Disclaimer: I only own the plot and my OCs. Anything you recognize as not mine belongs to Rick Riordan, Greco-Roman mythology, and/or their otherwise respective owners.
Author's Notes: Alright, are you guys ready for SoM? I know I am!
As always, hope you enjoy, and until next week,
~TGWSI/Selene Borealis
~The Finding Home Saga~
~Finding Home~
~Chapter 29: My Best Friend Shops For A Wedding Dress~
Here's what I would like to tell you happened next:
I would like to tell you that a few months into my self-imposed exile into the mortal world, Demeter called me up to go on my first quest as her champion. I would like to tell you that, while on this quest, I stumbled across Luke again. I would like to tell you that I was angry seeing him at first, because he fucking tried to kill me, but then I caved. I would like to tell you that I told him, even though we were on opposite sides, we could still pursue a relationship. A forbidden relationship.
But, that's not what happened.
. . .
. . .
The truth is, I spent the entirety of the school year of my exile being a "good" kid. I went to the school my mom had picked out for me, I got semi-decent grades, and I mostly kept my head down. I didn't practice my water powers or the possible siren ones because Will had given me strict orders to not practice for months, and by the time I could rolled around I wasn't really interested in it. Or much of anything else.
I was depressed.
My mom didn't understand why. She would come home from her shift at work, or her classes at night college, and see me curled up on the couch, my knees tucked under my chin. "Oh, Percy," she would say, or something like it as she walked over to me and petted my hair. "What's wrong?"
I would never tell her the truth. I couldn't.
Because, besides the times when Silena and I hung out, either going to the park or hanging out at one of our respective homes to eat popcorn and watch shitty romance movies, I knew one thing to be true:
I was alone.
And didn't that suck?
Towards the end of the school year, though, I had a nightmare. It began like this:
I was standing on a deserted street in some little beach town. It was the middle of the night, and a storm was blowing. Wind and rain ripped at the palm trees along the sidewalk. Pink and yellow stucco buildings lined the street, their windows boarded up. A block away, past a line of hibiscus bushes, the ocean churned.
Florida, I thought, though I wasn't sure how I knew that. I had never been to Florida.
Then, running past me like a bullet, I saw Katie.
I hadn't seen her in months. Like I just said, I'd been alone. But the chocolate brown color to her loose curls, her light green eyes, the freckles on her face, they were all distinguishable. Plus, she had vines running down her arms, growing from her, like she did whenever she was stressed. It was her.
Katie was darting down the street, past the little tourist shops and surfboard rental places, as the wind bent the palm trees almost to the ground. I could tell she was utterly terrified of something behind her, probably having just come from the beach. Wet sand was caked in her hair. She'd escaped from somewhere. She was trying to get away from...something.
But why? I knew she shouldn't have been here. She was a year-rounder, and camp didn't really give out quests. There had been mine, and then there had been hers to find me, and that was it. There hadn't been any others since two years ago, when Luke had gone on his and watched Alan...die.
Suddenly, a bone-rattling growl cut through the storm. Behind Katie, at the far end of the block, a shadowy figure loomed. It swatted aside a street lamp, which burst in a shower of sparks.
Katie stumbled, trying to avoid the pinpricks of light. She muttered to herself, something along the lines of "Have to get away, have to warn them!" But I couldn't make out anything besides that.
Nor could I see what was chasing her, although I could hear it muttering and cursing. The ground shook as it got closer. Katie dashed around a street corner and faltered. She'd run into a dead-end courtyard full of shops, and there was no time to back up. The nearest door had been blown open by the storm. The sign above the darkened display window read: ST. AUGUSTINE BRIDAL BOUTIQUE.
Katie dashed inside. She dove behind a rack of wedding dresses.
The monster's shadow passed in front of the shop. I could smell the thing – a sickening combination of wet sheep wool and rotten meat and that weird sour body odor only monsters have, like a skunk that's been living off Mexican food.
Katie remained behind the wedding dresses, her hand clamped over her face to muffle the sound of her breathing. The monster passed on.
There was silence, except for the rain.
Then:
Lightning flashed. The entire front of the store exploded, and a monstrous voice bellowed: "Mine!"
I sat up at the same time there was a knock at my door, gasping and shivering in my bed.
"Percy? Percy, are you up?" I heard my mom ask. "You're going to be late."
I couldn't immediately answer her. I had to consciously remind myself that I was in my home, not on some darkened street in Florida. That there was no storm and no monster, because morning light was filtering through my bedroom window.
That I was alive.
"Come on, dear," my mom called again. "You're almost at the end of the school year. You should be excited! You've almost made it!"
"Coming," I managed finally.
Feeling under my pillow, my fingers wrapped reassuringly around Riptide, in its pen form. I'd taken to keeping it there while I slept, just in case anything happened. Bringing it out, I looked at the Ancient Greek inscription on its side, written in the Latin alphabet: Anaklusma.
I sighed.
