"Just write a book" they said. "It'll be easy," they said, "Everyone gets published these days." Yeah, well, it's a little harder when your editors are gods that will turn you into a gecko and use you as a ping pong ball if you don't write them exac...
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AS I FOLLOWED LUKE, I WONDERED IF MOM HAD KNOWN. In elementary school, before unique names were cool and people just made fun of you with bad jokes, kids liked to make fun of Percy's and my name. I mean, when most of the people are named stuff like Jane and Alex, Perseus and Atalanta stood out (especially when teachers misread your name as Atlanta. You know, like the city.)
When I asked Mom about it, she told me she chose them because they were heroes. Because even though they suffered, like all Greek heroes, they eventually had a happy ending. She wanted that for us.
At the time it just seemed like parental optimism. Everyone goes through hard time. Maybe my mom was some Greek Mythology buff who thought these names would bring us good luck. But as I processed the idea that all that stuff was real, that I was the child of a god, that all the kids I was looking were children of gods, it started to seem like Mom might have known more than she let on. Maybe she chose Greek heroes because she knew what our dad was.
"Sorry about being weird," I said, once we were out of ear shot of the archery range. "I wasn't trying –"
"Don't worry about it. Most kids feel the same when they get here," Luke said. His tone was surprisingly light, given the topic. "You'll get use to it. We all did."
I didn't want to get used to it, but I didn't say that.
As we walked, Luke filled me in on the basics. Chiron was the same one who had trained heroes in the myths. Camp Half-Blood was created to continue to do that, to teach demigods to fight the monsters that would attack them. While he was the activities director, Dionysus – who the called Mr. D – was actually in charge.
"Wait, like the god?" I asked. "Why would a god be here?"
"Supposedly it's a punishment," Luke said.
Then he winked at me like there was some kind of secret message to this that only we understood. I nodded despite my confusion. I didn't want to look like an idiot.
There were twelve cabins, shaped into a Ω, where all of the kids stayed. There was one for each god or goddesses, housing specifically their children. Except for the Artemis cabins – because she didn't have any children – and the Zeus and Hera cabin – the first because there were not current children and the second because she never had demigod children.
"They're mostly there out of respect," Luke explained. "The Hunters of Artemis stay in their goddess's cabin when they visit, though."
We arrived in front of one of the cabins. Of all of them, it as the only one that actually looked like an actual summer camp cabin. The edges were worn down. Someone had painted the wood brown, but it had begun to peel. Over the door was one of those snake staffs they put in hospitals.
I peered in nervously as Luke pushed open the door. While we were walking, he had explained that each cabin had six bunk beds, allowing at most twelve kids per cabin. I had absentmindedly considered that might be a problem before deciding there just wasn't that many people there. Now I could see that blatantly wasn't true. The cabin was crammed with kids. The floor was littered with sleeping bags between those six bunk beds, which had been shoved right against the walls to allow more space.
