Well, I'm Here Now (PJO/HoO)

Becoming

Becoming the queen of the Aphrodite cabin was much more difficult than one would expect it to be. For starters she was the new kid and there was obviously already a head counselor in the cabin. Other than that there was only one real problem, no one knew her. She had to somehow convince people that she existed.

She spent the rest of September learning as much as she could about the camp and the recent history of it. Along with convincing everyone of her legitimacy as a camper.

She became something that she wasn't expecting to become— a bitch. She was no longer the quiet girl who walked alone to school and listened to sad indie and Brit-pop. She was now someone who she barely knew. She was the counselor she had replaced.

She changed her style, she decided that if she wanted to rule she would have to give her people what they wanted. She knew the Aphrodite kids from the time she had spent convincing them she existed, and if what they wanted was a strong minded leader who knew she was the best and demanded respect, then that would be what she would be.

Drew had always wanted friends and acceptance or at least someone who was proud of her. If she tried her best to rule the cabin and become what everyone wanted from a stereotypical Aphrodite kid, she would have the friends and the acceptance she desperately wanted. Her mother would come to know her as the best daughter ever and she would lead the cabin. At least, that was the plan.

But, it was hard to become a leader overnight, especially when you don't know who your subjects are. She spent weeks convincing the old counselor who was presiding over the cabin that she was more qualified and the old girl stepped down. And, suddenly she found herself the queen of the cabin.

But, for whatever reason, she hated it.

The old counselor had been horrid and a mean person who only thought about herself and since Drew had (basically) become her in a way she was this horrid mean tyrant and the rest of the girls in the cabin suddenly hated her. She wanted so badly to step down and just go back to be the smart girl who sat in the back of the class and had good eyesight for a person who spent the night reading but she couldn't be that girl anymore. Her mother seemed so proud of her and she wanted to be proud of herself too.

Drew read textbooks while she sat in the bathroom and as her siblings slept so that she didn't seem like a nerd and would be somehow be debunked. She kept up with her schoolwork and she tried to figure out how camp worked while not seeming too interested in the proceedings and being thought of as a weirdo.

She spent so much time trying to keep up her persona she had very little time for anything else.

She wondered how her foster parents were without her.

She wondered why she was wearing such stupid clothes instead of her nice retro dresses and cute hipster clothes. She felt like a fake.

She wanted to kill every single one of the little shits in the fucking cabin.

November ended and rumors began to spread about her being a slut and about how Percy Jackson was probably dead. Those two things were apparently of equal importance to the children of the great gods of Olympus. Drew was having trouble sleeping what with reading at night and the fear of not waking up earlyenough to take off the headphones she slept with to listen to music and fall asleep. Sometimes, she didn't want to go to sleep and hear her mother praise her for becoming an "amazing" leader.

Drew hated herself and everything she and her cabin stood for. She spent nights reading and trying to keep up with the studies that the camp didn't find important. She wanted to give up and go home, but some part of her kept her from doing it. Every morning she got up, even if she didn't sleep and pretended that she still thought she was the best or whatever they seemed to want her to think that day.

As it got colder she wished she could wear a too-big sweater and just sit in bed and read all day but she couldn't. She wore jeans and "stylish" Camp Half-Blood T-shirts and wished that her self esteem didn't seem to fall with the ever dropping temperature.

Her mother visited her in a crazy four am dream that faded in and out like an old TV due to the fact that she was only barely asleep.

"You're leading the entire Cabin!" Her mother said, unlike what she had heard from the other demigods her mother didn't read her thoughts, "You must be happy, right."

"Of course mother!" She hated pretending when she was happy and awake when she was asleep.

"I'm so proud of you, Drew. You are doing an amazing job." Her mother said.

"Thank you." Drew said smiling and rolling over to wake up, the rest of the cabin still asleep, to the sun rising and peaking through the corners of the pink curtains. Her math textbook and work along with her history book on the French Revolution and some creative non-fiction text on her favorite and least favorite daughter of Aphrodite, Marie Antoinette. She shoved the books away into her trunk and lay back down.

She probably had about 10 minutes to get ready for the day mentally. She wished she had 10 days.

"Uhhg." She muttered waiting for the rest of the cabin to awaken and knowing that once they did she would wish that they were still asleep.

It's going to be a long day, she thought to herself as she pulled a towel, her music and some stupid clothes from their respective trunks and hooks. She wished she had grabbed the white wool pull over that she found comfortable and comforting that her hand had brushed instead of this stupid outfit, but her mother was so proud of her now. Her mother loved her now, the mother who she had always wanted to love her when she was little and alone.

She should be proud of what she had accomplished... shouldn't she?