Where You Go ― Jason Grace

xxxi. still standing

OPHELIA WOKE TO a tear-soaked pillow. The cabin was silent, everyone fast asleep and deep in more pleasant dreams than hers. The sky outside was still dark and full of stars, blanketing the camp in the peaceful night. 

Peaceful for some, at least. 

It was too early to be awake, but Ophelia knew she wouldn't be able to go back to sleep. Mindful of her still-sleeping cabinmates, she got dressed as quietly as she could and slipped out of the cabin. Her feet were on autopilot, and she didn't bother to try and take back control. 

She was only a little surprised when she ended up in front of Cabin Three—the Poseidon cabin. 

It was smaller than the Hermes cabin, to the left of Zeus's bank-esque cabin and the right of the Ares kids' fortress. The exterior was made of rough gray stone, and she saw bits of sea glass, seashells, and coral embedded in the stonework. The back of the cabin looked out on the canoe lake, where Ophelia could see tiny ripples in the water from naiads swimming closer to the surface. It was all so picturesque, and for a moment, Ophelia let herself imagine Maren standing on the front porch. 

The Maren Ophelia killed would have hated Camp Half-blood. Not because she was Roman, but because she was a cynic. She would have laughed and mocked the camaraderie the Greek camp seemed to thrive on. She would have refused to set foot in the lake, and she would have said it was because the naiads were annoying, but Ophelia would know the truth—that even if seawater coursed through her veins, Maren refused to set foot in the territory that had taken her mother away from her. 

Ophelia could remember the day Maren got the letter from her aunt, could remember watching her face harden as she ripped the letter into pieces and ran away from the forum to mourn alone. 

Looking back, Ophelia knew that was the moment that the Titans' finally won her over. Her own godly parent had let her mother drown at sea, and Maren had lost the only parent who ever showed her love and affection. That had been the final straw. 

All the suspicious looks from the others at camp, all the talks of 'bad omens' and her divine ancestors' bad deeds, being turned into a soldier at the tender age of eleven—that had all been the kindling, but her mother's death by drowning in the middle of the ocean was the spark that set Maren Russell's loyalties alight. 

The Maren Ophelia knew before—the freckle-faced, blonde-haired girl who taught Ophelia how to swim and showed her how to properly fight with a pugio and kissed her like she was a fragile work of art—maybe that Maren might have liked Camp Half-Blood. 

From the way everyone talked about Percy Jackson, Maren's Greek half-brother was something of a celebrity. No one saw him as a bad omen, as bad luck, as a symbol of disaster. He had friends at camp, a family, people who were distraught with the idea of him being missing, who scoured the world to try to find him and bring him home.

Ophelia closed her eyes, and she could see Maren there. Complaining about the garish orange t-shirt but wearing it anyway; playing pranks on other campers with Ophelia and her half-siblings; finding a family there that she'd been denied at Camp Jupiter from the beginning. 

If Maren had been Greek, maybe things would have turned out differently. 

Or maybe her life was always a tragedy in the making.

Ophelia wasn't sure how long she sat on the porch of Cabin Three. She didn't dare think about going inside—it felt sacrilegious, like she would stepping on holy ground and would burn the second she stepped too far.