Trapped | ✓

Chapter 6

I slept fitfully.

I dreamt of home, but I could hardly call it dreaming. They were nightmares. Horrid, real, nightmares.

I remembered laying in bed at night, clutching Buttons with my eyes squeezed tight shut, waiting for it to be over. Waiting for daddy to come home and she'd stop.

My sister and I used to hide in the closet in our bedrooms when mom got like that, in the small, little wardrobe in the hallway that she wouldn't look for us in. She wouldn't find us, so we were safe. Sometimes, we would spend all day in there, just chatting and reading and Brianna would sit and braid my hair, and cuddle me when mom got close, and would even risk getting out and sometimes running all the way to the living room and back to get Buttons when I left him there.

I missed Brianna. It had only been a few weeks since she left for university, but still.

My dad would have to go to work every day and leave us alone with our mother. Our mother was most of the time drunk, and violent towards my sister and I. But although my father knew of this, he wouldn't bring up enough courage to ask her to leave. On the one occasion he did, she claimed it was her house as much as it was his, and that she wasn't moving. So we would have moved out right then, except we loved our house, and we wouldn't let her have it. We wouldn't give it up to the likes of her, more than anyone else.

My dad finally found out that my mother was having an affair, and got an excuse to kick her out. She left with the other man she was seeing. We finally had the house to ourselves, and were safe.

My mother threw open the wardrobe door and Brianna screamed and my mum dragged us out and I began to cry and-

I sat up quickly, breathing heavily. Percy was awake, too.

"Nightmare?" he asked. I nodded.

"Yeah, me too." I rubbed my eyes and attempted to make out the time on the clock on the wall.

"It's morning."

"Really? Wow. We've got our quest today, remember." Oh yeah. Our quest. Oh, wow! Had it been two weeks already? It had felt like mere days.

I leaped up and ran over to the corner of the room and pulled on my clothes hurriedly.

After meeting at the Big House, we all made our way to the armoury, to equip ourselves.

"You need a good weapon," Annabeth pointed out. She took a small object from her pocket and handed it to me. It was a ring, with a pretty rainbow coloured bead.

"This will be perfect for you. Chiron told me to give it to you especially. Tap it."

I did so, and it transformed into a sword, light enough for me to use easily, balanced perfectly in my hands, and it was almost transparent with a tint of the rainbow pattern that the bead had.

"This is your magic item. Here you are," Annabeth told me. Cool. She tapped the hilt of the sword, on a similar rainbow bead, and it transformed back into the ring.

We stood at the top of Half-Blood Hill. We were about to leave for our quest. A couple of campers were standing there also, to wish us on our way or whatever, consisting of the Stoll brothers, Clarisse, Will Solace, and a couple others I couldn't name. I stood by myself whilst Jason and Piper and Leo were all talking amongst themselves, Percy and Annabeth were doing the same, and so were Nico and Will, and Hazel and Frank. Connor Stoll approached me.

"Good luck. Hope you don't die." I laughed. "I'd miss our archery lessons together if you were dead."

"Me too." I grinned. "But thanks."

And suddenly Argus was beckoning us over and we had to go, and so I waved goodbye to Connor and I joined the other campers that were coming with me on this ridiculous, impossible quest.

And as we sat in the van that Argus used to drive us out, to wherever we could be going, I couldn't help but think, not of the quest or how we'd do it, not home, not this crazy situation in where I was inside a book, but the conversation I had just had with Connor Stoll.

We had been in the same archery class and had somehow sparked some sort of a friendship. He had been one of my favourite characters when reading the books, however small the role had been. And yes, I can admit, I had always had just a teeny tiny crush on the character.

And in real life, he was pretty lovely too.