Chapter Twelve

Charli's P.O.V

I woke up the next morning thinking that something was wrong, something important was missing.

I looked out the window to try to estimate what time it was.

It was still dark, and probably not even two A.M.

It's nothing, I thought. Just a dream making you feel nervous, nothing more.

But I really knew it was something else. I could just feel it. And no matter how much I tried to assure myself otherwise, my gut was telling me, screaming at ,e that something wasn't right, not right at all.

I jumped of of my bunk, silently landing on the ground, and looked around the cabin. Something, it felt, was missing, out of place, not here, where it should be.

Though the cabin was dim and hard to see in, I went with my gut and tried to find what might be out of place.

I checked the walls.

The minotaur horn that Percy had hung on the wall.

That wasn't missing.

I looked over at my older brother's bunk. A bundle of blankets were lying on the bed, rising and falling slowly in a pattern, and I could hear the sound of soft, rhythmic breathing.

Well, at least Percy was okay, still where he was supposed to be.

Something other then him.

I looked at Carter's bunk. I couldn't see anything, just bunched up blankets, with no one under or atop them.

Oh gods.

Maybe he was just at the bathroom. If I just went to sleep, he'd be here in the morning. And then, I'd be able to talk to him, try to sort all this horrible business out.

I climbed back in to my bunk and tried to fall asleep, my mind still racing with thoughts about Carter's empty bunk.

The thought on my mind when I closed my eyes was:

Something still isn't right.

Three hours later, there was still no sign of Carter.

Percy who woke me up, was the one to find out.

"Charli," He said softly, shaking my shoulder a little to wake me up. "Charli, Carter's not here. Do you think he might have went to breakfast without us?"

"Maybe," I said, sitting up. "Hopefully." I jumped down off of my bunk for the second time today. "He wasn't in his bunk early this morning, either."

"Should we go to breakfast to check?" Percy asked.

"Sure, why not?"

We walked down to the mess hall. He asked me a few questions about mom, and how things had been since he last saw us.

When we reached the mess hall, Carter still was no where to be seen. I was starting to get worried.

What if something had happened to him? Maybe someone had seen him...

I told my older brother my last thought.

"That's a good point. We should ask around a bit, see if anyone knows anything."

So that's just what we did.

We tried to ask as many people as we could, and still no luck. No one seemed to have a clue at all to where Carter might be. No one had seen him since yesterday.

Everyone... except for one person.

"I saw someone walk out of camp last night," A girl named Ruby, who had pink hair and was a daughter of Aphrodite, informed us. "Maybe it was your twin brother."

"No, I don't think so. I'm sure Carter wouldn't just... run away like that. I'm sure he wouldn't."

Actually, I wasn't so sure. I hadn't been all that great of a sister lately. Maybe Carter had run away. But where would he go?

Carter's P.O.V

I jumped in to Long Island Sound. I didn't know where I was going, and really I didn't care as long as I wasn't ruining anyone else's life.

I swam as fast as I could. The water seemed to push me forward, like it knew the direction I wanted to go in and helped me go there. It would have been cool, if the reason for it wasn't the reason I had then.

I had decided on going to Brooklyn. It was a good distance from camp, but... There was something that I was forgetting, something important...

Mom!

Oh gods, how could I have forgotten about mom?

I then decided to go to mom. She'd know how I felt, be her usual understanding self... I think. Hopefully. And she'd been worried sick, after we ran away to Camp Half Blood, no doubt.

I hoped on a dock and took off for the apartment, wanting to let mom know I was okay, to hear her say it would be okay, that all the horrible things I'd done were in the past.

I never got to hear her say that. And actually, I never even got to see her.

As I was running, I stumbled and tripped. A man reached his hand down to help me up.

"Are you lost?" He asked, his voice gruff. "Wait a second... you're one of them Jackson kids, aren't you? Your mom's at her new job. She just got it yesterday. Hop in the car, let me take you there."

"Okay," I said, completely unaware of this man's intentions.

Looking back, I shouldn't have trusted the man in the first place. How would he know if I was a Jackson kid? I hardly looked at all like my mom, and I didn't know what my dad looked like, but how would he? Another thought I had later, how would he know if my mom was at her new job or not? Or if she even had a new job?

But I trusted the strange man, someone I didn't know at all, someone I shouldn't have trusted at all.

Big mistake on my part.