Just Add Water

in my dreams

"So. How old are you?"

Eyes fixed entirely on Percy, who was just about to take a huge bite of his cheeseburger. He hadn't lied to Chiron when he said that he was starving.

"Oh, um. Seven and four months," he replied immediately. Four months meant that he was older, bigger. He knew for a fact that he definitely wasn't so little anymore.

The Hermes kids seated at the table didn't think so. They shared glances, smiling and going, 'awww.' He hated when people older than him did that.

"Buddy, but you're seven," Landon said.

"And four months," Percy corrected.

Though Landon didn't seem to care about that. He was their head counselor—and also the only person whose name Percy remembered from the flourishes of introductions that had taken place when he'd walked into the dining pavilion with Chiron in tow. All he could tell about the rest of the kids was that most of them looked strangely alike, at least in terms of sharing the same wide eyes and upturned noses and crooked smiles. Aside from that, no one could've guessed that the majority were half-siblings.

"That's actually really really young. I got here when I was like, thirteen."

"Dude, yeah," the girl next to Percy said, tossing her braid over her shoulder. "I'm fourteen and I got here last year."

"When did you arrive with Chiron, anyway?" another girl asked.

She had a strong Spanish accent, now that Percy thought about it. Similar to that of his mom when she was imitating one of her parents during her bedtime stories. Percy's grandparents. He'd never met them.

...Then he realized he'd zoned out, for the hundredth time during lunch break.

The girl who sat by his side nudged him.

"Huh?"

She raised a thin eyebrow, repeating the other girl's question.

He swallowed the bit of bread he'd been chewing. "Um. I don't know."

"You don't know?" she echoed. Her eyes where strange, almost hypnotizing. Percy looked away.

How much could he tell them, really?

"I kinda fell asleep, I guess."

"You fell asleep?"

"But how can you—"

"Give him a break, guys!" Landon said. Then he threw Percy an easy smile. Distractingly, Percy noticed that his front tooth was chipped. "Chiron said that they got here at night, obviously. And the guards—"

"Yeah, I was part of the night guard," a guy further back at the table added. "We saw Peter and Grover and Chiron come in. Pete was asleep on Chiron's back."

Percy swallowed the urge to correct him for the slight name error. Instead, he inhaled more of his cheeseburger. The magic nymphs here truly knew how to make the perfect lunch.

"I thought you said he was unconscious?" someone muttered.

"Yeah, and I saw him at the infirmary."

"I dunno, okay? Just what I saw."

Everyone eyed him again.

Percy shrugged. "I was just really tired."

He hated this, suddenly. The attention. And it was just his luck that out of the twenty year-rounders, most of them were part of cabin seven, and so, there were more interrogations that he had to deal with.