Amy's POV 7:30 AM
I knew that the arrows were there, but I didn't care about them right now. I mean, my life is falling apart before my very eyes, like seriously. Sunshine knew my secret now… and once Sunshine knows something, you'd have an easier time keeping it on the down-low by plastering it onto a billboard on a busy interstate. Don't smile to yourself like that, I'm not kidding.
Okay… I thought to myself, blank face as I stared down at the ground, my dear little friend trying desperately not to go into his spasm, but, see, he has this problem the whole shape-shifting thing, as in, when he gets nervous, he starts to change uncontrollably until he calms down.
Theo, I silently commanded. Calm down… try to become something non conspicuous… something simple that you'd find in any girl's backpack.
Err, I guess he sort of picked up on that vibe, because, as his little body shook, he settled himself on the best thing he could think of… a tampon.
A felt a warm blush spiral up to my cheeks as Sunshine looked back up at me, eyes wide and surprised. She drew in a breath to scream, and, as she did, I closed my eyes and braced for the worst.
"OH MY GODS, AMY HAS A SHAPESHIFTING TAMPON!"
That earned some odd looks. On different circumstances, I might've been amused, but this was a little too deathly to laugh about. "Sunshine…" I hissed, shutting her up as she came forward to me, leaning down and staring as it trembled under her gaze… (Although, I guess I can't blame him. Like, an hour of sleeping in a dark backpack, and then finally waking up to be greeted by the Hot Topic, Emilie Autumn, Evanescence milk shake that Sunshine was can give you a pretty good jolt.)
I sighed and picked it up by the little string, a piercing look seeming to break through his evil little packaging. Not moments later, however, it was a fleshy pink tail that I held in my hand, and Theo looked at me meekly, letting out a small sob as his little paws flew up to cover his eyes. "I didn't even want to come," he whispered, and Sunshine gasped again.
"HOLY ZEUS! AMY HAS A SHAPESHIFTING, TALKING TAMP—"
"Give it a rest!" I ordered, grabbing her by the wrist and yanking her so close that we almost collided foreheads. "I promise, I'll explain everything later, but for now—"
"Guys, look out!" shouted Kris, and we both looked up to find another arrow headed for us. Theo shrieked and swung himself up unto my wrist, scurrying down my arm faster than the wind until, finally, he reached my shoulder and burrowed in my chestnut hair.
This all happened in the split second that the arrow took to nearly skin Sunshine and pass me wide, before finally coming to a sudden halt in the tree that I'd tripped on.
Sarah began to run forward to us as if their were rabid squirrels at her heels, but Rainy held up a hand. "Guys, stop. Nobody move, it's a trap."
"What?" demanded Julia, dropping her backpack, biting her lip and searching the ground around her with one quick swoop. "I don't see anything."
"You're not supposed to," confirmed Kris, her figuring out what this was about. "It's like those trip wire things that you see in all of them mummy movies. You know, a booby trap…"
Leave it to Sunshine to bite her lower lips and start giggling like a 6-year-old at that. "What?" I demanded, narrowing my eyes and pulling back just slightly.
She looked up, eyes hidden behind a lace of dark eyeliner and thing purple veins. "Booby…" she whispered, and laughed again, louder, and a bit more cutting.
"Well…" sighed Rainy, her head leaning forward as she placed a palm atop it, giving herself a sarcastic aura. "At least one of us is mature."
We gave a clean moment for Sunshine to shut up and remember we were about to die, but no pressure or anything.
"Hey…" whispered Theo from his stance on my shoulder, bright eyes gazing longingly across the forest grounds. "Maybe if I went first in a very clean, straight path and all of you very lightly came behind me, I'd be able to spot the wires and warn you about them…"
I sucked in a breath and nodded, squeezing out the sunlight as I muttered, "They're all going to take me as insane, I know it, but…" I looked up and raised my voice just a bit, everyone looking at me intensely.
