SEA OF MONSTERS
June 9
The school year had gone great. No monster attacks. Like, at all. It was the last day of school and everyone was plugging away at the exams. My birthday was coming up; just four days after I'd get to summer camp. I didn't like to tell people about it. People celebrating me for just being me wasn't something I was comfortable with.
Anyway, I had my mythology exam today. I didn't study for it. Obviously. Between you and me, I didn't study for the other ones either. The ADHD didn't agree with it. I got to class and was the first one to finish the test, but I waited for another girl to hand it in first. I didn't want to be too good. It went the same with biology and ecology. I lucked out when it came to knowing stuff about plants and living things.
It was only 12 pm by now. So my roommate Sarah and I went back to our dorm and packed everything up.
As a half-blood —half god, half mortal. It's a long story — I spend my summers at Camp Half Blood, a safe place that all these demigods trained at. The monster attacks I mentioned earlier? Yeah, that happens to a lot of us. Only once has a monster breached our camp borders. That was last year, during our weekly game of armed capture the flag, when a son of one of the Big Three — Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades — showed up.
I was heading back tonight. The drive from Vermont to Long Island is about five to six hours, so my dad and I were going to leave right after school and hope we could get there in time for before curfew.
I bid Sarah goodbye and ran to my father's car.
"Hey, squirt!" He grinned, and tossed me a ziploc bag. "Cashews!"
I smiled. He thought that cashews were my favorite snack, when it was really walnuts, but it was sweet so I let it pass.
We drove all five hours, catching up with each other. I hadn't visited in a few weeks because I had to study for the exams. He'd made lots of money from the farm in the time I'd been gone, and he'd even met a woman. He was nervous to tell me, but I was thrilled. A single dad raising three kids couldn't be easy. He needed a break and distraction from the constant work.
And I'd met a boy. My friends and I went out to Waitsfield every now and then and there was a boy that worked at a local diner. He was really nice, and we had gone on a couple dates. Neither of us had discussed a relationship status. My father was delighted to hear this. The boy's name was Charles. He was disappointed to find out that I didn't have a cell phone, but he also thought it was funny that a sophomore didn't have a cell phone. No demigods could have phones, they were practically monster magnets. I'd told him that I would be away at a camp all summer, and he asked the mailing address. I told him there wasn't one. Can't have a mortal boy pushing his nose into our world.
He didn't understand, but he accepted it anyway. We agreed that we'd see each other before school started at the end of August. I was waiting for him to ask about a relationship. I wasn't sure yet. There was something holding me back. He couldn't know about my mother, Demeter, and he would definitely find out the closer he got to me.
At five o'clock, my dad drove through a McDonalds and we both got burgers for dinner. Just a couple hours left until I was at camp. I would finally see my half-siblings after a whole year without them. I was closest to Katie and Madge, but there was no way you couldn't be close with everyone. I had Julian, Mark, Noah, Harper, Julie, Anna, Alice, Theo, and a few newer kids that I hadn't really talked to yet. Terrible counselor, I know.
We sat in comfortable silence, eating our food, and finally arrived at Half Blood Hill.
"Thank you, Dad! I'll see you in August!" I hugged him sideways from my seat and hopped out.
I rushed up past the tree, taking in a breath and sighing. My bliss was short lived. I noticed a line of campers with armor and weapons standing just behind the pine tree. They were lead by none other than Clarisse La Rue, daughter of Ares, AKA our resident bully.
I jogged up to them and past the tree. "What's going on?" I frowned.
"Border patrol." A son of Ares replied grimly.
I raised an eyebrow. Camp Half Blood doesn't have a border patrol. "What?" I wanted to know more about this. Clarisse had other ideas.
"Get your ass out of here, Callaghan. Unless you're planning on joining us, go see Tantalus and get caught up."
I was very confused. I had no idea who Tantalus was, nor why I wasn't going to talk to Chiron. I did as she said anyway. I didn't want to get zapped with her electric spear.
I just started down the hill when I stopped short. I slowly turned back around. As soon as I had passed the borders, I just felt dirty. The tree. We all knew about Thalia's tree, and I usually didn't look too closely at it as I passed. It was a strong, healthy, very tall tree. But not now. The needles were yellowed, and there was a gaping puncture mark in the center of the trunk. It was poisoned.
•
As I ran down the hill, so many things raced through my mind. I didn't know who this Tantalus guy was, but I was going to-
Wait, Tantalus? As in... child soup guy? There was no telling why he was here instead of Chiron, especially because he was supposed to be in the underworld, cursed to chase food and water forever or something.
I took in the place that was supposed to be home. It had changed so much in less than a year. With Thalia's tree being poisoned, that took a toll on all of the other plants in camp. The forest was sick. The grass was yellow. I could hear them screaming in pain. Well, not really. But I could feel how drained they were. It was depressing, to say the least. I couldn't even imagine how to nymphs were feeling. Too bad I hadn't missed dinner. That meant I had to wait to speak to child soup guy and I'd already eaten anyway.
