"Just write a book" they said. "It'll be easy," they said, "Everyone gets published these days." Yeah, well, it's a little harder when your editors are gods that will turn you into a gecko and use you as a ping pong ball if you don't write them exac...
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I WOULD LIKE TO TELL YOU WHAT HAPPENED AFTER THAT. Unfortunately – and embarrassingly – as soon as I waded out of the lake, I fell face first into the dirt and passed out. I know, I know. Laugh. Turns out blowing up a small lakes takes a lot of energy, especially when you do it on accident.
The next morning, Chiron moved Percy and I to cabin three.
I couldn't have gotten out of cabin eleven fast enough. The other unclaimed kids kept giving us looks that made my skin crawl with guilt. Many of them had been here for years. Percy and I had been claimed within a week. I desperately wanted to apologize, but I knew it wouldn't do anything. I couldn't make their parents acknowledge them fast. It wasn't fair.
Once I was in cabin three, though, I realized it wasn't any better in there. Sure, we had all the space to ourselves. We got to sit at our own dinner table, no longer wedged at the very edge of an over crowed bench. We could pick all our own activities. We went to bed whenever we wanted. No one was in charge of us.
That was the problem. It was just Percy and me.
The thing about having a twin is that people try to make it your entire existence. You're supposed to do everything together. Dress exactly the same and have the exact same hair style and the exact same interests. It's creepy. And annoying. We made a point to not do that. It wasn't always easy – we usually ended up in the same friend group, if we had friends at all – but there was usually enough space for us not to be each other's entire social circle.
In cabin eleven it might have been crowded, but we were staying with other people. If we had been moved to any of the occupied cabins, we would have had a bunch of new siblings. Either way we would have blended in with the rest of them.
Now we were entirely singled out.
Other campers steered clear of us. After Percy had obliterated some of the Ares kids during capture the flag, cabin eleven refused to have sword class with both of us just in case. Luke tried to handle both of us in one-on-one classes. Percy got the most of the attention, since he was actually good at sword fighting, and I wasn't jealous in the slightest. Luke pushed hard. He wasn't scared to actually hurt us, either.
My archery was getting a bit better. It helped that everyone cleared out once I showed up, so I got Chiron's full attention. My aim was quickly improving. The only problem was the bow itself – it was still too heavy and I wasn't getting any less clumsy with it. I whacked just as many things with the ends of the bow as I shot with arrows.
"Hm," Chiron said, as he studied me like I was a strange insect he'd found where I shouldn't be.
