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9

Bad Reputation.

Jack was not a good person.

He had the most insane ideas. In three days, he had become my first and only real friend at camp. I didn't know how I had become so close to someone so fast. Was it because we slept after curfew? We would talk for hours inside the Apollo cabin, while everyone was out training. We snuck into the Mess Hall for food, only ten minutes after lunch because we thought that we would die of an ulcer or a heart attack if our blood sugar got too low. We slept at the latest hour, and woke up at the earliest. Usually, we spent that time talking or just plain messing around; doing things that kids our age should have grown out of already.

He wasn't the athletic type, just like me. That meant that he barely ever trained. He sat out a lot of the activities, except for Capture the Flag. It was a free pass to hurt people. Who could resist? Being the son of Dionysus, he knew more secrets about the camp than regular campers did. Luckily, I was his friend now. I wasn't just a regular camper.

He was awesome and that was undeniable. He did the craziest things. I remember him wearing a Camp Half Blood t-shirt. Under it, there was a messy handwriting. After about ten minutes of my staring at the text, I finally deciphered it. There was the usual print of the words camp half-blood in white. Under it, Jack had scribbled in black paint: IS FOR GAYS. I burst out laughing once I had finally read it. It became an occasional inside joke. CAMP HALF-BLOOD IS FOR GAYS. That was also pretty stupid of him because he went to the camp just like everyone else.

He was obnoxious in everyway and no one I knew could ever surpass his level of insanity. Sometimes, he just completely reverted into some other person. One minute, he's Jack Bassam, the next he's Richard Simmons, sometimes he was even Katy Perry. He was anything he wanted to be, really.

He was never the deep type. He never talked about his feelings, and neither did he ever show them (unless of course it was killing him, then he broke down in tears for a while and would be laughing about it in the next second). He was unstable, and not exactly easy to catch up with.

One of the things that we brought up in our conversations was movies. We talked about what we watched, ones that we wanted to watch, our favorite scenes, then proceed to acting them out in the accents that the actors had.

Once, we talked about Fight Club. It was an amazing movie, and Brad Pitt looked pretty good there. Of all the things in that movie, what I remembered was that pink bar of soap that had the letters, FIGHT CLUB engraved on it. That was when we decided to pull some stupid prank on the Aphrodite cabin. We gathered bars of soap and snuck them into my cabin when we were alone. Don't even ask where we got the soap. It was a hard and complicated negotiation with Argus. We told him that Jack had some 24-hour disease and the only way he would be able to survive was to live on soap for the next day. Argus didn't speak much. He just blinked his eyes around his body and grumbled. We took that as a yes. Once we were alone in the Apollo cabin (everyone else was practicing or training), we took out our knives and started carving the soap. At first it was easy. It only took Jack and I fifteen minutes to shape one bar of soap into a heart. Next came the hard part.

"We have to abort it." I said to him. "This mission's over."

"No! We can't! Don't you remember how much sweat and hard work we put into this? Remember how long it took to devise this plan?" he asked me desperately.

I raised my eyebrow and crossed my arms. "Er…five minutes? I was there, you know?"

He grabbed my shoulders and tackled me to the floor. I laughed, attacking him. I knew Jack. When he was at a loss for words, he just randomly attacked people. I kicked him off and shoved him away.

"Fine, fine." I finally said. "But how are we gonna write down the letters? We're both dyslexic and can't read."

Jack's face suddenly brightened. I could have sworn that I saw a light bulb pop over his head.

"I got it. We'll just have to find him."

W

We exited my cabin and headed for his. It was cabin number twelve. It was old and rundown with grapevines coiling around every corner. When we had reached the front door, a chubby guy appeared. I wondered if this was Jack's twin brother. I had never met him and Jack never really mentioned him. I noticed that this chubby kid had the same purple flame in his eyes.

"Hey Pollux." Jack said to him.

"Hey."

"Is he inside?" Jack asked.

"Yeah. He's asleep again, though."

"Of course."

Pollux nodded at me with an unsure smile, then jogged away.

"ALEXANDER WILLIAMS!" Jack's voice boomed inside their cabin. His voiced bounced off the walls and echoed around. It was dark inside, with barely any lights. It was a sad sight, really. The only things unique about it were the wilting grapevines around the walls. Let me repeat. WILTING.

"Alexander!" Jack sang.

I heard a muffle groan come from the edge of the cabin. I followed Jack to the bunk bed near the wall. There was a boy curled up into a fetal position. He was wrapped inside this neon green blanket that hurt my eyes just looking at it. It was probably the only colorful thing in the room.

"Alex!"

Jack swung his leg to kick the boy. That did the trick. The boy jumped up yelling. I just watched as he managed to spring out of his sleeping position and fall to the floor headfirst. I stared at his frame sprawled across the floor. He didn't have a shirt on and was wearing blue pajama pants. After two minutes, I decided to poke him because he stopped moving.

"Hello?" I said.

"Dude, get up. We have a girl in the room."

The boy quickly collected himself and stood up, tripping over his feet in the process.

