So...Basically, I'm not sure how much to tell you guys. I had everything planned out, like, air tight. But then I looked back and realized it was boring. So, now, I have to work with another idea. A budding, growing, really slow coming idea that's torture trying to write.

In other words, other ideas are appreciated.

Getting Half the Picture

I despise Aven Arnett. With a passion that burns deeply within me.

Mostly because she acted like everything was normal Tuesday morning.

That night, I did not find out what was going on, despite the fact that in about, oh, say, a week or two, it just might change my plans for the year.

Hint. Hint.

I did, however, find out that Aven like ridiculously long showers and that Tess refuses to cut short a lesson even when her roommate is potentially dangerous demigod or because I need to go to bed. I'm not sure which one is more important.

I need my beauty sleep.

So, I went to bed at two in the morning, my fingers practically bleeding, completely expecting an explanation when I walked into math the next day.

I was wrong.

The new, blond teacher looked up at me as I walked in (late) and frowned. "Late, Mr. di Angelo?"

I stood in the doorway awkwardly. Aven wrinkled her nose, her stuff already splayed all over the desk. She was scribbling on a piece of paper something that could have been a stick figure or an artichoke. "Ms. Childs, I bet he got lost or something."

I ducked my head and mumbled an apology. Then I shuffled to my seat, hopefully looking shameful and stuff, and plopped down into the seat beside Aven. I was about to begin my passionate interrogation when the teacher Ms. Childs looked at Aven sharply.

"Is that the seat I assigned to you, Miss Arnett?"

Aven sat ramrod straight, blinking at the math teacher we had never seen before in confusion before zeroing in on the chair she had picked for herself in the front row. "No?" she answered slowly.

"I make the rules in this class, Miss Arnett."

Aven nodded sheepishly and gathered her things under the eyes of the class as quickly as she could before practically galloping to the front of the room.

I could not believe that just happened.

I was sitting, all alone, clueless, and now, along with a lack of sleep, I had no explanation.

Obviously, karma decided that I needed bad luck to balance out my natural good looks.

She looked over her shoulder at me, pulling one of her braided pigtails and wiggling her nose like a rabbit. Then she turned and scribbled on a piece of torn notebook paper, before folding it into a paper football and flicking it across the room when Ms. Childs wasn't looking.

It hit my nose.

Thanks, karma. That was totally necessary.

I sighed and unfolded it.

I'll be in the dance studio you found me in on Saturday. Being Tess.

-Aven

Her handwriting was small and curling, with even spaces and perfect letters like she had typed it up on the computer. I looked back at her, but her attention had already drifted from my need for information back to the problems the teacher wrote on the board.

So basically, the rest of the day was torture.

In history, I couldn't fall asleep.

In science, I actually didn't even try to sleep.

In English, I got so agitated by my inability to nap and replenish my energy levels that I started tapping my pencil, which annoyed me, because I hate when people tap their pencils. But I couldn't stop! It's a curse.

Don't even get me started on lunch.

I didn't help that I had classes with Aven and other classes with Tess, and some classes with both Aven and Tess, and watching them both pay attention like nothing was wrong irked me to no end.

I was so frustrated, I just used the word "irk" to describe it.

That's not natural.

So, when the bell rang for the end of my final class, I did not bother going to my room. I did not bother writing the homework assignment (what else is new?) And I most certainly did not bother to pay attention when the teacher rambled off what we needed the next day.

I grabbed Tess's wrist and ran out of the room like my pants were on fire.

"Honestly, Nico," she snapped. "What's your problem?"

"Aven is my problem!"

"It's not that big of a deal!"

I glanced back at her sharply. "Did she tell you?"

"No," Tess snorted. "She wanted to explain to the both of us."

"How did you sleep in the same room with her without going crazy?"

"Because I'm practical enough to realize that her explanation might not be anything more than 'I'm a demigod and you just never saw me camp.'"

That made me stop. I hadn't thought about that before. "Really?"

"What else would it be?" she sniffed. "You aren't exactly observant. And with all the new kids flowing in the past three years it's completely plausible that no one noticed her."

Part of me felt really stupid.

The other part of me felt like that was totally not what was going on and was really curious to find out who the heck Aven Arnett was.

"I guess she could have survived without camp. She's only the daughter of a minor god or goddess, I think," Tess theorized aloud.

"I don't think it's that simple."

"Why not?" she inquired testily.

I didn't tell her about Gorilla, or that since that had happened I'd had this really terrible feeling bubbling in the pit of my unforgiving stomach. "It's just a feeling."

