Percy Jackson and the lightning thief

Our dinner goes up in smoke. [Percy]

Back at cabin eleven, everybody was talking and horsing around, waiting for dinner. For the first time, I noticed that a lot of the campers had similar features: sharp noses, upturned eyebrows, mischievous smiles. They were the kind of kids that teachers would peg as troublemakers.

Thankfully, nobody paid much attention to us as we walked over to my spot on the floor and plopped down with my Minotaur horn.

The counselor, Luke, came over. He had
the Hermes family resemblance, too. It was marred by that scar on his right cheek, but his smile was intact.

Found you a sleeping bag," he said. "And here, I stole you some toiletries from the camp store."

I couldn't tell if he was kidding about the stealing part.

I said, "Thanks."

"No prob." Luke sat next to me, pushed his back against the wall. "Tough first
day?"

"I don't belong here," I said. "I don't even believe in gods."

"Yeah," he said. "That's how we all started. Once you start believing in them? It doesn't get any easier."

The bitterness in his voice surprised me, because Luke seemed like a pretty easygoing guy. He looked like he could handle just about anything.

"So your dad is Hermes?" I asked.

He pulled a switchblade out of his back pocket, and for a second I thought he was going to gut me, but he just scraped the mud off the sole of his sandal. "Yeah. Hermes."

"The wing-footed messenger guy."

"That's him. Messengers. Medicine. Travelers, theives. Anybody who uses the roads. That's why you're here, enjoying cabin eleven's hospitality. Hermes isn't picky about who he sponsors."

I figured Luke didn't mean to call me a nobody.
He just had a lot on his mind.

"You ever meet your dad?" I asked.

He looked around to see if anyone was listening, "Yeah. Loads of times . Like earlier today. He's the best. But don't tell anyone the gods aren't supposed to visit their kids."

"Why?"

Luke rolled his eyes, "Because of the almighty douchey thunder king, the biggest fucking jerk in like the whole universe."

"Huh"

"He means Zeus," Harry whispered.

"You sound like you hate him."

"I hate a lot of them."

"Ok. If the gods are like actually fucking real, which I'm still skeptical about, why would anyone hate them. They have cool powers and gave us this amazing camp."

"Percy did you black out during all the Greek mythology lessons." Harry asked.

I shrugged, "I dunno."

Luke looked up and managed a smile. "Don't worry about it, Percy. The campers here, they're mostly good people. After all, we're extended family, right? We take care of each other."

He seemed to understand how lost I felt, and I was grateful for that, because Harry was being no help at all.

"Ow!" I exclaimed after harry elbowed me.

"I am being helpful you just ain't understanding anything."

I decided to ask Luke my last big question, the one that had been bothering me all afternoon.
"Clarisse, from Ares, was joking about me being 'Big Three' material. Then Jade... twice, she said I might be 'the one.' She said I should talk to the Oracle. What was that all about?"