I DO NOT OWN PERCY JACKSON RICK RIORDAN DOES! I only have rights to Atlanta and, just Atlanta. The stories are still in Percy's POV, with my oc added in.


Chapter seven: Our Dinner Goes Up in Smoke

Word of the bathroom incident spread immediately. Wherever we went, campers pointed at us, murmured something about toilet water. Or maybe they were just staring at Annabeth, who was still pretty much dripping wet.

She showed us a few more places: the metal shop (where kids were forging their own swords), the arts-and-crafts room (which satyrs were sandblasting a giant marble statue of a goat-man), and the climbing wall, which actually consisted of two facing walls that shook violently, dropped boulders, sprayed lava, and clashed together if you didn't get to the top fast enough.

Finally we returned to the canoeing lake, where the trail led back to the cabins.

"I've got training to do," Annabeth said flatly. "Dinner's at seven-thirty. Just follow your cabin to the mess hall."

"Annabeth, I'm sorry about the toilets," I said.

"Whatever."

"It wasn't my fault."

She looked at me skeptically, and I realized it was my fault. I'd made water shoot out of the bathroom fixtures. I didn't understand how. But the toilets had responded to me. I had become one with the plumbing.

"You need to talk to the Oracle," Annabeth said.

"Who?" Atlanta asked.

"Not who. What. The oracle. I'll ask Chiron later."

I stared at the lake, wishing somebody would give me a straight answer for once.

I wasn't expecting anybody to be looking back at me from the bottom, so my heart skipped a beat when I noticed two teenage girls sitting crossed-legged at the base of the pier, about twenty feet below. They wore blue jeans and shimmering green T-shirts, and their brown hair floated loos around their shoulders as minnows darted in and out. They smiled and waved as if I were a long-lost friend.

I didn't know what else to do. I waved back. Atlanta looked and waved at them as well. They bowed, whispering something to each other. Atlanta, feeling insecure, hid behind me, holding onto my shirt. The girls must have felt bad, because they waved smiling at her.

"Don't encourage them," Annabeth warned. "Naiads are terrible flirts."

"Naiads," I repeated, feeling completely overwhelmed. "That's it. I want to go home."

Annabeth frowned. "Don't you get it, Percy? You are home. This is the only safe place on earth for kids like us."

"You mean, mentally disturbed kids?" Atlanta asked.

"I mean not human. Not totally human, anyway. Half-human."

"Half-human and half-what?"

"I think you know."

I didn't want to admit it, but I was afraid I did. I felt a tingling in my limbs, a sensation sometimes felt when our mom talked about my dad.

"God," I said. "Half-god."

Annabeth nodded. "Your father isn't dead, Percy, Atlanta. He's one of the Olympians."

"That's…crazy," Atlanta said.

"Is it? What's the most common things gods did in the old stories? They ran around falling in love with humans and having kids with them. Do you think they've changed their habits in the last millennia?"

"But those are just-" I almost said myths again. Then I remembered Chiron's warning that two thousand years, I might be considered a myth. "But if all the kids here are half-gods-"
"Demigods," Atlanta said. "That's the official name."

"Right," Annabeth said, clearly annoyed Atlanta was beating her to things.

"Then who's your dad?"

Her hands tightened around the pier railing. I got the feeling I'd just trespassed on a sensitive subject.
"My dad is a professor at West Point," she said. "I haven't seen him since I was very small. He teaches American history."

"He's human."

"What? You assume it has to be a male god who finds a human female attractive? How sexist is that?"

"It's not sexist," Atlanta said. "how many of the stories are of the goddess running around, falling in love with males? Percy said dad, because its more common for the gods to do the chasing around."

Annabeth got red in the face.

"Who's your mom, then?"

"Cabin six."

"Right, because we're going to know who that is," Atlanta said.

Annabeth straightened, glaring at Atlanta. "Athena. Goddess of wisdom and battle."

Okay, I thought. Though she's more than just that.

"And my dad?"

"Undetermined," Annabeth said. "like I told you both before. Nobody knows."

"What does Odysseus have to do with this?" Atlanta asked.

I snorted as Annabeth looked annoyed at the joke.

"Expect our mother. She knew," I said.

"Maybe not, Percy, Atlanta. Gods don't always reveal their identities."

"Percy's dad would have. He loves her," Atlanta said.

Annabeth gave is a cautious look. She didn't want to burst out bubble. "Maybe your right. Maybe he'll send a sign. That's the only way to know for sure: your father has to send you two a sign claiming you as his son and daughter. Sometimes it happens."

"You mean sometimes it doesn't?" I asked.

Annabeth ran her palm along the rail. "The gods are busy. They have a lot of kids and they don't always…Well, sometimes they don't care about u, Percy. They ignore us."

I thought about some of the kids I'd seen in the Hermes cabin, teenagers who looked sullen and depressed, as if they were waiting for a call that would never come. I'd known kids like that at Yancy Academy, shuffled off to boarding school by rich parents who didn't have the time to deal with them. But gods should know better.

"So we're stuck her," Atlanta said. "That's it? For the rest of our lives?"