"No offense to your 'animal instincts' or your 'man gut' whatever you feel like calling them, but I'm going to laugh when you've been tearing yourself up and all she says is 'I was there, you just never saw me.'"

"Do you seriously think that someone like Aven could be in the same camp as us and no one noticed her?" I countered.

Tess frowned. "It's possible."

I snorted. "That would be like not noticing getting hit in the head with a brick."

She had no reply. She didn't need one. Because at that point, I managed to run into the same glass door for the second time. "Ouch," I muttered, rubbing my forehead.

Tess stifled a giggle, or tried to and failed miserably, and I opened the door before she could give me some witty comment that I didn't need.

Aven's mint green eyes peeked out through the clear glass of the dance room, like she had been waiting for us, which I guess she had. She opened the door and motioned us inside, checking out in the hallway theatrically like anyone would be eavesdropping on a bunch of high schoolers, and closed the door behind us.

"Hi!" she bubbled.

Tess and I looked at her like she was mentally impaired. "Is this really the time?" Tess asked, patting her bangs into place.

Aven looked shocked. "It's always time to say hello."

Over the course of the day, she had obviously gotten irritated with her pigtails, and just thrown her hair up in a bun. Little bits of hair were jutting out in a comical fashion, like she hadn't bothered checking a mirror. She had a bruise the size of a walnut on her forehead.

She looked embarrassed when she saw my looking. "I...er...fell. Up the steps."

Tess motioned for her to get on with it. "I have homework," she reminded us.

"And that's more important than this?" I asked, smirking.

"Homework is more important than everything," she sniffed, and I realized she did that a lot.

"Right," Aven said slowly. "I could, like, postpone this. Really, I wouldn't mind." She was blinking a lot, and her voice was high pitched, and I realized she was nervous.

"Not a chance."

She looked at me ruefully. "I didn't think so. Call it a blind hope." She ruffled her side bangs, and they flopped over her forehead. Tess fiddled with her own bangs, like she was making sure they weren't messed up too. "Anyway, I should get started."

"That would be good," said Tess, digging into her bag and drawing out a giant calculator.

I stared at her. "Are you going to stab her with numbers or something?"

"I'm doing my homework," she said, wrinkling her nose. "I might as well be productive."

Aven bit her lip. "Um...alright." She fidgeted, and moved over to the long bar running the wall opposite the mirror. "So, you guys realize we are all demigods, right? 'Cause that would just make my life so much easier."

Tess nodded absently, clicking in number on her calculator and scribbling the answer down on a piece of paper.

"What are you doing?" I asked, sliding down the mirrored wall and settling on the ground.

"Doing ballet exercises," she squeaked. "They calm me."

"Am I the only one taking this seriously?" I snapped. Tess glanced at me and nodded.

Aven looked offended. "I'm taking it very seriously," she insisted. "But if I don't calm down I won't say it, and I promised I would explain, and I if I don't than I'm breaking that promise, and I don't break my promises."

I exchanged a look with Tess. Aven sounded like a ten-year-old about to admit that she had been the one stealing from the cookie jar, but no one was taking her guilt seriously.

"Alright, Aven," said Tess softly, like Aven really was a worried child, resting her calculator in her lap, but, I noticed (who isn't observant?), not turning it off. "Go on."

"Okay." Aven took a deep breath and began stretching her leg on the bar, not facing us. "I'm British."

I couldn't help it. I snorted. Of all the things I was expecting to come out of Aven's mouth that had not been one of them. She glanced at me over her shoulder, and I passed it off as a cough. Tess looked at me, like I told you so.

What Aven said next totally put her in her place.
"I went into hiding here after escaping from a bunch of Evil Scientists."

I did more than snort. I laughed outright. No way I could pass that as a laugh.

She looked at me sadly. "It does sound a little weird. But I'm not lying. I promise."

The way she looked at us made it impossible for me to doubt her. Promises were hefty things in the world that Aven lived in, whatever that was. Tess still looked skeptical.

"Go on," she said again.

Aven took another deep breath. "My father was a prominent naturalist in England, which is my birth place."

"You don't sound British," I pointed out.

She grimaced. "I haven't been there for five years."

"That's not long enough to get rid of an accent," said Tess.

"Well, I'm in hiding," said Aven, huffing. "I'm not going to run outside, flailing my arms in the air and screaming to the heavens, 'Hey look! I have a funny accent! Come and drag me off the my prison!' That would be completely counterproductive." She looked a little weird, flailing her arms in the air while she bent over her leg on the bar.

I nodded complacently.

"Anyway," she continued. "He had married this monster of a woman and died before my first birthday. I think his name was Herald."

