?" "I have no point." She rolled her eyes yet again, and began to launch into what she wanted to talk about. I had a feeling it wouldn't be good, but then again, the world had a tendency to try and do its best to prove me wrong. For example, when I first came to my current school in Rochester (where I also just so happened to live by) when I was in fourth grade, I remember my principal saying "I can tell she's a very mature, well behaved individual" to my mother. A month later, I ended up in the office for slapping someone for talking during class and agitating my ADHD. People talking kept me unfocused.
"So, Val, I kinda wanted to talk to you about your step-father." I raised a slightly bushy eyebrow, not sure why she would bring up Frank at such a random time. "Okay, hit me with your best shot." She inhaled deeply and drummed her fingers on the gray steering wheel, probably trying to think of how to ask her questions as not to somehow anger me. Jeesh, I'm not that temperamental. Sure, I may have punched a kid back in the fifth grade (I was in eighth grade at the moment) for stealing my bag, but that was totally irrelevant.
"So, um… I was just wondering, but do you like Frank? I know I've asked you a million times, but… I kinda want to know if your opinion has changed of him yet." I sighed, and rolled my eyes, not liking the question each time it comes up. Frank was a complex topic that I didn't exactly ever enjoy exactly discussing. Although, each time, I found the answer changing. "I mean, he's a good guy… but it's not like I can ever come home, see him there, and say 'Hi dad.' It's different. He's just a guy that you are married to and that I live with. But it's not like having a real father that can teach me how to play a boardgame or teach me how to multiply fractions." My mom nodded, considering my opinion. "But do you get along with him?" I sighed exasperatedly. "Yeah. But I wish he was actually related to me, you know? He's a stranger to me, even though you and him have been married for two years."
"I understand, Valencia. And I'm so sorry that your real father couldn't stick around long enough to see you born or raised. But he really was a good man." She paused and smiles, turning the wheel in her hands, taking a left before allowing the wheel to snap back to its default forward. I could almost see the memories running behind her eyes, thinking about a man she knows all too well, and a man I will probably never know for as long as I live. "He was tough. Like you, almost. He was smart, funny. Handsome. I remember that the moment I saw him, I knew he was the man I would want to marry." "Where did you guys even meet?"
"I met Jack Harrison at a wrestling match. See back then, I was sort of… rebellious. I wore leather jackets, skinny jeans, high top converse. I dyed parts of my hair blonde. I was more of a tomboy than anything, and when I was twenty two, I took an interest in sports, but especially wrestling." My mom paused, obviously taking a moment to remember the supposedly gorgeous man she had met. And then knew for a month before he left her pregnant. "So, I bought a ticket to go to a professional match, and I ended up sitting next to your father. We started talking while we were waiting for it to start, and I found he was actually really, really cool. So… by the end, I gave him my phone number, we started dating, and then a month later he…" my mother paused, as if it pained her to say it. "He said he had to go. And I understood his reasons." My eyebrows slowly rose to the middle of my forehead. "So, what was his reason?" My mother sighed, drumming the steering wheel with her fingernails, her lips tucked in like she is determined to not let slip.
"It's… it's very complicated Val. If I told you, you wouldn't believe me. I'll tell you when you are a little older." I stared at her incredulously, like I couldn't believe that she could possibly keep something so important from her own daughter. "I'm thirteen. I'm a big girl, I can take it. Just tell me. I won't be upset." My mom instantly snapped back with a no, like I had touched something valuable and easily breakable and didn't want to risk me breaking it. "Valencia, no. It is too dangerous for you to know right now, okay? So please, just drop it." I scoffed, shaking my head, lacing my next words with as much poison and hate and rage as was possible for me. "Why? Because you don't want to tell me that I was a mistake, and he left because he didn't want to own up to it?" My mother snapped back at me with "No, that wasn't it at all, Valencia. I'm telling you, it's dangerous for you to know, so just drop it, or so help me, I will ground you for a week."
After a few minutes of silence, my mother suddenly burst into tears, the water rolling down her high cheekbones that were identical to mine (jeesh if I think about it, everything between she and I are identical besides the eyes, hair length and style, and our body types; while hers is stick skinny, I'm lean with muscle). "I'm so sorry. It's just a soft subject for me. While I love Frank, I still love your father. I wish I could see him again one day." As she was raising her hand to wipe the tears away, I sheepishly replied "And I'm sorry too, mom. I guess my temper got the best of me. I think I should get an anger management counselor or whatever they're called." My mom snickered and shook her head, wiping her small hand on her pants. "It wouldn't work." I smiled with my slightly crooked teeth shining and asked her what she meant by that. "Well, anger is kind of in your blood, hun. Your dad had a temper too."
