Cpov
Time passed quickly after Thanksgiving, and before I knew it, I was saying good bye to Max for two weeks while he'd be with his mother for Christmas. I'd be joining Will at Camp Halfblood mainly because with Max gone, there was no reason to spend it with my father.
"I wish I could go." He said sullenly as we waited for his mom to pick him up from school. Max knew a little about camp. Nothing crucial of course, but from things I'd let slip during letters he'd heard about the training with swords, horse racing, and other various camp activities. "Your camp sounds amazing. All I get to do is go visit my grandma who hates me and loves all of my spoiled cousins."
"Well maybe this will cheer you up." I said grinning and reaching into my bag to pull out a thin wrapped present.
"What is it?" he asked excitedly.
"Early Christmas gift." I said grinning. "Open it."
He eagerly tore of the paper and his eyes went wide. He was holding the latest edition of his favorite game 'Olympians on Earth', where you could choose an army of the different Olympian gods and their patron cities as they tried to take over Greece.
"How did you get this?" he asked staring down at the video game in amazement. I'd bought him the first edition years ago because it was the only game I'd ever be interested in playing with him, and he'd loved it ever since. "It's not even out yet."
"I might have flirted with the boy at the store a little."
"You're evil." He said laughing while tackling me in a hug. "And I love you for it."
He let me go and reached for his back pack.
"I got you something too." He said excitedly reaching into his bag and pulling out a package that was also thin.
"What is it?" I asked curiously.
"Open it and see." He said happily.
I did.
Inside was a framed picture of Max and I last summer, when I was still allowed to hang out with him outside school, standing in front a carnival ride on a peer at the beach.
"I heard you telling Will Dad ruined you copy the other day and I thought you might want to bring it to camp. Do you like it?" he asked hopefully.
"I love it." I said smiling and he looked relieved.
"Good because I didn't have a back up plan."
I hugged him again but after barely a second, we heard a car horn blast and broke apart to see that Max's mother had pulled up to the front of the school.
"Max! Let's go!" she shouted out the window.
"Bye Cal." He said dejectedly.
"See ya Max." I said knowing that however disappointed he was feeling, mine was ten times worse. "Have a good Christmas."
"You too!" he said already half down the steps. "And tell Will I said Merry Christmas as well."
"I will!" I said and the next thing I knew he'd shut the door and was gone.
I wasn't sure how long I sat there, watching the place where Max had turned out of sight, but it felt like an eternity before I heard my name being called.
"Cali!"
I looked up to see that Will was shouting out the back window of a car with his mother and step father in the front.
"You ready?" he asked. For the first time in three years, I'd finally accepted Will's offer to give me a ride to Camp Halfblood.
"Yeah." I said knowing my things were already in the trunk, we'd packed last night to avoid complications with my father.
"Then get in, we're burning day light Parker." He said and I rolled my eyes, but jogged down the car after and slid into the back seat next to him.
"How was school?" Dave asked me curiously and I knew that he was asking out of genuine interest rather than politeness. He had been helping me in school almost as much as Will had.
"It was fine." I said and for the first time it was true. "I got a b on my history paper."
He nodded in approval and while Will didn't say anything I could see his smile from the corner of my eye.
His mother pulled out of the school drive, they got into a discussion about which route to take to get to camp, while Will plugged into his iPod for the long journey a head and I had a sudden realization. This was exactly how families acted on TV shows or in the movies. Parents talking about boring stuff in the front seat while the kids got up to their own business in the back. Asking about our days and taking road trips together where no one was fighting or had to be back by eight because the siblings weren't allowed to be together after sundown.
I glanced at Will whose mind seemed to be elsewhere as he stared out the window. I never thought this was possible for a demigod. To be so normal. I'd all but resigned myself to a painful monster related death and a life of misery, and anything that seemed otherwise was a trap. But right now I felt completely ordinary, not just ordinary, but happy. All this time I'd seen Will with his perfect family, thinking it was a lie, that something would have to go wrong, or it just wasn't right. There was no way that someone like me could have that. So I pushed it away thinking I was happier being alone than trying for what he had and getting disappointed again.
But was that really true?
Here I was, and nothing had gone wrong. No one had rejected me, or lied to me. Nothing bad was happening at all, and as the next hour passed, still nothing had happened and I found myself thinking, hoping actually, that one day, I could have this too.
