Chapter Four

All around the room, one right after the other, shards began hurling down on us. Everyone started screaming and rushed for the exits of the room in panic. They frantically pulled on the door, but it seemed to be welded shut. We were trapped.

The black haired boy had let me out of his grasp by this point to try to gain control of the situation, which gave me time to scramble for my glasses and put them back on. Then from above, the orb light fixtures began popping; the light bulb within exploded as sparks of electricity flickered in the air. The glass came thrashing downward, cutting up some kids in the process.

"The tables!" barked the black haired boy to the cabin members. He grabbed me harshly by the arm and nearly flung me under the marble tables. Miraculously, we all crammed together beneath our shelter, covering our heads. A few girls were crying as the debris relentlessly rained down on the table tops. I felt bad for some of the kids at the end of the table: they were striped with bloody cuts all along their arms and faces; it made me grateful that I hadn't been hurt. Everyone else was clenching their eyes shut or covering their ears as the shattering continued, hoping everything would stop before they got stabbed with a lethal shard.

Peals of laughter shook the room, but except for me, no one could hear it. The laughing corpse had dissipated again. We heard all the little pieces of the mosaic on the ceiling finally fall, beating and thundering down on the tabletops.

A huge crash cut across the room like a rapier. One of the glass cabinets blasted apart. Its pieces shot across the room, impaling the opposite wall. The contents collapsed onto the floor in another calamity of busting glass; ink and oil paint bled out of their broken bottles. Some of the shattering died down right then. We lifted our heads, hoping to see it was all over—but we were wrong. Terribly wrong.

Several hundred shards began floating around the room. They were all suspended menacingly in the air, hanging like death ornaments by invisible strings. We were facing an army of sharp, merciless blades. The shards were bewitched—all of them full of blood lust; all of them waiting… watching for a stray camper to test its edge on.

There was no way out. If we stayed under the table, we would die. If we tried to escape, we would die. The only way out rested with the bloodthirsty shards. The campers were racked with fear; some screamed in their moment of doom. The blades, as if on command, stopped floating. They immediately zoomed towards the tables; campers shrieked as they faced their imminent deaths—

The door burst open.

All the flying shards came to a dead halt and plummeted straight down onto the floor, shattering upon impact. Dropped.

The door had opened. And we had… amazingly survived.

Silence. Dozens of kids were trembling; uneven breaths were shaking their bodies. The relief hadn't set in yet. We were all too shocked.

From under the tables I could see three pairs of sneakers and a set of hooves.

They'd saved us! I wasn't sure how, but they saved us! Within seconds, some of the campers had regained a sliver of composure. They heaved in huge breaths of relief at last, finally allowing themselves to breathe.

"It's safe now—everyone out!" ordered the black haired boy.

We stumbled to our feet.

I panted gratefully. While we were getting out from under the tables, I tried to help a camper get up by reaching out my hand. But once they saw that it was me trying to help them, they gave a start and snatched their hand back from mine. I clenched my jaw. I tried to tell myself that it wasn't my fault, when inside… I knew it all was.

When we were all standing again, we faced what looked like a battlefield of glass casualties. The floor was hardly visible beneath the mass, razor-sharp heaps of them.

I turned to the open door which had saved our lives. In the doorway, I could see the horrified visages of our cabin counselors, Travis and Connor, the outraged Apollo kid, Isaac, and Chiron. Isaac marched angrily out of the doorway and right into the disastrous art room to start bludgeoning us with questions.

"What the hell just happened?" yelped Isaac, who was pointing to various places in the room all at once, as if he didn't know quite where the catastrophe had begun. His arms quivered with anger when he finally saw his sculpture with hundreds of shards of glass protruding out from it. Slowly he walked over to his slain bust of Apollo, and turned angrily back to us. "Who the hell did all of this?!"

Immediately all the kids of the Hermes cabin began yelling and screaming their own accounts of the incident, telling Isaac about how the lights started flickering and then all the sudden the world was ending as they knew it; the art room had just blown up during the process. Chiron tried to tell everyone to get out of the art room, but no one was listening. Meanwhile Isaac, no matter what explanation he heard (if he managed to hear any at all) began pointing his finger at us. He blamed us for the horrible death of Camp Half-Blood's art room, saying we were the most obnoxious cabin and the most annoying kids he'd ever met. Not only that, but as kids of Hermes, all of us were born liars anyway. Travis and Connor then rushed to our defense and got in between us and Isaac. The two started yelling at him for being a snotty Apollo kid, and for being an insensitive jerk for not first asking if all the campers were okay. Unfortunately, the argument proceeded into a giant insult contest, full of foreign curses and shouting and screaming until it was a huge, overblown, gigantic mess of chaos—

"SILENCE!!" bellowed Chiron.