"Nikki, meet my twin brother, Alex." Jack said.

I waved at him.

"Hi." Alex said with his own smile.

I smiled back, and for some reason, a giggle escaped my lips. I concluded that it was probably because Alex was shirtless.

Alex blushed, realizing it and did his best to cover himself up with a small pillow. He didn't look very much like Jack. Jack's face was longer, and his body was thinner. Alex was a few inches shorter than Jack, but had broader shoulders. He had natural honey brown hair and—of course—the patented violet eyes.

After Jack introduced us to each other, he decided to get to the point.

"Dude, we need your help." Jack said.

"Again? What's it for? To get another girl?" Alex mused.

"Ha-ha. No. We need you to write something for us."

"Write." Alex repeated, shifting his feet.

"Yep." Jack confirmed. "On soap, no less."

"Gods, what the hell are you guys up to?" Alex asked. He was looking at Jack mostly. I was not surprised.

"A joke." Jack said. "Come on. Seriously. We need you."

Alex pursed his lips and narrowed his eyes at his brother.

"I don't know…"

"We're serious." I said. "We do."

Alex turned to me. The expression on his face looked it like he was just seeing me for the first time.

"Um. Well. I guess I could…"

"YEAH!"

Jack gave me a high-five and laughed.

W

We waited for Alex to get dressed outside the cabin. I used this time with Jack to get some info on his brother.

"So," I said. "Why do we need Alex for this job?"

Jack's face blanked for a second. His smile turned upside down.

"It's complicated. Turns out, mom didn't really want two kids. She kept me, and gave Alex away. Some rich family adopted him. They had the money so that paid for his dyslexia classes. I was stuck with a drunk for a mom."

I swallowed. This was the first personal thing Jack had ever really told me. I gave myself a point for it. Getting someone to do something they don't normally do was one of the things I do best. Well, at least for the moment.

Alex emerged from the cabin in a clean orange camp shirt and jeans. We led him inside the Apollo cabin and handed him the heart-shaped bar of soap. Jack and I just sat on the floor, watching Alex write down exactly what we had told him to write. At least, that's what I thought. I wouldn't know. I had no idea how he was even doing it. Then again, he was still dyslexic so it took him three hours to finally finish. By then, it was five in the afternoon and it was almost shower time.

Since I was the only girl from the three of us, I was sent to sneak it in. The Aphrodite girls took their showers first because of some stupid request they had made. That meant I had to act fast. It was an easy job. I placed the bar of some neatly by the windowsill of their cabin, and ran back to mine as fast as I could. In five minutes, all of the Aphrodite campers were fighting over it. It was pretty funny watching them strangle each other just for that.

Do you know what that bar of soap read?

Here are the exact words:

THIS IS A MAGICAL BAR OF SOAP. WHOEVER WASHES HER FACE WITH IT WILL BECOME THE MOST BEAUTIFUL ONE IN ALL OF AMERICA.

For girly girls, they sure knew how to fight. There were catfights, and hair pulling. Heels were flying everywhere and Greek curses could be heard from every cabin.

"Thank you." I told Alex later. "Seriously. We would never have been able to pull this off without you."

"It was nothing." He scratched the back of his neck. "Anyone could've done it."

"Yeah, right." I said. "Admit it. You're good."

"Well, thank you, then." He said. He smiled shyly at me before returning to the Dionysus cabin.

Eventually, the Aphrodite girls found out that it was a trick. Lucky for us, they quickly concluded that it was the Stoll brothers' fault. They put some kind of curse on the whole Hermes cabin. All the campers (even the boys) got perms and permanent lipstick that wouldn't come off for seven whole hours.

W

Another thing I loved about Jack: he did anything he wanted. Illegal or not, he did it. It was part of the rules and regulations. A camper from another cabin was not allowed inside another god's cabin after nine o'clock.

See, Jack wasn't the type to come at ten just because it's an hour after nine. Jack was the type that snuck into your cabin at three in the morning just to talk.

It was the evening of the day that we met. On that morning at 11:02 that I had tackled him to the ground, we just started talking after that. We were both too lazy to actually stand up from the grass so we just talked and talked. Then talking turned into stupid jokes, and singing, and just plain laughs drowning out everything else. We even tried to make a handshake but after three minutes of thinking about the first move, we gave up and decided that handshakes were stupid and only uncool retards (unlike us who were very cool retards) used.

I don't know. Something about the two of us just clicked. Meeting him was like some amazing sign that I should stop sitting around thinking that everyone hates me. It totally worked. One little coincidence of meeting Jack Bassam pretty much fixed everything up.

But back to that night…see, Jack wasn't exactly the smartest one at camp. Actually, he wasn't by a long shot, but he wasn't dumb. He just never saw the point in trying. I completely understood so I didn't question any of it.

Here's what happened:

I was fast asleep. It had to be at least three a.m. and I was having a nightmare about Marilyn Manson strapping me to this wooden chair, taking out a kitchen knife, and giving me a Chelsea smile.

