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_________________________________________ CHAPTER THREE : I LOCK ANKLES WITH MY STUDY BUDDY
Percy was, in a way, Easton's quickest friend.
Sure, she had Beckendorf, who had seen the small, nine year old, unclaimed and nervous and had somehow decided he wanted to be friends with her. He was twelve and became like an older brother to the girl. People had thought she would be a daughter of Hephaestus. Everyone, except Chiron, Mr. D, and her. She remembered the godly glow and firm grip of two hands, and the motherly feeling of having her hair tucked behind her ear and a kiss pressed against her forehead. An apology, because her father didn't have a cabin built, and a reassurance that everything would be okay.
Beckendorf was probably the best thing that happened to her at camp. She got to roll around in the dirt with him, laughing and having fun. She tested all of the weapons he built and needed a second opinion on. He had built her the bow she used, a sleek thing that was sturdy enough to whack anyone if they got too close. Which, Beckendorf knew happened too much with Easton, considering she was an archer.
She could feel when the inkling of him liking Selina had started to take root in his chest. He had been there when she realized she could sense who everyone truly liked and had been hit with the tons of emotions, the small crushes each camper had on another camper, or a classmate that wasn't even there. The migraine had put her in the infirmary for three days.
She cared about Beckendorf, who emailed her stupid jokes on their school accounts and had sat down and shared their dreams for the future while the July fireworks went off. But Percy was different, somehow. She saw him everyday, watched him struggle with his ADHD, always moving somehow and couldn't concentrate for too long. There was something intimate about it, seeing him in school instead of as some big figurehead at Camp. He said stupid jokes, snorted a little when he started laughing, had a habit of running his hand through his hair when he got super stressed about math problems.
Easton also never hung out with Beckendorf away from camp. They had maybe snuck out to walk to the convenience store up the road to grab snacks, but other than that, their location was limited to the strawberry fields, the forge, the archery range, or the pavilion.
Percy and her walked block upon block around New York, sometimes with Rachel Elizabeth Dare, sometimes without. Sometimes Percy had his skateboard with him and would declare he was going to teach Easton. In the week after their arcade hang out, Percy and her had spent everyday after school grabbing something to eat together, or walking around, Percy pointing out the cheap but worth it places to go when they were bored. Her mom had thought they were study groups with some of her classmates and Easton stayed up late learning new stuff to prove it to her mom.
And, despite how much her mom did want here to study something STEM related, this means she could reread the Odyssey or the Iliad and look for something she hadn't noticed before.