Silence.

I didn't snort that time.

"So, once she had me all to herself, she took me to this stupid place called the Academy, which is totally generic and really uncreative. She was a big member there."

Aven began bobbing up and down at a rapid pace. It looked like she might have started out doing something dance related, but now she was just trying to keep herself going.

"I learned Ancient Greek, and Spanish, and a little Italian, and I learned French later, but that was different. Anyway, I learned to walk on a tightrope, and to walk on my hands and how to pick locks. Although I was completely rotten at chess and painting and walking in a straight line. I learned other things, too, about myself. I could climb trees really fast, and jump super high. I could jump off of buildings and land on my feet, but I found that out later."

I tried my hardest not to think about how she found that out.

"After my fourth birthday, when I had been there for three years, they put me in this group with four others. Let's see..." She held up four fingers. "There was a girl around three months older than me, and we called her Leo." One finger went down. "And then Column and Pillar, the twins, who were exactly twelve months older than me." Two more fingers went down. "And then Jacob, who was two years older than them."

I blinked. "Leo, Column, Pillar, and then Jacob?" I asked. "One of these things doesn't belong."

Tess stared at me. "You're focusing on the completely wrong thing."

But Aven didn't hear her, or at least, if she did, she didn't bother to comment. "Well, they'd all been there since they were not even one, just like me. None of us really remembered our names but him."

"How did he remember, especially if he had been there the longest?" Tess asked.

"He carved it into his shoulder with a nail."

Silence.

"Wow," I said, just to say something. "So..."

"What did they call you?" Tess asked, trying to change the subject. "If the other girl couldn't remember her name, surely you couldn't either."

She wrinkled her nose. "I think it started with a B. Beatrice, or Brittany, or Bethany, or Bangladesh, I can't remember. So they just called me Blossom."

I had this really strange image of her dressed up like a Power Puff Girl.

"So, your name isn't Aven?"

She shook her head. "Nope. I picked that name for myself. Aven Arnett. Way better than Bangladesh."

I laughed a little, and the breath that Aven had been holding unconsciously flew out of her mouth in a gust of relief. "Okay. So. When I was ten—"

"Wait," I said suddenly."

"I would appreciate it if you didn't interrupt."

"You completely skipped, like, six years of your life."

She looked confused for a second, but she just flapped her hand again. "They don't really matter."

Tess and I looked at each other, but didn't say anything.

"So, when I was ten," she pressed on, "I went to Column and Pillar, and I was like 'I wanna leave,' expect I had my accent still. And they were all like, 'Yeah, sure!' So we went to talk to Leo and she was like 'Yeah, sure!' and then we went to Jacob and he was like, 'Nope' and we were like 'Okay.' And then we left."

I felt like there were some serious plot holes in this particular part of the story.

"Did you just walk out the front door?" I asked skeptically.

"No," Aven snorted like the idea was ridiculous. "Oh, wait...yeah, we did, actually. Huh." She blinked a few times.

I didn't realize Aven took everything so literally. I'd have to watch my witty sarcasm around her. I might just blow her mind.

"Anyway," she said, flapping her hand again. "The twins wanted to go back to Scotland."

"They were Scottish?" I asked. So many cool accents, so little time.

"Yep, and Leo was Spanish. So, the twins went to Scotland and Leo went to France."

"And you came here?"

"Oh, nope. I went with Leo for a while. Then I went to Portugal, then Spain and Greece, and then Italy and Germany and then I went to Sicily, and then I was in Ireland for a while." She blinked. "I've only been in America for around two and a half years."

Tess looked at Aven, and I could tell she was half-jealous and half-impressed. "All by yourself?"

She nodded. "I got people to pretend to be my parents. Or I just lied flat out. I became a better liar." She grinned, like it was fantastic.

I raised an eyebrow. "In addition to picking locks?"

"Yep."

"Can you teach me?"

"Nico!" Tess elbowed me in the stomach.

I guess I deserved that.

Aven collapsed down the wall like the effort of talking had been too much of her rain, somehow hitting her head on the bar in the process. I heard the thunk all the way across the room, but she didn't notice. "So...yeah. That's basically it."

I looked at Tess. "That was way more than 'I was there, you just never saw me.'"

She rolled her eyes so she didn't have to admit that I was right.

But, really, when am I wrong?

So, this chapter was more of a I'm-going-to-explain-a-bunch-of-stuff kinda chapter. I didn't realize how much I had to explain! And there is more, but this chapter would have been it's own book.

Remember guys! Ideas are encouraged. :)

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