In which, Adira Lancaster falls in love with her rival, Percy Jackson
OR
he falls in love with her first, unknowingly.
She only seemed to think about a rivalry. Nothing else. Zilch. Nada. Zip.
-disclaimer- I do not own the Percy Jackson Books, or an...
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Word of the bathroom incident spread immediately. Wherever I went, campers pointed at me and murmured something about toilet water. Or maybe they were just staring at Adira, who was still pretty much dripping wet.
She showed me a few more places: the metal shop (where kids were forging their own swords), the arts-and-crafts room (where satyrs were sandblasting a giant marble statue of a goat-man), and the climbing wall, which actually consisted of two facing walls that shook violently, dropped boulders, sprayed lava, and clashed together if you didn't get to the top fast enough.
Finally we returned to the canoeing lake, where the trail led back to the cabins. "I've got training to do," Adira said, looking at her watch. "Dinner's at seven-thirty. Just follow your cabin to the mess hall." She turned around, beginning to walk away. I grabbed her wrist, pulling her back. A little too harsh, that our faces were only inches apart. She and I both blushed, then she backed away, fidgeting with her bracelets.
"Adi, I'm sorry about the toilets."
"YOU don't get to call ME Adi. Only people closest to me," she scoffed, shooting daggers right at me, through my skull.
"It wasn't my fault."
She looked at me skeptically, and I realized it was my fault. I'd made water shoot out of the bathroom fixtures. I didn't understand how. But the toilets had responded to me. I had become one with the plumbing. I probably made her hate me more than she already had.
"You need to talk to the Oracle," she said.
"Who?"
"Not who. What. The Oracle. I'll ask Chiron."
I stared into the lake, wishing somebody would give me a straight answer for once.
I wasn't expecting anybody to be looking back at me from the bottom, so my heart skipped a beat when I noticed two teenage girls sitting cross-legged at the base of the pier, about twenty feet below. They wore blue jeans and shimmering green T-shirts, and their brown hair floated loose around their shoulders as minnows darted in and out. They smiled and waved as if I were a long-lost friend.
I didn't know what else to do. I waved back.
"Don't encourage them," Adira said. "Naiads are terrible flirts."
"Naiads," I repeated, feeling completely overwhelmed. "That's it. I want to go home now."
She frowned, as if trying to make me understand. "Don't you get it, Jackson? You are home. This is the only safe place on earth for kids like us."
