Camp Half-Blood

I Get a Haircut With a Blowtorch

As soon as I walked through the door to the cabin, basically a giant bank vault door with a large spinny wheel thing in the middle, steam hissed and a billion lights blinked in a variety of colors.  It was enough to give someone a seizure.  As the door closed and the steam cleared  I saw a bunch of wierd machines and kids with powertools building what looked like a robot.   A teenager with large muscles came forward.  His biceps bulged and he looked strong enough to go twelve rounds with Chuck Norris with an arm tied behind his back and without breaking a sweat.  He had dark skin like my dad. Well, okay, OUR dad, and large hands and his brown hair hung down in his face.

"Hey!" He said sticking out one of his huge, greasy, rough hands for me to shake. "I'm Harley, the cabin leader! Let me be the first to welcome you to Cabin 11.  Two doors down from the dreaded Cabin 9."

I looked around wondering where I was suposed to throw my stuff and saw that there were tools EVERYWHERE. Electric drills lay on the floor and blow torches sat in easy reach. That could NOT be safe for little kids. A spiral stair case lead down to a second story and a random ladder and fireman's pole led to a higher story.

"The bunks are upstairs. Go take a look! I think there is an extra bed over by the dance floor. Be careful, Joey is trying to work out some kinks in it and she said it might spontaneously combust." Harley said chuckling. I didn't find it funny at all. I climbed up the ladder and found an even messier room at the top which was fine with me. I hate cleaning my room.

"Hey you! Could you hand me that wrench?" A girl at the back of the room yelled at me.

I assumed it was Joey. Picking up a wrench that was laying on top of what looked like a mini refridgerator I headed over to her and felt my feet fly out from under me. Oil went everywhere and I spit some out that had gotten in my mouth.

"Oh and watch out for that oil spill! Nyssa accidently poured it out while dodging Mickey's new frisbee. He got it to fly any way you want. How cool is that?" Joey said unhelpfully.

"Too late." I said picking myself up, walking over to her, and handing her the wrench.

"You're new aren't you?" She asked not even looking at me.

"Um... Yea. How'd you know?" I answered.

"Well you don't have really callused hands that look like you just stuck them in a bucket full of grease." She said laughing.

"So what is all this stuff doing on the floor? Isn't that kind of.. I don't know... dangerous?" I asked picking up a blowtorch.

"We all know how to use them so it's not a problem." She said absent-mindedly messing with something under the dance floor.

I looked at the blow torch and saw the 'On" switch. "So you turn it on like this?" I asked flipping the switch right as she looked up and screamed

"Face it away from your.....!"

Then a blast of heat went up my nose and I felt my hair catching on fire.

My first reaction was to panic and try to snuff out the flame with my hands but then I realized that I couldn't even feel the fire on my scalp. I turned to Joey and found that she was looking at me unconcerned.

"MY HAIR IS ON FIRE! DO SOMETHING!" I yelled.

"Ok, Ok. Just tell it to stop." She said and I was like "WHAT?!?!?"

So I looked up at the smoke coming off my head and said "OK fire. Stop burning my hair off. I really don't want to go bald. Please and thank you."

The smoke stopped and my head wasn't as hot as it had been.

"See?" Joey asked. "It follows your commands."

"Hey! Hey! Hey! Joey guess what! I just made a refridgerator that is also an oven and an expresso machine!" a little boy yelled running over to us and slipping in the oil.

Guess I wasn't the only one who can't keep his balance in a puddle of oil.

"Watch out for the puddle." Joey said.

I ran over and helped the kid up trying to get as much oil off as possible. He was a short kid, maybe 9 or 10 with long curly blond hair and the biggest brown eyes I'd ever seen.

"Who are you? And uh... what happened to your hair?" He asked looking at my still smoking hair.

"He lit it on fire with a blowtorch." Joey answered and I shot her a 'Make me look stupid why don'tcha' look.

"Really? I did that yesterday. It was so weird 'cause nothing happened to my hair." He said.

"So Mickey. You made an expresso machine?" Joey asked still working.

"Not just any expresso machine. A expresso/oven/refridgerator machine!" He said puffing out his chest with pride. "I just tried it out. The coffee tasted good... or at least Harley said it did, and then the oven made AWESOME pizza and I've got my energy drink in the refridgerator right now."

I grinned at them but turned to find the bunk Harley had told me about. It was under a set of crutches and a few stiff looking blankets but I found it. I dropped my bag on the bed and sat down. This place was amazing.