Putting my pen-sword on my nightstand, I dragged myself out of my bed. I dressed as quickly as I could, trying to ignore several things at once, though I wasn't entirely successful. My fingers came down to the knotted mess of scar tissue on my left side, gently poking and prodding at the remnants of the wound that had almost killed me. It still hurt sometimes. Twinged whenever I moved the wrong way or thought about it for too long.
"Have to get away, have to warn them!"
Grimacing, I moved my hand away from the scar. What had Katie meant by that? Why the hell was she in Florida?
No, I shook my head. The dream couldn't be real. It made no sense.
Still, I made the three-fingered claw over my heart and pushed outwards, the ancient gesture for warding off evil.
My mom was right. The school year was almost over, I should have been excited. For the first time in my life, I'd almost made it an entire year without getting expelled. No weird accidents. No fights in the classroom. No teachers turning into monsters and trying to kill me with poisoned cafeteria food or exploding homework. Soon, I would be back at Camp Half-Blood, my favorite place in the world, with Katie, Silena, Ethan, Alabaster, and Chris. My friends.
In the kitchen, I found a plate of blue pancakes and blue eggs waiting for me. I ate at the table while my mom washed the dishes. She was dressed in her work uniform: a starry blue skirt and a red-and-white striped blouse she wore to sell candy at Sweet on America, because she was still working there for the time being. Her long brown hair was pulled back into a ponytail.
The pancakes tasted great, but I guess I wasn't enjoying them like I usually did. My mom looked over and frowned. "Percy, are you alright?'
"Yeah...fine."
My mom dried off her hands and sat down across from me. "Is it school, or...?"
"I think Katie's in trouble," I said, not willing to divulge the million other things wrong with me. I told her about my dream.
She pursed her lips. We didn't talk much about my other life. My mom had asked, several times, but I wasn't willing to tell her all too much, and I'd wanted to pretend a little bit that I could live as normally as possible this past school year. But she knew all about Katie and Silena, having met my other best friend several times now.
"I wouldn't be too worried, dear," she said. "Katie's a daughter...she's a daughter of one of your stepmothers, and she's been at this longer than you. If there was a problem, I'm sure we would've hears from...from camp..." Her shoulders tensed as she said the word "camp."
My eyes narrowed. "What is it?"
"Nothing," she replied. "I'll tell you what. This afternoon, we'll celebrate it almost being the end of school. I'll take you and Callie to the Rockefeller Center and the alternative shop there you like."
...Not gonna lie, that was tempting. With us being a one-income household surviving just above minimum wage, we were always struggling with money. Even after she'd sold Gabe, it was hard for my mom to pay for my private school tuition and her own college night classes. We could hardly ever afford to do special stuff like buying t-shirts for bands like The Killers, My Chemical Romance, and Fall Out Boy, or figurines of Marvel and DC characters.
But I wasn't tempted for long. "Mom, seriously, what's wrong?" I asked, setting down my fork.
She twisted her dishrag. "Percy, I got a message from Chiron last night."
My heart sank. He wouldn't contact us unless something serious was going on. "What did he say?"
"He thinks...it might not be safe for you to come to camp as soon as your school year is over. We might have to postpone."
"'Postpone?'" I scoffed. "Mom, how could it not be safe? It's Camp Half-Blood! It's the only place safe in the entire world for kids like me!"
"Usually, dear. But the problems they're having – "
"What problems?"
"Percy, I'm so sorry. I was hoping to talk to you about it this afternoon. I can't explain it all now. I'm not even sure Chiron can. It all happened so suddenly."
My mind was reeling. How could I not go to camp? I wanted to ask a million questions, but just then the kitchen clock chimed the half-hour.
My mom looked almost relieved. "Seven-thirty, dear. You should go. Callie will be waiting."
"But – "
"Percy, we'll talk this afternoon. Go on to school."
That was exactly the last thing I wanted to do, but my mom had this look in her eyes – it was a warning. I knew better than to press when I saw that. Besides, she was right. Callie would be waiting for me.
I gathered up my stuff, but I stopped in the doorway. "Mom, this problem at camp. Does it...could it have anything to do with my dream about Katie?"
She wouldn't meet my eyes. "We'll talk this afternoon, dear. I'll explain as much as I can."
Reluctantly, I told her goodbye. I jogged down the five flights of stairs to the ground floor, heading off to meet Callie.
I didn't know it at the time, but my mom and I would never get to have that afternoon talk.
In fact, I wouldn't be seeing home for a long, long time.
Let me amend my earlier statement: I wasn't totally alone this past school year.
Besides Silena, I had found another friend at my school. Her name was Callie, short for Callirrhoe – but don't tell her I told you that, because she would absolutely skin me alive. Like me, she didn't exactly like her first name.