I remember crying, my chest feeling like I was going to explode. I was still very much alive when he ripped the duct tape off my lips and pushed the knife into my mouth. I cried, knowing there was no escape to this. I was shaking and sweating as he ever so slowly pulled that knife to both sides, ripping open the sk—

"Nikki."

I gasped, air filling my lungs. My heartbeat raced and pumped against my rib cage. Jack was kneeling beside my bunk, his hand covering my mouth. I tried to calm down and keep my composure. It was just Jack. Oh thank God. It was just him. He stood up slowly, sitting down on my bed.

I moved forward, hugging him tightly.

"You're not Marilyn, are you?"

I felt his hands hug me back, squeezing me against him even if he didn't even know why.

"No, I'm pretty sure I'm not." He said, pulling back. He had his half-smile on his face.

His hands were on my shoulders, when I realized what I was wearing. God, I didn't even have a bra under my Jabbawockeez tank top. I really didn't mind since it was dark and he probably couldn't tell.

"What are you doing here?" I finally asked after two minutes of just looking at each other.

"Oh, right, sorry." Jack finally took his eyes off mine. "I need your help."

I tucked my bangs behind my ear and uselessly combed my hair with my fingers, trying to look presentable. I had only known him for at least 18 hours or more so I was still worried about him seeing me like this for the first time. He would have to get used to me looking like a mess though if he wanted to keep up and be friends.

"What do you need?" I asked.

"Help."

He raised his left foot up. I wasn't the least bit surprised. He had his shield glued to his shoe. Seriously. How did that even happen? And how did he even manage not to wake up anyone inside my cabin when he walked? I would find out later that that was one of Jack's many talents. He could be as stealthy as ever when he tried really hard.

I shrugged, just staring at his shoe. What did he want me to do? Get if off? Yes, duh, Nikki. What else?

"Please. Get it off. I don't even know how that happened." Jack said only seconds after I thought about it.

"Um, okay." I said. "But why don't we take it outside? We might wake someone up."

Jack nodded, skipping with one foot out the open door. I quickly grabbed my gray cardigan and changed out of my stupid pajama pants and into shorts. I caught up with him later, sitting on the porch of my cabin uselessly.

"How did you even manage to do this?" I asked later.

"I don't even know."

Jack had one arm slung over my shoulder as I helped him towards somewhere far; somewhere where no one would wake up or ever find us: the strawberry fields.

I think I liked the place so much because of the name, not the fruits. I loved The Beatles and whenever I set foot in this place, I thought of their song, "Strawberry Fields Forever".

Jack collapsed on a bed of various flowers.

"Take your shoe off." I commanded him.

He pulled at his shoe, grunting.

"It's stuck."

My shoulders dropped. Seriously? Stuck? Seriously? I sat in front of him and yanked his shoe off. There was a rip. It was his sock, which was also glued to the shoe.

"Dumb fuck…" I muttered, trying to separate the shield from the shoe. It wasn't working of course.

It was only after a half hour of my trying that Jack told me that it was his brother, Alex's shoe.

Seriously?

Alex's shoe? No kidding. I had to stop expecting anything good from him.

"He'll kill me if he found out that I took his shoe."

"Why'd you take his shoe?" I asked, suddenly annoyed with him.

"Because." He said as if it were pretty obvious. "They're Italian."

I rolled my eyes, and exhaled.

"Yeah, and they're like two sizes smaller than yours!"

"Well so-rry for not looking for the sizes." He crossed his arms. "Oh and by the way, that's Alex's shield too."

I shook my head, not surprised. I didn't even know why they were glued to each other. I suddenly didn't care. I just wanted to get this over with so I can get back to sleep.

I glanced up at the sky. It was still dark, but I could feel the morning air slowly coming in. It was 4:17. It was just one of those things that I knew.

After another thirty minutes of trying, we decided that there was nothing to do, so we just threw the shoe with the shield stuck on it in the Long Island Sound.

"Thanks." Jack said later on. He had one sock on and another was ripped up. I still had no idea what happened.

"Don't mention it." I said. "I didn't really do much."

"You tried enough to earn a thank you, so thank you."

He grinned at me as we stopped in front of my cabin. My eyes were still heavy and my body was all tired.

"Good night, Bassam."

"Good night, Blackinton."

So I guess one good thing came out of that night. Jack woke me up before the worst part of my scarring nightmare came. I did not want to be haunted for life by that dream.

Another thing came out of it though. I wasn't sure if it was good or not.

Jack woke me up at three o'clock every night and just talk for a whole hour. He'd give me two hours of sleep before waking me up at six just to talk again. At first I was seriously pissed and annoyed that he was disrupting my sleeping habits, but I learned to like it. He kept back my insomnia but showed me the amazing things about it too.

See, this is the amazing part with being friends with the two of them. You can have all the fun you want; cause all the trouble you want; make as much noise as you pleased. Mr. D would never punish his own children. Jack, Alex, and well, Pollux, were probably the most important things in the world for him. He would never hurt them. It was just one of those coincidental advantages.

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