Nobody moved. Nobody said anything.

His huge body lumbered gingerly through the debris and stood in front of us, his expression hard. He glared at Isaac and the Stoll brothers. "I am greatly disappointed, counselors," he whispered. All three of them hadn't a word to say, they simply sagged in shame.

Finally, Chiron turned to the rest of us, trying to remain calm.

"ONE of you," he said gravely. "ONE of you will tell me what the meaning of all of this is."

I didn't stand a chance. The entire body of the Hermes cabin moved away from me like I was the plague. The black haired boy spoke up, nodding his head at me.

"It was her, sir. She was getting everyone all riled up."

Chiron looked surprised. "Jakobin?"

I didn't have anything to say. How could I testify that there was some creepy kid harassing me, who apparently no one saw, but was responsible for the hell that was unleashed onto the Art room?

"Yes, sir," answered the black haired boy. "She was talking to herself while we were working in class. She kept saying things about how Hermes kids just liked to screw around with people."

Chiron didn't have any response, so the boy continued.

"Then she started screaming, and before we knew it, the room just started falling apart…"

Our activities director was paying attention, but something had caught his eye. Everyone held their breath as they watched him look over the black haired boy. Chiron began walking towards him. He clopped over, the weight of him crushing the glass beneath. The black haired boy backed up nervously as Chiron was only a few inches away. I was surprised to see that Chiron wasn't interested in the black haired boy. He instead gently moved the boy aside, and continued forward to the counters. The counter of interest was littered with broken bits of bottles; ink was splattered all over its surface and trickled off into a dark puddle on the floor. But this countertop where the black ink bled bore a message constraining me to the crime:

I AM NOT A CHILD OF HERMES

Chiron turned to me, his face drawn in disappointment.

"Jakobin, tell me you didn't do all of this—," he struggled. "This… this…!"

"Chiron, I… I swear, I was just…"

What could I say?

"I didn't do it!" I yelled. My fists balled at my sides, trembling in anger. I knew it wasn't the greatest statement to say in my defense, but it was all I had. That… and the whacked up truth. I tried anyway. "There was a guy that just started talking all this crap, Chiron, and then he disappeared and started to—"

"Shut up, liar!" yelled the black haired boy. I shot a hateful look at him, but he didn't care. Our glares grated against each other, flinty sparks flying. "The least you could do is tell Chiron the truth! There wasn't anyone talking to you; none of us talked to you! So quit with the story about your little imaginary friend, you freak!"

"ENOUGH!" snapped Chiron, one of his hoofs stomping onto the floor in outrage. "Everyone out of the art room this instant! I'll have no more of your arguments!"

We skulked out of the art room, shoving past each other in great frustration, trying not to have the soles of our shoes lacerated by any underlying blade of glass.

Once we had all herded ourselves out of the disaster that was the Art room, everyone turned immediately to Chiron. He was rigid and pensive; his four legs stiff. Sighing, he crossed his arms and regarded us with new orders. He made it relatively easy:

"Everyone back to your cabin. Take the injured to the Apollo children for healing." His voice was soft; it only made me feel worse.

There were a few murmurings of comfort among the crowd as they all rotated in a body to begin voyaging down the hill. My shoulders sagged as I went trudging after them, but I was stopped in mid-step.

"Not you, Jakobin."

I spun around. "What?" I scowled, "You want to ask me questions, too?"

Chiron's mouth tightened as he slowly neared me. I crossed my arms and glanced resentfully over my shoulder to my cabin mates who were already at the base of this hill… going right on… right on without me.

"I didn't believe him, you know."

I lifted my eyes to meet Chiron's image against the evening sky. It was only interrupted by my brown strands of bangs. I would've swept them to the side any other time, but life was less scary when I was peeking out at it through the tiny thread-sized breaks in my hair. That… and I didn't want to face Chiron. I had only arrived this morning and already I had screwed everything up.

"Yeah, well, you're not going to believe me either," I grumbled.