"Guys…" I began, "this may seem a bit deranged, but you all have to just believe me and listen carefully, then ask quests later. If we're going to get out of this without dying a really horrible death… because seriously, arrows?… just follow me."
All I got in response were stares, but that was good enough for me. I reached up to my shoulder, and took Theo's tail in my grasp, taking a deep breath as I lifted him up.
Sarah's POV 7:40 AM
Oh, gods, the only thing that can get you good and awake before eight in the morning is Sunshine screaming bloody freakin' murder because Amy decided to be a freak and act like some mouse that she held in her hand was the FREAKIN' Queen of England… Ahem.
I covered my ears absentmindedly, knowing that this must be pushing like, 120 decibels, but said nothing for 2 reasons: 1) No one else was saying anything. Becoming the black sheep at the moment didn't seem fun. Also, 2) she acted real serious, which wasn't something common for Amy. Everyone looked from one person to the next, not sure what to say about Amy suddenly walking into Bedlam so casually, but I guess that anything was worth a shot. There was a volley of nodding heads that followed.
Carefully, Amy took a step forward, and then looked around, slowly making her way to the front of the group. About halfway through, she set off another trip wire and an arrow sprang light a lightning bolt, lodging itself into Julia's pack, and Kris, who stood just behind the backpack, lost all the color in her face. Yep, we're gonna die.
"Be careful, would you?" I muttered, and she turned to look at me in dismay with a glare so cold that I shut up right then and looked to the ground.
Hearing a sigh, Amy quickly danced her way up to the top, letting out a sigh and shattering our tight silence.
"Alright, everyone make a line behind the mouse. The forest doesn't go on much further…"
Rainy looked at Amy, displeased. "What do you mean, Amy. That's a mouse!"
"Your not too bad yourself, doll face," retorted the thing, and we all yelped in surprise, excluding Amy, who flicked things nose.
"Shut up," she hissed.
"I'll be quiet when I'm dead."
"That can be arranged," she threatened, and the poor thing fell into silence.
After that, we found ourselves walking forward, carefully and slowly, like we were all sharing the same tight rope with no net beneath us. I could feel my face grow red in frustration and anxiety, both because I was one step away from death, and I was following a mouse into it.
After a few silent minutes of creeping forward, there was an abrupt stop, and I heard the mouse thing whisper, "There's a wire right over there, Amy. Had you taken another step, that arrow over there would've been sprung at us," and his little pink paw motioned forward to an arrow, camouflaged in the tree.
"Okay, I'm convinced," whispered Julia, and quiet murmurs of agreement followed. After a few seconds of thinking on it, I finally realized why we all felt the need to be so quiet: this was day 1 of our quest, and already we'd had a skin with death. My heart skipped a beat, and for a few seconds, I felt like I might faint, but I held my ground, thank the gods.
Julia's POV 8:20 AM
Have you ever heard that quote "Go not where the path may lead, instead make a new one"? Yeah, I'm pretty sure some dead guy said it… But whatever, I guess that's kind of my quote for today, considering all the weird stuff happening.
Well, no, "weird" isn't really the right word. Weird is a little more like, "Oh, my toothbrush just grew legs and walked away. What are he odds of that?" It's really more like… spontaneous. That's it!
See, I've kind of felt a bit spontaneous ever since we embarked on this quest. Just as well, this whole day has been really, well, spontaneous. I mean, people falling from trees, arrows flying at us randomly, a shape shifting talking tampon- not your average stroll through the park.
Anywho, we'd been walking for a REALLY long time. I mean, it felt like days, although it could have easily been hours. (I'm gonna go with the hours option.)
I lingered a few feet behind with Sunshine and Kris, all the while staring at the back of my best friend's head in disbelief. She actually trusted that weird little… thing? Well I guess it got us pretty far, and I was pretty sure that the arrows didn't reach this far into the woods. The undergrowth was becoming thicker as the trees grew smaller. I sighed, yearning for the sun to peek through the dark storm clouds above us, even if just for a moment, but I didn't see that happening for quite a while. Rain would be coming soon, and since we were pretty much out of campgrounds, we'd have to put up with it.
