𝐒𝐮𝐦𝐦𝐞𝐫 𝐂𝐚𝐦𝐩

Chapter 12

Six - (y/n)
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Dining Al Fresco

Word of the bathroom incident spread immediately. Wherever (y/n) went, campers pointed at him and murmured something about fire. Or maybe they were just staring at Annabeth, who was still pretty much steaming from the unexpected sauna.

  She showed him 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 they returned to the canoeing lake, where the trail led back to the cabins.

  "I've got training to do," Annabeth said flatly. "Dinner's at seven-thirty. Just follow your cabin to the mess hall."

  "Annabeth, I'm sorry about the toilets."

  "Whatever."

  "It wasn't my fault."

  She looked at him skeptically, and he realized it was his fault. He'd turned the bathroom into a forest fire. He didn't understand how. But the fire had responded to him. He had become one with the Blaze.

  "You need to talk to the Oracle," Annabeth said.

  "Who?"

  "Not who. What. The Oracle. I'll ask Chiron."

  (y/n) stared into the lake, wishing somebody would give him a straight answer for once.

  He wasn't expecting anybody to be looking back at him from the bottom, so my heart skipped a beat when he 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 he were a long-lost friend.

  (y/n) didn't know what else to do. He waved back.

  "Don't encourage them," Annabeth warned. "Naiads are terrible flirts."

  "Naiads," (y/n) repeated, feeling completely overwhelmed. "That's it. I'd like to go home now."

  Annabeth frowned. "Don't you get it, (y/n)? You are home. This is the only safe place on earth for kids like us."

  "You mean, mentally disturbed kids?"

  "I mean not human. Not totally human, anyway. Half-human."

  "Half-human and half-what?"

  "I think you know."

  (y/n) didn't want to admit it, but he was afraid he actually did. He felt a tingling in my limbs, a sensation he sometimes felt when his mom talked about how they found him and Benny.

  "God," (y/n) said. "Half-god."

  Annabeth nodded. "Your biological parents didn't abandon you, (y/n). At least, one of them didn't. They're one of the Olympians."

  "That's ... crazy."

  "Is it? What's the most common thing gods did in the old stories? They ran around falling in love with humans and having kids with them. Do you think they've changed their habits in the last few millennia?"

  "But those are just—" he almost said myths again. Then he remembered Chiron's warning that in two thousand years, he might be considered a myth. "But if all the kids here are half-gods-"