a story as endless as the ocean . pjo / allie jackson

0.4 the worst candidate to run camp

0.4 If I Were Just a Little Bit More Suicidal, I Would Have Jumped Over the Table, No Questions Asked

Ever go into your bedroom and get the feeling that even though it all looks the same on the outside, you get the awful suspicion that on the inside, everything is completely different? Completely wrong?

That's what I felt like, seeing Camp Half-Blood again after a little over a month of being gone. The last time I had been there, everything was normal. Kids were doing their lessons outside under Chiron's careful eye (demigods didn't learn well stuck at desks in a classroom, and Chiron had long since learned the best way to teach us anything we needed to know), others were sparring and doing other activities, while others tended the strawberry fields.

It all seemed wrong now.

On the surface, things didn't look all that different. The Big House was still there with its blue gabled roof and its wraparound porch. The strawberry fields still baked in the sun. The same white-columned Greek buildings were scattered around the valley, the amphitheater, the combat arena, the dining pavilion overlooking Long Island. And nestled between the woods and the creek were the same cabins, a crazy assortment of twelve buildings, each representing a different Olympian god.

But there was an air of danger now. You could tell something was wrong. Instead of playing volleyball in the sandpit, counselors and satyrs were stockpiling weapons in the tool shed. Dryads armed with bows and arrows talked nervously at the edge of the woods. The forest looked sickly, the grass in the meadow was pale yellow, and the fire marks on Half-Blood Hill stood out like ugly scars.

Somebody had messed with my favorite place in the world, and I was not a happy camper.

As we made our way to the Big House, I recognized a lot of kids from last summer and during the year. Nobody stopped to talk. Nobody said, "Welcome back," or asked about my latest trip outside of the wards, like they had every other time I returned home. Some did double-takes when they saw Tyson, but most just walked grimly past and carried on with their duties, running messages, toting swords to sharpen on the grinding wheels. The camp felt like a military school. It wasn't all like the camp I knew, and I hated it instantly.

"Luke, what happened?" I whispered to him. My distress leaked into my tone, and he reached out to grab my hand and rub his thumb over my knuckles without glancing at me.

"It's a long story," he explained gruffly. "Chiron will be able to explain it better than me."

Tyson was oblivious to both the looks given to him by various campers and the air of oncoming doom that had engulfed my home. No, Tyson was fascinated by the whole place. He kept pointing at stuff and asking what it was. Truthfully, I felt too overwhelmed and stressed to keep acknowledging him, but my own maternal instincts wouldn't let me tell him to be quiet.

"Whasthat!" he gasped.

"The stables for pegasi," I said as patiently as I could. "The winged horses."

"Whasthat!"

"Uh... those are the toilets."

"Whasthat!"

"The cabins for the campers. If they don't know who your Olympian parent is, they put you in the Hermes cabin, that brown one over there. Luke is the head counselor of it, until you're determined. Then, once they know, they put you in your dad or mom's group."

He looked at me in awe. "You... have a cabin?"

"Number three." My voice went crisp as I pointed to a low gray building made of sea stone.

"You live with friends in the cabin?"

"No. It's just me." I didn't elaborate. It would've broken his heart to know that I was the only one who stayed in that cabin because I wasn't supposed to be alive.