I ran to meet my cabin and we all filed into the dining pavilion. Not many summer campers had gotten here yet. My school got out pretty early for the summer.
I almost gasped when I saw who I could only assume to be Tantalus. I'd imagined him to be what he looked like in the paintings: long brown hair, bearded, mostly naked. Wrong. The man — if you could call him that, he looked more like a skeleton — was very thin with dark shadows under his eyes, grimy fingernails, choppy gray hair, and was wearing an orange prison jumpsuit.
I shivered. I didn't like to diss on people's appearances, but this guy was really creepy-looking. Just the kinda guy you wouldn't want to accept soup from. Luckily I didn't have to, because a wood nymph brought pizza to our table. I looked up to smile and thank her, but I was met with a nasty look. It was Aspen, the tree nymph I'd stood on last summer. I was fairly sure she was about to spit in my dinner, but she just moved on.
I tried not to eat too much, I needed to stay mobile for capture the flag. It was exciting, to have capture the flag on the first night back at camp. It always felt very homey. It was still early in the season, so the teams were much smaller. I was always one of the more competitive Demeter kids, so today it was only me playing for us. Connor Stoll, being the little shit he is, requested the Demeter cabin to team with Hermes and Athena rather than Ares.
Connor and Travis Stoll were my worst enemies. Last year, the head of Hermes Cabin had betrayed us and turned to help the Titan Lord Kronos rise to power, so the Stolls were now co-Head Counselors of Cabin Eleven. My summer was going to be a nightmare now that those two had more power than I did.
Connor and Travis' favorite activities were making mine and my half sister Katie Gardner's lives a living hell. They targeted the two of us more, considering how we were sworn enemies since the chocolate bunny incident of '03.
Katie and my other half siblings decided to sit out of this weeks Capture, probably to unwind and relax because of the whole dying tree situation. We all found relief in different ways. Some people liked to sleep or shower or lay down. Others, like me, enjoyed beating the shit out of anything and everything nearby. It was a good release.
I stood with the Athena, Apollo, and Hermes cabins, facing the others: Ares, Dionysus, Hephaestus, and Aphrodite.
"Alright, you know the rules," Tantalus drawled, clearly not enthusiastic. We'd all heard the rules a million times anyways.
"The creek is the boundary, the whole forest is fair game, any and all magic items are allowed, no more than two guards per prominently displayed flag. The guards have to stand at least ten feet from the flag and prisoners cannot be gagged or bound. Oh! And any maiming or killing will result in no dessert for a week. Go on, play!"
The conch horn sounded without any warning and we bolted to the woods to set up our flags.
"Alright, let's talk." Travis began. "No Annabeth yet, so it's up to us to strategize. I say Athena on defense, Hermes on offense, Apollo and Maddy in the trees. Good?"
Everyone nodded or made a sound of agreement. Except me. "Hang on, the wood nymphs have had it out for me ever since last year. Can I maybe go for border patrol?"
Travis nodded. "Yeah, sure. Don't get on any naiads bad sides, though. We need you to be able to go somewhere." I rolled my eyes at him, and we all scattered to our stations. The Athena kids grabbed the flag and ran deeper into the forest. I jogged to the creek.
People were being smart tonight, so almost no one passed through the creek. I assumed that they would be going through the woods. I did get some time to practice the geokinesis I had neglected over the school year, though.
"Still playing with rocks, I see."
"Shouldn't you be looking for the other team's flag?" I turned to face Connor.
He scoffed. "Nah. That's what my siblings are for. I'm here to enjoy the view."
"Fuck off, Stoll."
He laughed and hurried back into the woods. The first day of camp and he was already back on his bullshit. Not that I really cared for Connor anymore. Or ever did. I was talking to someone now; someone who said he'd wait for me all summer even without contact.
Charles was a very nice boy. Simple, but nice. He went to a nearby public school where he was on the hockey team. I knew next to nothing about hockey, but he was liked to talk about it a lot, so I listened. I loved the way his eyes lit up when he talked about stuff like that. It was similar to the way Connor's eyes—
No. Charles and Connor were not similar. I couldn't start mixing the two together in my head.
Yeah, I knew that I was probably slacking on my defending, but our team was good enough that I knew we'd probably win anyway. The driads thought I was still on the other team, so they were probably sabotaging the red team and unknowingly helping us.
Sure enough, Lee Fletcher came bursting through the clearing, gripping the red silk in his hand and cheering.
Dozens more campers on the blue team suddenly melted out from the trees, cheering with him. See? Easy. All I had to do was sit next to some water for an hour or so. Just this once, though. I was tired from the car ride here, so I allowed myself one game where I could slack. Next week I'd go full out.
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hi this was kinda like ,, not great but idc 🙌