I saw his face turn away from me and rise to the purple sky. He flexed one of his uneasy hands and took a deep breath.

"Walk with me."

I was reluctant. "I don't think I should."

"There is plenty that we think we shouldn't do, but that doesn't keep us from doing it, now, does it?" He smiled. I wished I had it in me to do the same, but I didn't. Too many insults of 'freak' and 'liar' were ringing in my head; they hindered me from doing much more than granting Chiron's small request. But it does bring me a little happiness to say that at least I did so without further complaint.

--

Well, I'll say it: I spilled. Maybe flooded. By the time I was finished telling Chiron the truth, all he could do was furrow his eyebrows at me just as he'd done this morning when I denied being a demigod. We were in a small meadow beside Camp Half-Blood's lake; I was watching the pier where naiads shifted out from the water and ran across onto the land. Curled against my chest were my legs, on top of them were my folded arms. I meddled with the sleeves of my hoodie.

"So… just send me home, Chiron," I murmured. "I ruined your art room on the first day. You don't need to keep me here. You know that."

"Pah. You're not going anywhere, Jakobin."

I looked up and glowered at him. He didn't deserve it, but I did it all the same—

"I don't belong here!"

Chiron's hooves made an aggravated shuffle in the grass as he leaned forward to me, his voice rising slightly in protest.

"No, Miss Blane! Whatever you saw didn't belong here! You, however, are quite the contrary!"

I groaned and went back to fidgeting and tugging on my sleeves in suppressed anger. Strangely, I almost wished he hadn't believed me. Now I was stuck here for the summer in a camp I'd already managed to destroy. Well, some facet of it, anyway. Chiron just inhaled deeply.

"Jakobin."

"Yes?"

"Forgive me."

My eyes pierced him. What in the hell was he apologizing for? I was the one who was in all this trouble. When Chiron met my baffled expression, he glanced downward, unable to face me, although I didn't know why.

Chiron's voice was melancholy. "I'm apologizing for making a very large mistake."

I coughed. "You're apologizing." I yanked out a piece of grass, crushing it.

"Yes, Jakobin. Because I've failed to be a good host. You're already in trouble and I'll have to defend you somehow against Mr. D when he hears about this," he took in another breath. "I've been letting some very personal things get in the way of my job lately… I'm worried about a friend, who's yet to arrive at camp. I'm unaware as to why, but it has me… terrified.

You see, these last few years, huge problems have been bearing down upon Camp Half-Blood, beginning with one of my friends. We've had a falling out with one of our own campers as well. Since then, Mr. D and I have been wary of letting anyone into this camp. Needless to say now, I'm worried for you. I've not a clue what it was that you saw taking place in the art room, but I have a… a bad feeling."

These small pauses in his speech, on the other hand, worried me. I asked what kind of problems the Camp had been having. Unfortunately, all Chiron said was that I shouldn't think anything of it— not now, anyway, because this wasn't even the end of my first day. Plus, it didn't have anything to do with me or who I was, and that was the big question right now.

"We don't let mortals in, Jakobin," explained Chiron. "Camp Half-Blood is invisible to normal humans and monsters. If you weren't one of us, you wouldn't even be able to see this place."

"But wait—then how did my taxi driver get me here?"

Chiron grinned. "How, indeed."

"He was a… a…?"

"He must have been a satyr. They're out in the human world, searching for any sign of new demigods, and they bring them here. We call them our Searchers." Chiron cleared his throat in that gentlemanly way, and then resumed. "But I have much to speak of with your Searcher in particular. I believe it will help in your Determining."

"But I, I…," I uttered.

"Have we forgotten my apology so quickly, Jakobin? For letting my worries get in the way of what's needed to be done?"

I quieted. Hundreds of broken blades of grass lay dead on the jean of my knee. I gently pushed them back onto the ground. My hands dug into the dirt a little as I pushed my body up to stand. Once I had accomplished that, I faced Chiron again.

"No," I replied. "No, I didn't forget."

"I'm glad to hear it, then."

As Chiron began guiding me to the Mess Hall, I knew had to start somewhere.

I had to start believing in something.

If he could believe me enough to tell his superior that the demolition of the art room was not my fault, I think I owed it to him to begin believing I was a Half-Blood. Someday I'd ask him to forgive me for the same reasons. My doubts were in the way of me being able to do something Chiron thought was very important:

Believing…

in myself.