A bit of a drabble... Then again they all are, right? Thanks for the reviews but more importantly... THE SON OF NEPTUNE!
That's tommorow Ladies and Genies, so put on your helmet if you live in my area because if you are in my way on the path to the bookstore I make no promises. Also; earplugs because I make no guarantees on how loud I'll scream when we figure out some immortal parents that have been confusing me like algebra. Just kidding; but if you see a kid running to a book store muttering 'oh boy oh boy oh boy oh boy' be nice and let him pass no problem. What goes around comes around! Like a boomerang, minus the nailing you in the eye part.
Anyways, enjoy!
Disclaimer: I wouldn't be that [look above] excited about the book if I were Rick Riordan, now would I? The world would be so much safer.
6
No Spit balls
Mr D had decided that there should be a meeting for all the campers.
So basically he had put all activities and project on hiatus. No kidding- he'd frozen a couple who were making out and that's how they were sitting in the front row of the amphitheatre. It was very funny and Travis really wished the 'no rude remark' thing would take a break. Actually, he wished he could pause the whole bet for a while.
It'd been over a week since he, Travis Abraham Stoll (well, he didn't have a middle name but he sounded so serious when he said it like that), had stolen a single thing and he'd played 5 clean games of Friday Night Go Fish and whenever-there's-money Poker. Not only was his morale and rep going down, but he was basically broke too.
By the end of summer; it'd be worth it though.
That's what he was telling himself as Mr D went on and on about rules and regulations, and you're not supposed to go in the forest because you'll die but you can go in anyways and I encourage it, etc.
Someone tapped Travis on the arm and very subtly he looked over his shoulder and saw Eva's hand, closed around a dozen or so straws she must've stolen from the kitchen.
"Take one," she said very fast, her lips barely moving.
Oh boy spit balls!
They were sitting right behind the Athena cabin! Those guys would figure it out and hate it, and the fact that they couldn't just call them out in front of Mr D and everyone would frustrate them even more! And if you were a really sharp shooter (like Travis prided himself to be), he could even nail Ares in the front row. Boredom buster!
He reached out, not even looking towards Eva but someone sneezed behind him. He turned around and saw Cassia, the little girl from Demeter that Connor had nailed earlier in the summer.
His eyes followed to the far end of the line where Katie was sitting down. Her legs were crossed and both her hands were just positioned on her thigh. She hadn't even noticed him.
Be good Travis, be good. Even if it means no spit balls.
"Actually Eva, I think Mr D is sort of keeping an eye on Con-man and I, so I'll lay low." Travis said. He felt twisted up inside. He wanted spit balls! He was so bored! Why would anyone be good on their own personal choice? This was madness! Madness!
"Since when has that stopped you? Since when has anything ever stopped you until now?" Eva said. The question mustn't have been a big intrigue in her life because she turned around to pass down the straws a nanosecond after. Good.
As his siblings were trying to make spit balls as quietly as possible, Travis started having the near-undeniable urge to call them idiots and show them how it's done.
Happy thoughts. Happy thoughts. Stink bombs, rubber snakes, water balloons… No- good happy thoughts.
Well; adding responsibility to his life was obviously not working to retune his brain to think 'good'. What a rip off, there went 3 hours of his life.
To keep himself from screaming as Mr D ruled out his all-time favourite things to do from the rules, and that 50 something demigods sat in the sun sweating and resisting the urge to run away; Travis peaked around his shoulder and looked at Katie.
She was bored out of his mind too, twirling a rebel streak of hair that had dropped down from her high ponytail. She caught his eye at some point and smiled weakly. Travis rolled his eyes, yawned and pretended to fall asleep. His head had nearly tipped onto the back of his seat when he shook himself awake and jumped freakishly high. Katie bit her lip to stop laughing and looked back in front.
Travis smiled, but unlike Katie he didn't look back in front.
Travis started wondering how her hair smelt like- which was the total proof that his brain was slowly dying and going out of control.
Something natural, he figured. Maybe a flower like lilac or something, since he doubted that 'wheat field' was a brand of shampoo. Maybe he could invent that and impress her. Inventing random things was a Hermes-kid thing, right?
She might also smell like a herb or something. Lavender, lemon balm, rosemary, peppermint, stuff like that. Wait- did Lavender count as a herb? What about lemon balm and peppermint- was there a special name for specific herbs you stick in tea? He'd have to find out.
Maybe he should find out a lot about farming and impress Katie with his nature knowledge. Then maybe in twenty years he could say 'I found out the Latin name of lemon balm because I was wondering what your hair might smell like and I figured maybe it smelled like it' and they'd laugh about it or something. Or he could ask her and they could bond or something… Wait- back to point…
Spices could be cool too. Cinnamon, ginger and nutmeg and junk.
It might be a fruit though. Like apples or something.
Travis figured that Katie was too pretty to smell bad, and she cared too much- but not about herself. Travis figured that half the things she did were to show a good example, for her little brothers and sisters who were here got raised right. She cared so much about them… Which blew Travis' minds away because as far as he could tell they were all little balls of fury that liked fruit and all got the flu at the exact same time.
She probably did smell like apples. Or citrus. She drank a lot of orange juice, so she probably did like citrus. Did lemon count as citrus? It was acid and all that. If it did, did lemon balm count as a citrus?
Sometimes Travis thought it sucked that demigods couldn't use Google.
Sometimes Travis thought it sucked that he had to be good too.
Correction: Travis totally thought it sucked and his conscience was telling him that spit balls were in his in-born instincts and that he shouldn't be ignoring their existence like this. But then the lovey-dovey thing part said that it'd all be worth it.
He really wanted that kiss. Yeah, Katie the farm girl out of all the girls at camp. Not the hottest, not the easiest girl to get a date with (note: the hardest to get a date with after the oracle's mummy), not the most flirty... But there was something about Katie the farm girl that was different from all the girls at camp. There was something about Katie the farm girl that he really liked, and he wasn't much of a ladies' man, but he wanted there to be something about Travis the klepto that made Katie like him too. Maybe a kiss would do the trick? Travis didn't know and it honestly sounded like a badly written novel to him, or one of those fan fiction things on the Internet, but it was true (as desperate as that made Travis sound).
Then again, he was theorising on how her hair smelt. Travis was desperate.