Chapter Eleven

The rest of the day passed by in a haze. After the eating in the Dining Pavilion, we made our voyage to the amphitheater where a sing-a-long ensued, just as the night before. I sat higher up on the amphitheater's sloping benches, watching everyone below. Travis and Connor were talking to Chiron again, and it made me smile when the two of them laughed and nodded their heads, smacking Chiron on the arm in that "look at me, I'm so manly" way. The two of them strutted off, throwing their arms triumphantly into the air as they yelled to the crowd:

"WE ARE TOILET GODS!"

Silence. Maybe crickets in the distance. But mostly silence.

Poor toilet gods.

They didn't get much applause, but then again, they didn't seem to care. Travis and Connor were probably sure that they could smite the non-applausers with a swirly of death in the Oblivion Bathroom Stall anyway.

I leaned on my sleeved arms as I sat, listening to all of the campers sing their strange songs. The night smelled of roasting marshmallows and melting chocolate while the campers sang things like "Pain, Pain, Go Away," "The Spartans Go Marching In," and "Ring around the Psyche." I was especially disturbed by:

"He's baying,

He's growling,

The Minotaur is howling!

Theseus chopped off his leg

And baked his head

And had beef burritos in the morning."

My mouth twitched. They had completely distorted the happy little tune of "It's Raining, It's Pouring." After a song like that, I was seriously waiting for all the campers to quit the smores façade and just starting gnawing each others' arms off into little bloody stumps. I mean, come on—baking heads?

Eventually we were dismissed from the amphitheater by a group of goaty-dudes with crushed Diet Coke cans on their heads. I assumed it was a "present" from Mr. D, who I'd noticed took it upon himself to boss the poor goaty dudes around.

Everyone lifted up from their seats and migrated out of the amphitheater like a herd of cattle. I was moseying through the Cabin Commons when I caught sight of a group of kids bunching around a little fire pit they had made. They were all laughing and joking with each other, their faces outlined by the warm, yellow light that flickered from their dancing fire. Part of me wanted to join them— wanted to join in on their scary story telling and the smore munching; wanted to just... be around them. But the other part told me to do what I did yesterday—just go back to my cabin and try not to bother anybody.

I sighed, my eyes narrowing at the camp fire kids who were still merrymaking in front of me. Who needed smores? Who needed scary stories? Not me, that's who. I was tired anyway and I had books to read. Besides, if I came and joined them, they would probably all walk away and say they had suddenly caught AIDS or something.

I shuffled to the Hermes Cabin. My fingertips had even touched the cabin's door handle when someone yanked off my hoodie, revealing my disheveled, wiry hair. I yelped like a pansy.

"Hey, Jakobin!" a happy voice chimed.

I whipped around abruptly, my shoulders stiff by my neck. My chin wrinkled and my eyes widened in fear making me look like a prune-y old lady who'd just had her floppy boob grazed by a stranger. Only it wasn't a stranger.

The hoodie-yanker turned out to be Connor, who now looked quite confused as he observed my bad case of hoodie hair and horrified-old-crusty-lady expression.

"Uh… okaaaay. Are you turning in early because of the rat's nest on your head or because you made that face in the amphitheater and now your facial muscles are stuck?" He asked, pointing at my frazzled 'do. At first I didn't have any breath to say anything back. I had seriously expected the hoodie-yanker to be Isaac coming back to knock my face in.

"N-no," I stammered, shoving my hood back over my head like some sort of hermit shell. "I'm just… tired?"

Connor sighed and told me that I couldn't possibly be tired, considering that he'd hardly made me participate today in any activities.

"Unless you have some other disease called dork-o-sleepiosis that makes you sleepy due to excess amounts of LAME!"

I said I didn't have excess amounts of lame— it was just him that had a rare disease that mistakes radness for lameness, thus causing all of the rad people he knows to actually be lame. Therefore, he himself would be dubbed lame, forcing him to realize that he'd been living a lie his entire lame-tastic life.

Connor was silent for a minute. If I was lucky, maybe he was actually trying to grasp everything that I'd just told him.

"Well…" He began.

"You're going to let me go to sleep now, maybe?" I asked hopefully.

Connor looked down at me and smiled good-heartedly, putting a hand on my shoulder. I gave way to a sigh of relief. I knew it. Connor had always been a more intelligent and kind person than anyone else I knew anyway. Of course he'd understand why I'd want to—

"If you're not lame, you won't go to sleep. And that's that."