"Uh guys… can we please stop? I'm really hungry!" Sunshine complained, piercing through my thoughts like a spear. Snapping back to reality, I looked around slowly, waiting for someone to refute what she had said, but nobody seemed to disagree.
After a short lunch break consisting of whatever we had in our backpacks (three raisins, a granola bar, and some of nearly-anorexic Amy's mini Oreos for me) and a few minutes of sitting down, we were just about ready to get back on the road (oh joy). Now, if I went on to explain every detail of the next hour, you'd get pretty bored. Let me just sum it all up for you in one sentence- we walked a real long time through what seemed to be a lot of the same forest over and over again until we finally found a break in the trees.
"Thank the gods, a sign of civilization!" Sarah said stepping out.
"Huh?" I asked stupidly, it taking me a moment to realize what she meant. We had come across a gravel road. I had never seen it before, but then again I had never exactly been this far out before either. Amy looked back at us and then at the road.
"Let's keep in the brush," she whispered, and then turned away. "The road is too open and we could be spotted too easily." There were twin groans of protest from Sunshine and me before Kris stepped up with a frustrated look.
"Wait," she order, and we all stopped to turn to her. "Are we just going to keep walking around and expect someone to pick us up in the end?" Her voice escalated slightly into a cry of desperation. "This is pointless! We're getting nowhere closer to—to Liz! Can't we just-"
"Kris!" Rainy cut in, her blue gray eyes staring into Kris's brown ones. "We're doing all we can to find her, okay?"
Instead of answering, Kris only looked down.
Silence lingered around us for another couple of minutes as we once again started trudging forward. I saw Amy lean down and hold her hand open for that little rodent, and he promptly flattened himself into a little garden snake and slithered up her arm, coiling up round her neck like a wicked cool necklace. That left us to the summer silence. Leave it to Sunshine to be the one to break it.
"Okay, can we fill up some time here?" She said, staring up at the darkened clouds. "Anyone got any stories to share or something? I'm going to go insane if we keep this up."
"Stories?" I retorted.
"Yeah, I dunno- just something." Her shoulders sagged, as she obviously perceived this as a failure. Amy stopped, fusing herself back into the blob of girls. For a moment, I was about to demand that she explain this whole mouse thing to us, but before I could, she said something that completely caught my attention.
"I know who's got stories." She said, her voice growing curious. This wasn't a good kind of curious. Last time Amy was talking like this, we almost got our heads blown off by a couple of Ares kids. I made a mental note to myself to shut up and keep quiet. That usually seemed to work in times like these. Amy's head twisted around to Rainy. "Rainy, it's been a good year now, and you can't help us for being curious. What happened, you know, in Lithium?"
From the moment those words rolled off the top of her mouth, you could tell she had said something wrong. There was a dead silence as all eyes took to Rainy. Her straight blonde hair seemed to fall in front of her face, and there was an eerie, lost glare in her eyes that I had failed to notice before.
I'm sure you're lost in the dark here, about Lithium, so I'm gonna feed you what I know about it, but don't expect much. No one seems willing to open up and talk about it back at camp; if you ask someone who's been there about it, you're lucky if you can even get them to utter its name.
So last summer, Rainy had been in her hometown, Wisconsin and preparing to come to camp. The night before she was supposed to come, though, she was kidnapped in the night and brought to Lithium. Don't freak when I say this, but Lithium is kinda like a death camp from World War II- only for Half-bloods. You know, a German concentration camp like Auschwitz. Ringing any bells? As far as I'm concerned, it sounded like hell on earth. See, you're freaking out. Well anyway, she managed to survive until the camp was closed down and she was brought back all bruised and battered and stuff. Seriously, we all freaked out; we'd almost lost one of our best friends and didn't even know about it. It's not one of our favorite things to talk about.