Callie was the daughter of one of the teachers at our school, the same teacher that my mom had spoken to in order to secure me a spot at it, Paul Blofis. He was an English teacher, and a pretty nice guy all around. I'd had him for my freshman English class this past year, and we read several fun books in his class, like The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. He even put on the movie The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe after we watched it, so we could get an idea of what Narnia looked like outside of our minds.
Anyways, Callie was about my age, only six months younger than me. She had long, wavy black hair, and blue eyes. Really blue eyes. Like, if my eyes were the color of the sea, then hers were of the ocean. And she was a big fan of the Killers. So big, in fact, that she was wearing a t-shirt of their recent Sam's Town album, along with blue shorts and a pair of black converse.
"Hey, Percy," she said, flashing me a grin as I walked up to her.
"Hey," I said, smiling myself. "How are you this morning?"
"Good. Great." Her smile widened. "How are you?"
"Oh, could be better," I replied.
Predictably, she rolled her eyes. It had come to be one of my favorite things to say over the past several months due to how shitty I felt all the time between recovering from the pit scorpion wound and my mood, and she didn't try to hide how tired she'd grown of hearing it. Of course, I realize with most people that probably would sound like a bad thing, but with her it...wasn't. Trust me.
"Yeah, yeah," Callie grumbled. She held up one of her earbuds to me, which was connected to her MP3 player. "Want a listen?"
I knew I should probably say no. Technology worked just fine around demigods, but it was best to be avoided when it came to phones and shit. Monsters could pick up on their frequency waves.
Still, I shrugged. "Sure."
The two of us listened to the same album as her shirt on our walk to the train, then on the train ride and following walk to our school. When the third song came up, we both sang parts of it out loud, drawing more than a few odd looks, but I didn't care. The lyrics were just too good...too cathartic.
"He doesn't look a thing like Jesus, but he talks like a gentleman, like you imagined when you were young..."
After a few more songs played and we were close to the school, she let me pick out a song to listen to. Sugar, We're Goin Down played in our ears, the proper dose of emo angst to kickoff the day. As Patrick Stump sung the lyrics, I turned to look at her. "Hey, did you do the reading for today?"
To end the year, Mr. Blofis had been making us read Lord of the Flies, a book where a bunch of kids get marooned on an island and go psycho. It was fairly interesting, but since my life was basically that already, just with monsters and gods and other fun stuff, I had a feeling I couldn't enjoy it as much as some of our classmates did.
Callie winced. "About that."
I tried not to gawk at her too much. "Callie, you didn't do the reading?"
"...No."
"But Mr. Blofis is your dad! How do you just not do the readings when he both grades your papers and can ground you for getting a bad grade on one of them?"
She blew out a puff of air. "You know how."
...Well, I couldn't argue with that. I did.
See, like me, Callie had ADHD and dyslexia. Not to make medical conditions a competition or anything, but they weren't quite as bad as mine. She had never been kicked out of any schools or anything, although that might've simply been because of the pull her dad had as a teacher.
But, I had my suspicions. Silena and I had talked about it once or twice when at one of my homes, where the prying ears of monsters wouldn't be able to hear us. We figured, if – and it was an if, because not every single kid with ADHD and dyslexia was a demigod, and indeed not every single demigod had both of those conditions, just look at Katie for an example – she was a demigod, she was probably the daughter of a minor goddess. Probably one of the water goddesses, too, considering her name, although that did not mean much.
Oceanus and Tethys had three thousand daughters, after all, and one of their daughters, Doris, had another fifty with Nereus. One of the Nereids was my other stepmother, even. Amphitrite.
Personally, I was placing my bets on Thetis. But Silena had other ideas. She said it was possible she was the daughter of one of my dad's kids with Amphitrite. Maybe not Benthesikyme, since by all accounts she was utterly devoted to her husband, the immortalized Enalos, but maybe Kymopoleia. Probably Rhode.
And yeah, it was a little weird to think about my friend being my prospective niece when she was the same age as I was, but that's what happened when one of your parents was a god. Whatever.
"Besides," Callie said, stirring me out of my train of thought. "It's almost the end of the school year. My dad won't be toomad at me for not doing the reading when I've done almost all of the others."
"'Almost,'" I repeated.
"It's better than 'most' or 'some,' excuse you!"
Snickering, I took her earbud out of my ear and handed it back to her, just as Nobody Puts Baby In the Corner began to play and we started to walk up the steps to our school. "Here. Thanks for the music."
"Ha, very funny."
"I try," I told her smugly.
The two of us walked through the hallways and to our classroom. We sat down in our seats right as the bell rang. Not a second later, her dad, Mr. Blofis, walked in the room and soon began to take attendance.
Taking out my copy of Lord of the Flies, I allowed myself to focus on his lecture and the jungle lives of the book's characters. I knew I had better things to worry about, but for right now all I could do was focus on the present, and not on the dread that was beginning to settle in my stomach.
Because seriously, what was going on at Camp Half-Blood? With Katie?
Word Count: 3,103
Next Chapter Title: I Play Dodgeball With Cannibals