I smiled and rolled my eyes, and after a couple of seconds, I questioned her on how much longer it would be before we actually got to Subway. "Five minutes. Are you really that hungry? I mean, we've only been in the car for fifteen minutes." "You know the school serves crap food. It's super gross." Her thin, neatly plucked eyebrows knit together as she focused on her driving once more, calming herself down from her previous almost-breakdown. "What do you mean 'crap food'?" "Once, I was eating some nachos there a long time ago, cause I was like, starving, right? And then all of a sudden, I put a chip in the cheese, and then there's a freaking lump in the cheese. So I poke it with my friend's fork, and it's a dead fly. A dead fly mother. I mean, I gagged and vowed never again." My mom started snickering, probably imagining me finding it, leg still twitching as everybody at the table looked on in absolute, pure, sheer horror. And if she's imagining it like that, then she's right. And then suddenly, as we go over a bridge with no other cars around us, with water below the bridge, I see something odd in the distance.
It looks like a woman, who from the waist up is human, but from the wait down is a snake.
And that's when my mother gasped and drove off the bridge.
Every second seemed like three minutes. The five seconds it took to leave the concrete and then hit the water felt longer than they ever should. It felt like a stopwatch being clicked on and off again and again, freezing time and then letting it go. But the exact opposite was with when the blue car flipped into the water. With the windows up, water leaked into the car at a slow pace, and in the last seconds I would have with my mother for awhile, I remember asking "What did you do that for?" and her hurried reply of "The Enchidna was in front of the car, and I know it was coming for you, oh my god…" "The what? What are you even talking about?"
"Valencia Wainscott, get out of the car right now. From now on, take care of yourself, okay?" I looked at her as if she was mad. For the way she was speaking at that very moment in time, she might of well have been. With water filling the car up to our chests, the way she said those words "from now on" as if she was going to die scared me to no end. "What do you mean?" "Valencia, listen to me. Get out. I'll find you later." And suddenly, as if on cue, I hear something drop into the water, and then after a few seconds, somebody shows up outside of the window. He's patting the glass with his hand, seeing us in there and getting us out. "Valencia, go with that boy. I'll be safe." Reluctantly, I looked back at her one last time, told her I loved her, and opened the car door, filling what last space of air was left with water.
The water was really cold for a mid May summer. I should've noticed it before, but when I popped open the Subaru door and the water in its entirety hit me, it chilled me to the bone and made me realize just how cold it was. And being at the bottom of the river thing was just as bad too; I could barely see the sunlight. The boy grabbed my hand and pulled me up, indicating for me to swim myself to the surface. With somewhat of a breaststroke, the guy and myself pulled ourselves up to the surface, and immediately, I was confronted with the noises of metal against metal, almost like swords clashing as you hear in movies.
Up on the bridge, I realized that the snake lady wasn't fake, as she was busy fighting with two girls, who were both probably my age – thirteen or fourteen. They both had swords, and were swinging them at the snake lady like pros, but the snake lady had a sword too, and was just as much of a pro as they were. "Dawn!" The guy in the water with me yelled. The brunette one looked down at us from the bridge. "What? I'm busy!" "Are you guys okay? I need to take her back to camp!" This girl, 'Dawn' nodded, and waved us away. "Oh, and her mother is still in the water, so take care of that too, because we're going to go!" Dawn turned around and gave us the thumbs up before turning back to the snake woman.
The boy turned to me, saying "Okay, we're gonna take you back to the camp, and your mother will be taken care of." I had no idea what he was even trying to tell me, and to be honest, I wasn't sure if I even wanted to know. After he assured me everything was gonna be okay, he pulled his black hair out of his face and screamed a name towards the sky. "Light! Come down! Light!"
And after a white Pegasus came crash landing into the water, I had no idea what to believe. With a snake woman on the bridge fighting a brunette and a redhead, and now a Pegasus, I should have been believing that – even though it sounds so cliché – I was dreaming. But for some reason, I didn't. Natural instinct told me to just go with the flow, accept everything was real, and do what this blackhaired kid said.
The kid gave me a boost into the saddle, and after I was situated in the back, he climbed in front of me, grabbing hold of the reigns. "We'll be at camp! If you aren't back by the time it's four, I'm sending out a search party!" and then he mumbled about something, and kicked his hightop Converse into the sides of the winged horse, instantly making me wrap my arms around the guys waist and causing the Pegasus to spread its wings and jump into the air, accelerating and ascending into the cold clouds that were almost as cold as the water that I just escaped from.
"Okay, so, what's the name?" He asks me, his voice actually quite low for someone of his age. "Valencia Wainscott. And you are?" He shoots back with "Ryan Weekes. Son of Thanatos. Do you know what you are yet?" I quirked an eyebrow. "What do you mean by that?"
"Okay, well, this sounds insane and crazy, but you know like… Zeus and Poseidon and those Greek gods that can do cool stuff?" "Yeah, I guess?" "Well, they're real. And sometimes, they come down to Earth from Mount Olympus, get involved with a human, and have half human half god kids called Demigods, also called 'half-bloods'." I paused and digested this for a moment. "So you're saying, I'm one of these… ah… 'half-bloods?'" He nodded. I didn't pursue the topic any further. I didn't really even want to.
"So, um, just out of curiosity, where are we going, exactly?" He glanced back at me, holding the reins tighter in his white knuckle grasp.
"Well, Valencia, we are going to Camp Half-Blood, exactly."