I blinked. "What?"

"You heard me, cheesepuff. See ya," Connor bade snobbishly, abandoning me as he walked off towards the Cabin Commons. My jaw hung open.

There it was again. Me being wrong for the ten-billion-and-seventeenth time. Right when I think someone's nice, they walk away and tell me I'm a lame-o. Way to go, Jakobin. Way. To. Go.

I sighed and turned back to the Hermes Cabin door. Screw Connor. Why should I care about what he said? I lowered my eyes as perhaps the voice of self-doubt, or someone else all together spoke to me in my mind:

'Are you really going to admit you're lame, Jakobin?' the voice inside my head pestered. A grumble arose from my throat in silent aggravation.

"I'm not lame," I peeped in the nerdiest voice ever while my hand was about to turn to handle on the cabin door. Despite my statement, all I could hear in my mind head was all the stupid insults I'd collected over the past two days. They were all scratching at my conscience, clawing at me like a rabid animal.

Pursing my lips, I narrowed it down to two very simple things.

Before me was the door leading into the cabin— a door that blatantly meant further ostracizing and supreme weenie-dom.

Behind me was a Cabin Commons full of kids who might chase me out of their camp fire with pitch forks and rotten eggs. Both options seemed relatively fatal, only one was a bit quicker and perhaps smellier than the other. With a deep breath, I made a final decision. I even did something that I didn't think I'd do:

I let go of the handle.

"I'm not lame," I muttered as I kicked the door closed and jerked myself towards the Cabin Commons. The moment I left the Hermes Cabin stoop, I knew what Connor was trying to do. He wasn't trying to be mean, he was challenging me. Challenging me to do the same thing that Chiron had challenged me to do— to have faith in myself.

Because the only one who would prove all those insults wrong—

was me.

--

"Welly well well. Look who decided to show up," Someone said, standing up on a rock, a lyre at their side. Apparently it was John at the fire pit, probably telling another story. Most of his cabin was gathered around him (with exception to Isaac, of course) as well as Travis, Connor, and a small handful of Biscuit Kids.

And then there was me. O Glorious, on-the-brink-of-pissing-her-pants Me. The moment John acknowledged me, the whole of the crowd turned their heads in my direction, practically scorching my clothes. As if that wasn't embarrassing enough, I was nervous as hell. My hands trembled madly in my pulled-over sleeves, so I looked like a penguin in the midst cardiac arrest.

"Hey, Wako Jako," Travis teased, "decide to skip out on that bucketful of lame?"

"I guess," I croaked, trying not to focus on the sheer amount of kids looking at me. If I didn't regret taking Connor up on his challenge before, I was regretting it now. I was about to just call it quits and run for my pathetic life towards the cabin, but that dumb John kid just had to break in with his stupid... nice-ness.

"Good ta see ya, Jak. We were just tellin' a story. Come pop a squat," he said pleasantly. I just sorta nodded my head in a "as long as you don't kill me" manner and proceeded to the fire pit, trying to find a seat. John suggested I sit next to some dude nibbling on these biscuit-like things. The nibbling dude smiled primly at me, asking if I 'should like to pah-take in his evening crumpets.'

"Go on. Take it, ducky," he coaxed in his obviously English accent. I looked around awkwardly before I snatched the crumpet up in my sleeve-y mits and made a small mumble of thanks. Then John introduced the crumpet kid as "Wesley Pennington, the dude from Britain."

"GREAT!" Wesley interjected. "It's GREAT Britain, you blithering idiot! Thurza big difference! There's Great Britain and then there's just good Britain… which is basically Ireland."

The rest of the crowd rolled their eyes at Wesley. I, on the other hand, was admiring his amazing accent which radiated pure awesome and everything that was The Beatles and London anything Union Jack-tastic. Unfortunately, I didn't get to sit next to Wes because my retardo cabin counselors wouldn't let me.

Connor and Travis piped up that they had some Irish mixed up in them somewhere and how they "took umbrage" to Wesley's snooty statement. So I ended up next to the weed-o guy, Ellfo, who was pretty cool.

"Wassup, man," he greeted in his slurred, stuffy voice. I was about to say I was doing pretty good when he just put a finger in front of his mouth and said: "Shh… shh...you're groovy. Everything's groovy…"

At first I was a bit weirded out that he'd answered his own question, but then I wasn't. Ellfo's "groovy" usage made me think of my dad and all his beatnik terminology that he'd passed on to me. He probably would've answered Ellfo's statement with snaps and "Right on, man. Right on."