"It depends," Annabeth said. "Some campers only stay the summer. If you're a child of Aphrodite or Demeter, you're probably not a real powerful force. The monsters might ignore you, so you can get by with a few months of summer training and live in the mortal world the rest of the year. But for some of us, it's too dangerous to leave. We're year-arounders. In the mortal world, we attract monsters. They sense us. They come to challenge us. Most of the time, they'll ignore us until we're old enough to cause trouble-about ten or eleven years old, but after that, most demigods either make their way here, or they get killed off. A few manage to survive in the outside world and become famous. Believe me, if I told you the names, you'd know them. Some don't even realize they're demigods. But very few are like that."

"So monsters can't get in here?" I asked.

Annabeth shook her head. "Not unless they're intentionally stocked in the woods or specially summoned by somebody on the inside."

"Why would anyone want to summon a monster?"

"Practice fights. Practical jokes."

"Practical jokes? How is that a practical joke?" Atlanta asked.

"The point is, the borders are sealed to keep mortals and monsters out. From the outside, mortals look into the valley and see nothing unusual, just a strawberry farm."

"So…you're a year-rounder?"

Annabeth nodded. From under the collar of her T-shirt she pulled a leather necklace with five clay beads of different colors. It was just like Luke's, expect Annabeth's also had a big golden ring strung on it, like a college ring.

"I've been here since I was seven," she said. "Every August, on the last day of summer session, you get a bead for surviving another year/ I've been here longer than most of the counselors, and they're in collage."

"Why did you come so young?" Atlanta asked.

She twisted the ring on her necklace. "None of your business."

"Oh."

We stood there for a minute in uncomfortable silence. "So…we could just walk out of here right now if we wanted to?" I asked.

"It would be suicide, but you could, with Mr. D's or Chiron's permission. But they wouldn't give permission until the end of the summer session unless…"

"Unless?"

"You were granted a quest. But that hardly ever happens. The last time…"

Her voice trailed off. I could tell from her tone that the last time hadn't gone well.

"Back in the sick room," Atlanta said, "When you were feeding us the ambrosia you asked us something about the summer solstice."

Annabeth's shoulder's tensed. "So you do know something?"

"Well…no. Back at my old school, I overheard Grover and Chiron talking about it. Grover mentioned the summer solstice. He said something like we didn't have much time, because of the deadline. What did that mean?"

She clenched her fists. "I wish I knew. Chiron and the satyrs, they know, but they won't tell me. Something is wrong in Olympus, something pretty major. Last time I was there, everything seemed so normal."

"You've been to Olympus?" Atlanta asked.

"Some of the year-rounders-Luke and Clarisse and I and a few others-we took a field trip during winter solstice. That's when the gods have their big annual council."

"But…how did you get there?" I asked.

"The Long Island Railroad, of course. You get off at Penn Station. Empire State Building, special elevator to the six hundred floor." She looked at us, like she was sure we must know this already. "You two are New Yorkers, right?"

"Oh sure," As far as I knew, there were only a hundred and two floors in the Empire State Building, but neither Atlanta nor me pointed that out.

"Right after we visited," Annabeth continued, "the weather got weird, as if the gods had started fighting. A couple of times since, I've overheard satyrs talking. The best I can figure out is that something important was stolen. And if it isn't returned by summer solstice, there's going to be trouble. When you two came, I was hoping…I mean-Athena can get along with just about anybody, expect for Ares. And of course she's got the rivalry with Poseidon. But, I mean aide from that, I thought we could work together. I thought you two might know something."

I shook my head. I wish I could help her, but I felt too hungry and tried and mentally overloaded to ask any more questions.

"I've got to get a quest," Annabeth muttered to herself. "I'm not too young. If they would just tell me the problem…"

Atlanta's stomach growled and I could smell barbecue smoke coming from somewhere nearby. Annabeth must have heard our stomach's growl. She told us to go on, she'd catch us later. We left her on the pier, tracing her finger across the rail as if drawing a battle plan.

Back at cabin eleven, everybody was talking and horsing around, waiting for dinner. For the first time, I noticed that a lot of the campers had similar features: sharp noses, upturned eyebrows, mischievous smiles. They were the kind of kids teachers would peg as troublemakers. Thankfully, nobody paid much attention to me and Atlanta as we walked over to our spot in the floor and plopped down with our minotaur horns.

The counselor, Luke came over. He had the Hermes family resemblance too. It was marred by that scar on his right cheek, but his smile was intact.

"Found you two a sleeping bag," he said. "And here, I stole you both some toiletries from the camp store."

I couldn't tell if he was kidding about the stealing part.

I said, "Thanks."

"No prob." Luke sat next to Atlanta, pushing his back against the wall. "Tough first day?"

"We don't belong here," Atlanta said.

"I don't even believe in gods," I said.

"Yeah," he said. "That's how we all started. Once you start believing in them? It doesn't get any easier."

The bitterness in his voice surprised me and Atlanta, because Luke seemed like a pretty easygoing guy. He looked like he could handle just about anything.

"So your dad is Hermes?" Atlanta asked.

