Hey Hey, so yeah. For a third time, I changed my name. With Grace And Courage, I am a true warrior, Apollo's little angel—yeah, same dude.
Oh! Shout out to kmills499 loved your review! Ambrosia for everyone! |::| |::| |::|
Forward and upward!
"For the love of all things good in this universe—go away!" I groaned throwing a pillow at Miranda's face. I hadn't seen her for the past few days and she wanted to get caught up. At five o'clock in the morning. What kind of crazy person does that, I ask you?
I heard her laugh softly. "Shut up," she whispered. "You're going to wake the whole cabin up. You need to come with me. like, now." I tried to ignore her, which worked out fine until my so-called best friend sat her butt down on me.
"Okay, okay!" I quickly got ready in a pair of shorts and a blue tank top with sandals.
Miranda lead me to the huge rock that looked like deer droppings—Zeus's fist, she told me.
"It looks like a poop pile." Just then the sky rumbled softly, like a warning. Wincing, I remembered how gentle the gods were. I'm sorry, Zeus, I prayed silently in my head.
Miranda told me to climb up the tall tree beside Zeus's Fist and go all the way to the top. At first, I had my doubts, but then I realized she had a dagger strapped to her belt and a rope in her hand, and let me tell you: Demeter's children—even the girls—are very strong. It must be all the time they spend farming or whatever it is they do. Needless to say, I did as I was told, no questions asked.
At the top, there was a wooden platform, kinda like the flooring of a tree house, without the roof or walls. I could see every inch of camp and even into the city a little bit. The sky was navy blue, starting to set lighter and lighter, the sun appearing over the edge of the horizon. Pinks and purples and oranges began to color the sky. It was beautiful.
"Travis and I built this one day, hiding from Katie," Miranda said, behind me. "See, Katie is a nice girl, but an irritating sister. She stole my gardening tools one day, so I teamed up with Travis to prank her. We ran here and quickly built this to save our lives from a killer horde of bees… That was also the day they fell in love, ironically enough."
I smiled. Katie and Travis were cute together. When they were around, he would say something stupid and Katie would blush and walk away, or hit him, or yell at him, but no matter what she did, you could always tell she was smiling. He loosened her up and she tied him down—a matched set.
"That's so romantic," I told her. I continued to watch the sky as it formed into a beautiful explosion of colors. Looking over at Miranda, I saw her waving to the sky. I did the same as Apollo streaked by. He saw us and waved back from his sweet sports car.
"Apollo is a flirt, but he's a nice guy," she commented once he'd passed.
"I bet. Hey, it's almost time to eat breakfast. We should get down." But even as I said it, I didn't want to. Up here, nothing was wrong. It was as if time stood still. Peace and quiet. Down there, at camp, swords would be flying and training would begin.
As we traveled back to camp, we smelled something burning. It was strong like seriously overcooked meat that was rubbed in tuna fish, rubbed in Tabasco sauce, and left out in the middle of the road in Arizona on a hot summer day. (If you can't imagine that, I promise you, it is not pleasant. That was the day I found out Miranda had no idea how to cook, whatsoever!)
It was the Ares cabin. One of the landmines inside had gone off and the whole building collapsed. Every camper got out, except for one. River. I met her before and we had a lot in common. She made me feel like I wasn't such a freak and she made me feel better about having a horrible home-life. Nico and Clarisse were crying over her body as people began to crowd around.
"It wasn't an accident," a blonde girl whispered.
"What?" another person said.
"Some people are saying it was rigged on purpose."
I didn't have a lot of information about the situation, or about the cabin rivalries in general, but in that moment, my blood filled with rage. Tears stung my eyes and I pushed myself to the front of the crowd, ignoring all the dirty looks I was getting. Seeing her, I couldn't hold in the tears any longer. River's brown hair was loose and wild, her light skin even paler than usual. Blood trickled from her neck and arms, flowing over her body.
"N-Nic—" I stammered. He understand and took my hand.
"She's gone. I can't do anything," he muttered, almost to himself. "Just like Bianca."
Clarisse jumped to her feet, yelling at everyone. "WHO DID THIS? FACE UP TO IT? YOU KILLED MY SISTER, I KILL YOU!" She was ready to start a fight. Chiron galloped over, pulling her aside to calm her down.