I plopped down on the stone next to Ellfo while John told some story about Persephone assuming a yoga position called "The Grunting Turtle," which was the only thing that could make the ghoul guards in The Underworld pee their pants in laughter, despite their lack of bladder, and their lack of pants.

All I can say is: it might have been funny had I not been sitting next to Ellfo.

During John's story, Ellfo would dig around in his hoodie pockets until he pulled out what he'd been looking for.

Lo and behold—it was butter.

I could feel my face scrunch up as I watched Ellfo ever so daintily peel off its paper wrapper, then cram the entire stick into his mouth like a starving hobo off the street. The true horror was saved for when John said something funny: Ellfo would open his butter-smothered mouth and laugh, revealing the yellowy gloop on his tongue.

Yeah.

There was no way in hell I was sitting next to that guy at lunch tomorrow.

Despite Ellfo's "see-food" and my initial feelings of wanting to crap my pants, the night was actually really fun. After the story, I got to talk to Wesley about all these underground British bands like The Naughty Socks and Zombie Flavoured Tea. I even found out that this Apollo chick named Akindra (who turned out to be my body-slammer) listened to Jack's Wrath, which was pretty high up there on my scale of radness.

When everything was over and we were walking back to our cabin, Connor pulled me aside on the cabin stoop. All the other Hermes kids followed Travis inside, saying "Oooooo, Jakobin's in troublllle" as they went. Once they were all inside, Connor turned to me. I couldn't tell if he was mad or not, since his moppy hair completely blocked out his eyes. The only instrument of expression was his mouth, which was currently in a pinch-hole position. At first I thought he was going to taunt me again or tell me that I had to sleep on the floor now, but he didn't. He just crossed his arms, shifting his weight to one foot.

"It took a lot of guts to get out there, tonight," he said sternly, nodding his head.

I just looked down at my feet and fiddled with my sleeves, concentrating on a specific scuff on my sneakers. For a second, I thought of saying something, but I didn't.

"Honestly, I didn't think you'd show up," Connor continued. "With what Isaac did to you earlier."

My neck almost snapped with how quickly my head shot up. "You heard about that?" I whispered, embarrassed.

"From Logan. He said Isaac tailed you after lunch and tried to hurt you."

There wasn't much response on my part. Thoughts of what Isaac had said re-emerged from the shallows of my mind, the memory of how scared I was under his fist. Not only this, but I was wondering why the hell Logan would tell.

"Why didn't you tell me and Travis?" Connor persisted, uncrossing his arms. "If something like that happens to you, you have to tell us so we can report it. How do you expect us to help you if you don't say anything?"

"Because I was afraid."

Connor didn't say anything else. He let out an irritated sigh and just shook his head. Meanwhile, I moved my gaze to a crack in the stoop and shoved my hands into my jean pockets. I couldn't expect Connor to understand me when I didn't even understand me, so if he was getting frustrated, I could see why. A few minutes passed before either of us spoke again.

"Just remember that Travis and I are here to help," he said at last. "And good job getting out there tonight."

When we finally went inside and I was lying in my bunk, (because apparently it was cursed according the rest of the Hermes kids, so no one wanted to sleep in it anymore) I actually couldn't sleep myself. Whether it was the fear that I'd have nightmares about butter-gargling Ellfo or floating cockroach carcasses, I had no clue. With no other resorts, I pulled out a book from my messenger bag that was still smushed up at the foot of my bed. It was only then that I noticed that this whole time, a small light had been shining through Travis's bed sheets. He still had the top bunk and he was rolled over fast asleep, but he'd left the flashlight on again. He left it on so I could sleep.

I bit my lip and turned away. I felt like crying. Not because I was sad, but because I was happy. However, I didn't want to wake up Travis like I had last time, so I held back the waterworks. It seemed to be the least I could do.

A few chapters of Great Expectations flew by and my lids grew heavy under the dim glow of Travis's flashlight, my mind full of evil Uncle Pumblechook and creepy old ladies catching fire.

But while I floated off into the realm of sleep, I couldn't help realizing that some tiny fiber of me felt different. Felt better. Because even though today had nearly been another disaster, it was worth all the humiliation to find out that despite most of the campers thinking I was "freak" and a hoodoo...

Two people cared about me enough not to care about what those campers thought.

It was something that I'd never had before, and right then, I made my first prayer to the gods before I completely lost consciousness.

"Please let it stay this way..."