Chapter 5

Percy

It's not as if I didn't like the Roman camp, but my problem was how alone I felt. Gwen had her Ares siblings (oops… I mean Mars) and Reyna had her Athena (uggh… Minerva!) ones, but I had no one. They said it was because I wasn't supposed to be born. Something about Jupiter, Neptune, and Hades swearing on the River Styx to not have any kids. So I was born of a broken promise. This earned me about twenty million stares from my fellow campers.

It would be another thing if I was just like everyone else. Problem #2: I wasn't. I just couldn't get a hang of the Roman names. I was always flubbing them. Lupa said it was because I was Greek, and probably, wherever I'd come from, I'd learned them the other way around. I'd never been the best at learning, and especially re-learning something I'd already been taught.

Needless to say, everyone hated me.

Meanwhile, I was still getting more dreams. Every night I learned a little more about my past, and about Annabeth, and the half-goat Grover, and even someone named Luke with a scar down his face. Some dreams were amazing, and I was having fun, but others were horrible.

I felt pain, and I hurt all over. Sometimes it was physical and others mental. Obviously, I didn't get much sleep over the few weeks I was there.

Reyna and I had begun to be civil to each other over the last few days and Gwen considered this a huge step in our relationship. Of course, she didn't tell me that. I figured it out by myself basing it on the number of times she jumped and squealed during one conversation.

So, you may ask, did I have any guy friends at camp? I could tell you I did. There was Bobby son of Mars, my trainer, or Derek son of Mercury, my Latin teacher, but they were all in their late twenties. Any guys my age? No. Our only contact was fighting each other in the middle of my classes and sitting in detention across the room from each other.

Detention was one constant in my life. The only stable thing anyway. I definitely remembered getting in trouble before I lost in my memory. It wasn't as if I didn't try to be good. I just always seemed to be the one persecuted. Even though I almost never did anything wrong.

Or at least in my opinion.

One afternoon it was raining. The fields were too slick to run on and we all sat inside our cabins. Everyone except for me. I was running as fast as I could. Making laps around the wet grass outside the arena. I thought I was alone until I heard a voice.

"Percy?"
I slipped and slid into a metal bar under the arena. Reyna bent down and looked at me. Then she laughed. It was the first time I'd heard anyone laugh at the camp, even if she was laughing at me.

"Come on."
She gave me her hand and pulled me up. I stared at her suspiciously.

"Did Gwen put you up to this?"
"What?"
I shook my head, "Never mind."

She smiled, "I wanted to talk to you."

"About what?"

"About you," she looked me straight in the eyes, " About your past."
"I've told them before. I don't know anything."

Reyna tilted her head to the side, "Well what happened last night? Because Bobby walked by your cabin and heard you screaming."

I shivered. It had been a particularly bad nightmare. Annabeth had been stabbed and I'd been fighting off the people trying to get to her.

"I guess I was screaming for no reason."
"Percy?"

"Yah?"
"I'm a daughter of Minerva. I know better than to believe that."

"Ok," I agreed, "I've been having nightmares."

She raised her eyebrows, "Well that's normal for demigods. And you're a son of Neptune, so yours might be more frequent. What are they about, Percy?"
I looked at her, square in the eyes, "They're about my past."