Wpov
"Will!"
I grinned as several of my brothers and sisters tackled me into hugs the moment I stepped into cabin eleven.
"How've you been?"
"Did you win any races?"
"I heard you got into a good school!"
"Is it true you got Cali to come back?"
Everyone went silent and I felt uncomfortable as at least a dozen pairs of gray eyes fell onto me and I knew why. Cali's charmspeak was legendary and despite being a daughter of Aphrodite, she was one of the toughest fighters in camp. It had been a couple years since she'd last come to camp, most people thought she was never coming back.
"Yeah, she's back."
Whispers broke out amongst my siblings. Cali's reputation was strange to me, most people loved her, others had no reason to dislike her, I had to admit, I didn't know much about Cali when she regularly stayed at camp. Most of the older campers remembered her as a much different person than she was, and all of her siblings seemed to adore her, which, considering the person she was now, didn't make sense to me at all. I remembered all the pictures of her when she was little, a pageant girl, a child model. Maybe that was the girl they remembered, which could have been the reason she didn't come back.
"Ok, ok stop pestering him." Said Ted pushing through the crowd. Over the past year he'd become Head of the cabin and though I loved all my brothers and sisters, he was my favorite. He'd been the first of my very few friends in my first couple years of coming to Camp Halfblood and we'd gotten into a lot of trouble together. He was the one who first ever taught me how to pick a lock so we could steal snacks from the Big House. "Scram guys. We've got to get ready for cabin inspection tomorrow. Go clean your bunks."
"Fine." they grumbled and dispersed though out the cabin.
"How are you doing Will?"
"Good. How's Katie?" I asked. Katie was Ted's girlfriend and had been head of the Athena cabin for as long as I could remember. They'd been together since before I'd even started at camp and apparently they were one of the many couples that Cali had set up in her time here that were still dating.
"She's fine. A little irritated with me at the moment though." He said grinning.
"What did you do?" I asked also feeling myself smile. When we were younger, before he'd become a counselor and had to be 'responsible', she spent half time chasing us around trying to stop us from pulling pranks on the other cabins. She was the only one smart enough to catch us. It was why he liked her. He thought it was funny when she got worked up and yelled at us for all the trouble we'd caused. He'd never admit it, but I was pretty sure that was the main reason he did it.
"Blame Jenna and Robert" he said referencing the twin brother and sister that had come to camp last summer and always seemed to be behind whatever chaos that upset camp. "They were the once who convinced me to let them break into the armory last night and hide all of the Ares Cabin's weapons all over camp with traps made by the Hephaestus cabin. It caused a fair amount pandemonium this morning. But they deserved it."
"What did they do?"
"They cornered Thomas after he'd stole their clothes as a joke and tied him to a tree in the forest to let the monsters have him. I mean, that was an extreme reaction just for a prank."
That was the weird thing about my siblings. Because our father was the patron God of thieves, were all so good at stealing that thievery was almost way of life and certainly a point of pride for our cabin. No one got too angry if their stuff went missing, it was almost a challenge to see if they could get it back without being noticed. We often forgot that the rest of the camp didn't see it that way.
Thomas was the youngest in cabin and very close with the twins. I definitely could see them wanting to retaliate, and no matter how mature he pretended to be, Ted had always hated people messing with his siblings and always approved of a good prank.
"So is it true?" he asked curiously. "You got little Cali Parker to come back?"
"Little?" I asked confused. I knew Cali wasn't exactly tall but the way he was describing her was like as if she were five.
"Well, I haven't seen that girl since she was about thirteen." He said when he caught my expression. "In my head she's still about this tall."
He raised his hand to somewhere about midway up his chest.
"Well I'm sure you'll see her tonight at the campfire."
"I doubt it, if memory serves correct she'll be surrounded by a crowd of boys the entire night."
I thought back to the first time I'd seen Cali.
"I feel sorry for those boys then." I said shaking my head.
"Why? Does she have a boyfriend or something?"
"No. But she doesn't need one."
"What do you mean?"
"Cali's a lot different now." I explained as he followed me towards my bunk and I dumped my stuff on my bed. "And I pity the boys who try and hit on her before they realize it."
