Percy Jackson and the Kane Chronicles: The Beginning

Chapter 6

Carter Kane

 I wasn't sure how I felt about swimming. I mean the water looked freezing. But Percy just dove right in, so I guess it could not be that cold, right? I thought to myself, 'Ok, Carter! Man up! It won't be that cold!' Boy was I wrong.

 Slowly, everyone else got in the ice water, trying to warm up to the temperature. Percy looked like the only one unaffected by it. The coach made sure we could all do front crawl, which we could, and told us we were going to race. We had to do eight lengths, and this was a not a small pool. Percy raised his hand.

 "Percy?" coach called.

 "If we finish first, can we do extra lengths until everyone is finished?"

 "If you really want, though you only have ten minutes, and you will most likely be exhausted." Coach replied.

 He got us into positions and blew his whistle. Percy took off like a rocket. 

As I was swimming, I thought I was doing pretty well, but Percy kind of killed my confidence. He was like a human water missile. Back, forth, back, forth, he finished the eight laps in about two minutes, (breaking school records), breathing maybe every minute or so (also breaking a record). By the time we all finished, he had done 32 laps (breaking yet another record), and wasn't even out of breath. The coach was very impressed and told him he had a spot on the swim team. Percy declined, saying he had no extra time, to which the coach was very disappointed.

By the time class was over, we were all exhausted except Percy, who seemed to have more energy then when we started, oddly enough. We all went back to the locker rooms, showered, changed and headed back into the gym. The bell rang for the end of school and we headed for our lockers.  I didn't notice this earlier, but Percy's friend's lockers are right next to ours. It's like fate is keeping us together as a group.