He pulled out a switchblade out of his back pocket, and for a second I thought he was going to gut Atlanta. I pulled her to me, glaring at him but he just scrapped the mud off the sole of his sandal. "Yeah. Hermes."

"The wing-foot messenger guy," I said.

"That's him. Messengers. Medicine. Travelers, merchants, thieves. Anybody who uses the roads. That's why you two are here, enjoying cabin eleven's hospitality. Hermes isn't picky about who he sponsors."

I figured Luke didn't mean to call a nobody. He just had a lot on his mind.

"You ever meet your dad?"

"Once."

I waited, thinking if he wanted to tell us, he'd tell us. Apparently, he didn't. I wondered if the story had anything to do with how he got his scar.

Luke looked up and managed a smile. "Don't worry about it, Percy, Atlanta. The campers here, they're mostly good people. After all, we're extended family, right? We take care of each other."

He seemed to understand how lost I felt, and I was grateful for that, because an older guy like him-even if he was a counselor-should've steered clear of an uncool middle-schooler like us. But Luke had welcomed us into the cabin. He'd even stolen toiletries, which was the nicest thing anybody had done for us all day.

I decided to ask my last big question, the one that had been bothering me all afternoon. "Clarisse, from Ares, was joking about 'Big Three' material. Then Annabeth…twice, she said I might be 'the one.' She said I should talk to the Oracle. What was that all about?"

Luke folded his knife. "I hate prophecies."

"What do you mean?" Atlanta asked.

His face twitched around the scar. "Let's just say I messed things up from everybody else. The last two years, ever since my trip to the Garden of the Hesperides went sour, Chiron hasn't allowed any more quests. Annabeth's been dying to get out into the world. She pestered Chiron so much he finally told her he already knew her fate. He'd had a prophecy from the Oracle. He wouldn't tell her the whole thing, but he said Annabeth wasn't destined to go on a quest yet. She had to wait until…somebody special came to the camp."

"Somebody special?"

"Don't worry about it, kid," Luke said. "Annabeth wants to think every new camper who comes through here is the omen she's been waiting for. Now, come on, it's dinnertime."

The moment he said it, a horn blew in the distance. Somehow, I knew it was a conch shell, even though I'd never head one before.

Luke yelled, "Eleven, fall in!"

The whole cabin, about twenty of us, filed into the commons yard. We lined up in order of seniority, so of course Atlanta and I were dead last. Campers came from the other cabins, too, expect for the three empty cabins at the end, and cabin eight, which had looked normal in the daytime, but was now starting to glow silver as the sun went down.

We marched up the hill to the mess pavilion. Satyrs joined us from the meadow. Naiads emerged from the canoeing lake. A few other girls came out of the woods- and when I say out of the woods, I mean straight out of the woods. I saw one girl, about nine or ten years old, melt from the side of a maple tree and come skipping up the hill.

In all, there were maybe a hundred campers, a few dozen satyrs, and a dozen assorted wood nymphs and naiads.

At the pavilion, torches blazed around the marble columns. A central fire burned in a bronze brazier the size of a bathtub. Each cabin had its own table, covering in white cloth trimmed in purple. Four of the tables were empty, but cabin eleven's was way overcrowded. I had to squeeze on to edge of a bench with half my butt hanging off, Atlanta had to sit on my lap, to sit with us at all.

I saw Grover sitting at table twelve with Mr. D, a few satyrs and a couple of plump blond boys who looked just like Mr. D. Chiron stood to one side, the picnic table being way too small for a centaur.

Annabeth sat at table six with a bunch of serious-looking athletic kids, all with her gray eyes and honey-blond hair.

Clarisse sat behind us at Ares's table. She'd apparently gotten over being hosed down, because she was laughing and belching right alongside her friends.

Finally, Chiron pounded his hoof against the marble floor of the pavilion, and everybody fell silent. He raised a glass. "To the gods!"

Everybody else raised their glasses. "To the gods!"

Wood nymphs came forward with platters of food: grapes, apples, strawberries, cheese, fresh bread, and yes, barbecue! My glass was empty, but Luke said, "Speak to it. Whatever you want-nonalcoholic, of course."

I said, "Cherry Coke."

The glass filled with sparkling caramel liquid.
Then I had an idea. "Blue Cherry Coke."

The soda turned a violent shade of cobalt.

I took a cautious sip. Perfect. Atlanta did the same thing as me, and we drank a toast to our mother.

She's not gone, I told myself. Not permanently, anyway. She's in the Underworld. And if that's a real place, then someday…

"Here you go, Percy, Atlanta," Luke said, handing us a platter of smoked brisket.

I loaded mine and Atlanta's plat and was about to take a big bite when I noticed everybody getting up, carrying their plates toward the fire in the center if the pavilion. I wondered if they were going for dessert or something,

"Come on," Luke told us.

As I got closer, I saw that everybody was taking a portion of their meal and dropping it into the fire, the ripest strawberry, the juiciest slice of beef, the warmest, most buttery roll.

Luke murmured in my ear, "Burnt offerings for the gods. They like the smell."

"You're kidding," Atlanta said.

His look warned us not to take this lightly, but I couldn't help wondering why an immortal, all-powerful being would like the smell of burning food.