Camp Life Kinda Sucks Now

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Character Information:
(Y/N): Your Name
(L/N): Last Name
(H/C): Hair Color
(E/C): Eye Color
(H/L): Hair Length
(S/C): Skin Color
(F/C): Favorite Color
(F/F): Favorite Food
(F/D): Favorite Drink

(Y/N)'s POV

The sun was setting behind the dining pavilion as the campers came up from their cabins. We stood in the shadow of a marble column and watched them file in. Annabeth was still pretty shaken up, but she promised she'd talk to us later. Then she went off to join her siblings from the Athena cabin.

Next came Clarisse, leading the Ares cabin. She had one arm in a sling and a nasty-looking gash on her cheek, but otherwise her encounter with the bronze bulls didn't seem to have fazed her. Someone had taped a piece of paper to her back that said, YOU MOO, GIRL! But nobody in her cabin was bothering to tell her about it.

After the Ares kids came the Hephaestus cabin—six guys led by Charles Beckendorf, a big fifteen-year-old African American kid. He had hands the size of catchers' mitts and a face that was hard and squinty from looking into a blacksmith's forge all day.

The other cabins filed in: Demeter, Apollo, Aphrodite, Dionysus. Naiads came up from the canoe lake. Dryads melted out of the trees. From the meadow came a dozen satyrs.

After the satyrs filed in to dinner, the Hermes cabin brought up the rear. They were always the biggest cabin. Last summer, it had been led by Luke.

Now the Hermes cabin was led by Travis and Connor Stoll. They weren't twins, but they looked so much alike it didn't matter. It was almost hard to believe that Travis was a few years older. They wore orange CAMP HALF-BLOOD T-shirts untucked over baggy shorts, and they had those elfish features all Hermes's kids had: upturned eyebrows, sarcastic smiles, a gleam in their eyes whenever they looked at you—like they were about to drop a firecracker down your shirt.

Percy looked at me. "Aren't you gonna join your cabin?"

I grunted. "Yeah, I guess I should." I stayed in place.

"Uh... Why aren't you moving?" Percy asked.

"You think I'm going to let you waltz over into the pavilion by yourself? And, no, the cyclops doesn't count."

Percy narrowed his eyebrows. "Do I need some kind of protection? It's just Mr. D."

"It's not Mr. D I'm worried about," I said cryptically. "Now, let's go. I'll pretend I'm lagging behind."

I walked into the pavilion, with a confused Percy and Tyson behind me. As we walked into the middle, conversations faltered. Heads turned. "Who invited that?" somebody at the Apollo table murmured.

From a head table, Mr. D drawled, "Well, well, if it isn't Peter Johnson. My millennium is complete."

Percy gritted his teeth. "Percy Jackson...sir."

Mr. D sipped his Diet Coke. "Yes. Well, as you young people say these days, whatever."

I tapped Percy on the shoulder and nodded to where Chiron usually sat. A pale, horribly thin man in a threadbare orange prisoner's jumpsuit sat there. The number over his pocket read 0001. He had blue shadows under his eyes, dirty fingernails, and badly cut gray hair, like his last haircut had been done with a weed whacker. He stared at Percy.

"This boy," Dionysus told him, "you need to watch. Poseidon's child, you know."

"Ah!" Tantalus said. "That one." He smiled coldly. "I am Tantalus. On special assignment here until, well, until my Lord Dionysus decides otherwise. And you, Perseus Jackson, I do expect you to refrain from causing any more trouble."

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