/ thálassa | pjo \

/ chapter five | we get a new roommate \

edited. 

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 No matter how much I wished they were, it turns out my feet weren't like Frodo Baggins's or Samwise Gamgee's. So, after seeing the blood following my footsteps across the porch of the Big House when I was helping other campers get to the infirmary, Annabeth forced me to follow and have Will get the splinters out of the soles of my feet. She told me she would put a snake in my bed if I didn't do what she said.

I would rather not have the reptile as a bedmate, so I did as she told me.

"I don't understand why she had you come to see me..." Will admitted while he inspected the super-deep splinters. He had cleaned up the blood and dropped a pair of spare shoes on the bed next to me so I could put them on after he was finished. He scoffed a little–sounding way older than his tween years as he eyed one, "You're just gonna have more at the end of the day if you decide not to put those shoes on..."

As I eyed the shoes, I knew I probably wouldn't put them on.

"That's what I told her!" I exclaimed, making the younger boy grin when our eyes briefly met again. I flinched a little bit as he prodded a spot near the outside of my foot. My voice came out pained as I said, "You should talk to her, Sol–not that she listens to anyone anyway. Maybe she'll listen to a doctor."

"I am not a doctor."

"You're my doctor."

He smiled again and I winked at him–making him giggle like the ten–almost–eleven–year–old he was.

And even though we joked about him going to college to become a doctor, William Solace is sincerely one of the smartest I have ever known. And I know Annabeth Chace. But regardless, his brains didn't just come from him being a son of Apollo–gifted in his knowledge of healing and medicine–but because he was observant and read like a madman. This kid could finish at least six books before I even finished one, which was partially because he didn't get the dyslexia gene like most demigods did (even though he could read fluently in Greek).

He lived and breathed literature to the point where he is now my living and breathing audiobook narrator (more on this a little further down).

Will carefully twisted my leg a little towards the light, the rays catching in his sunshine blond hair and making his cerulean eyes glitter like jewels. A couple of campers told me that while many Apollo kids looked like their godly father, Will looked the most like him.

So, Will was the embodiment of sunshine. And I would kill anyone who tried to snuff him out because the young kid was one of the first friends I made last summer (other than the Stolls and a couple of other kids).

Before I had been completely indoctrinated by the Apollo cabin, I had been having a rough day. I was irritable–mad at the world because of what Poseidon had told me on Mt. Olympus. But anger turned to sorrow, and that's when I first met Will. Thinking I was in an isolated part of the beach (not too far away though), I had been crying–not allowing the water of the shore to touch me, not wanting that connection to the god who didn't want me–when I felt the sand shift next to me.

Startled, I looked over to see a young blue-eyed Texan (I didn't know that until later, but just so you know) boy sitting there silently offering me an ice cream sandwich.

I just stared at him for a long moment before I hesitantly took it from him and just held it until I had the energy to open it and eat it.

Once the sugar hit my system and I felt alive again (I hadn't eaten all day), I turned to him again to see he was reading quietly next to me–his head propped up in his palm.