I don't know what got into Amy to bring it up now. Rainy took a moment to stare at the ground. I felt a small rain drop prickle the back of my neck as she looked up.
"Have you ever been to hell and back?" Rainy asked. Her voice was light, yet fell down so heavily, and somehow in that instance, we all became anxious. No one answered and Rainy took interest in the sky. "Well…" She trailed. "I have."
Amy looked at her in disbelief. "Huh? That's it?" Great, she decides to get pushy now… Seriously, couldn't this have waited? Rainy remained silent. "But… what about the cells? The conditions? The people running the place?" She just kept digging. Rainy shot her a glare.
"What, you expect me to open up like a textbook and give you a whole run-down of the place?" She shot at her. Amy shrugged.
"Well yeah, kinda." She said. I was beginning to feel like a fly on the wall in the middle of the conversation.
"Guys… stop…" Sarah murmured from the back. The two didn't seem to hear her.
"It isn't that easy, to be so open about something, especially this." Rainy retorted. I felt a few heavier rain drops.
"Rainy, but we're all close friends here right?" Amy said, half sounded like she was whining. I tried giving her a look to get her to shut up, yet she seemed to ignore it.
"You don't understand! This has nothing to do with that! Can we just leave it alone?" Rainy's voice reached new heights- like seriously defensive. It sent chills down my spine hearing it.
"Come on!" Amy tried coaxing. "What makes it so hard?" The rain got heavier to the point of near poring. My hair became damp as I pulled up the hood of my sweatshirt as did most of us. Rainy let her hair soak.
"Amy… Rainy…" Sarah squeaked, still ignored.
"Listen," Rainy said, her voice climbing to anger. "I can tell you it isn't a place I ever want to go back to, yet it's a place where I've left behind valuable things…memories…." Her voice cracked.
"Like what?" Amy kept digging, showing little remorse.
"I…" I wasn't sure if it was the rain, but I could've sworn I saw a tear in Rainy's eye, as if she was flashing back to something bad.
"Was it something that happened there? Was it something someone did? Was it a person? A friend? A… A boy?" At these words Rainy didn't answer. Amy said it in such a way that made it obvious: someone had told her something that the rest of us didn't know. All I heard was another quiet plea from Sarah.
"Can you guys stop fighting?" She said. Too late.
"How the hell could you bring something like that up?" Rainy said, livid.
"Like what up?" Amy fired back.
"Gods, Amy! You're so… so..."
"So what? What am I?"
Rainy grit her teeth before answering. "So fucking detestable!"
"That's it!" Sarah screamed in the back. At that point, we all turned to look at her, and a wave of silence fell upon us. Her face was red with prominent tears streaking down, soaking into her sweater. "I… I…" Her next move was out of total despair for her two close friends. She darted out into the rain-soaked street, having nowhere else to go where she could possibly get away from all of this.
About a few yards up ahead, a large black car swerved around a corner. It was going at an incredibly high speed- right at Sarah. For one second my heart stopped. For one second, each and every one of us held our breath.
And that was all it took—one second—for Sarah to drop to the ground, and not get back up. She'd been hit.
XX
Ha! I was surprised, too, actually. Rainy wrote all of Julia's POV. I would like to construct a really long and rambly apology with, like, a sobstory or something, but in truth, I just kinda needed to step back from the PJO community, with all the new people coming on and writing their "ZOMG I'M THE CHOSEN WON!!!" stories… And we all know that there'll only be more once the movie comes out. ^_^ Anyways, thanks for waiting, thanks for reading, and thanks to everyone who's reviewed. Please tell us what you think of our work!
Just as well, there was a big reference here to Rainy's story, Lithium, which you may want to check out. It's another story that the 2 of us have co-written. :-)
Thanks again! Ciao!