I was so numb, I couldn't feel anything. I could hardly register the voices behind my back mocking me.
"She didn't even know River," someone said.
"She knew her well enough," someone defended. "And besides, you don't have to know them personally to be sad from another camper dying. Haven't we lost enough? It's about family, stupid."
Nico looked at he, cocking his head to the side, like he wanted to talk alone. I walked with him to the edge of the forest. "You okay?"
I sniffed an shook my head no. "You?"
"I've dealt with death a lot. It hurts a lot, but not as much as it used to"
At that point, I broke down into sobbing tears, thinking about how everything. He held me in his arms, despite how uncomfortable he felt, even when my legs went numb from crying and hyperventilating.
After I collected myself, Nico asked, "What happened to you?"
"What?"
"No one cries that hard, unless they knew the person well or had an excruciatingly painful run-in with death before," he wiped tears from my face. "So I wasn't to know—if you don't mind my asking what happened."
I took a deep breath. It would feel good to tell someone and Nico was nice enough to act like a big brother to me…
...oOoOoOoOoOOoOoOoOo...
It was my eleventh birthday when I got the news. Dad's long-term girlfriend, Monica, was now his fiancé. Like, happy birthday! You get a new mom! Everything was fine the first few months, then it happened. Monica's son—my stepbrother—Michael, started to cut. It affected the whole family. Monica and dad both ignored him, because they were always at work. I was Michael's only comfort. The kids at school hurt him and teased him, called him names so awful, I couldn't bear to think about how he managed to move on. After a few more months had gone by, Michael was still cutting, I was still keeping it a secret, like I'd promised, but Monica started to pick up on it. Once word was out that my brother was a cutter, school became even more intense for him. Fights happened every turn you made. It was crazy, because it seemed like the whole school was divided into two groups: the people who were on Michael's side and the people who were not. There was no middle ground. Eventually, Michael started to come home with bruises, black eyes, then a broken nose. I don't know why my parents hadn't transferred him earlier, but the broken nose it what really did it. Monica set up a privet tutor for Michael and me to study with. That worked for a while, until the bills started coming in. privet tutoring was expensive. Monica and Dad fought constantly. They threatened to leave each other and nasty things like that. Then it happened. I was coming back from the store one day, when I noticed Michael wasn't in the kitchen, like he usually was. He wasn't in his bedroom either. I found him in the bathroom. Dead. All because of a racial issue. Was it so hard to keep peace in this crazy ,messed up world that the pigmentation of skin can cause such an uproar?
...oOoOoOoOoOOoOoOoOo...
"Wow," Nico said. "I'm so sorry, Anna. I had no idea…"
I sighed, tired. "No one does. Not even Miranda. I kept that a secret for a long time."
He looked at me with sad eyes. "Never keep a secret like that to yourself. It eats away at you. I know from personal experience."
I sniffed, rubbing the corner of my eye. "Thank you."
He pulled me up to my feet. "I'm going to take you out." He announced, like I didn't have a say in it.
"What?"
"You need something to get your mind off of things, and I know just the way to do it. That is, if you don't tell on me," he teased.
"I'm still confused."
He took my hand, smiling. "Just trust me."
Shadow travel is both fun and exciting and terrifying and crazy. I felt my face being practically ripped off. Lucky for me, we stopped soon. Looking around at the booths and clean counters, I knew we were at McDonald's.
"Really?" I asked.
He looked at me, genuinely surprised. "What? I love this place. And it has ice cream, the best comfort food known to man."
I rolled my eyes. "Okay, fine… But I don't eat meat, got it?"
I ended up eating two ice cream cones and most of Nico's French fries. As compensation, though, he played with the My Little Pony happy meal toy he got for me and named it Princess Sparkle Butt.
We stayed out for hours without a monster in sight. It wasn't until we got back to camp that trouble started brewing.
It was like school all over again—two side fight against each other. The Ares cabin blamed the Hermes cabin for the death of River. Alongside the Ares cabin were Aphrodite, Hephaestus, Nike, Hebe, Iris, and Tyche. On the other side was Hermes, Apollo, Demeter, Dionysus, Hypnos, Nemesis, and Hecate. There were a few cabins, like Poseidon and Athena, that chose to not get involved, but for the most part, we were divided.