Outsider (Story about Camp Halfblood)

Chapter 33

"Oh please, you guys can't even paint your own cabin! What makes you think you'll paint better canoes than me?" I was in the middle of an argument with Travis. He thinks that he can paint the canoes better than me, in a shorter amount of time.

"Is that a challenge I hear?" Connor grinned nudging Travis.

"Oh yeah! You're asking for it Mia!" Travis said pointing his finger at me. Connor laughed and I rolled my eyes.

"Bring it!" I smirked, hiding a laugh.

"Let's do this." Travis grabbed a paint brush and tossed it at me, which I caught in my hand. The three of us picked out our own canoe, other groups around us working in pairs or trios. I sat down a started to paint with the small can I picked up from the pile of other supplies.

"Mia!" I looked up and saw Victor waving at me. I smiled and waved back. He left some of his siblings and came over and sat next to me.

"Hey! Stop cheating!" Travis shouted, accidently throwing paint that hit me and Victor.

"I'm not cheating! Victor is just saying hello." I told Travis, who didn't look convinced.

I sighed. "Sorry, I'm in the middle of a challenge."

Victor laughed. "Okay, I see you're taking it pretty seriously."

"Travis is, and I'm not going to let him beat me." I said, adding more paint onto my canoe, painting it as evenly and quickly as possible.

"Challenges are fun. What do you have to do?" Victor sat next to me and watched me paint.

"Paint as many canoes as you can with a nice paint job as fast as you can." I informed him.

He nodded. "I see. You know that there's only one canoe left that hasn't been painted. And so you'd have to finish this canoe before everyone just so you can beat Travis."

"You have got to be kidding." I groaned a threw paint off the brush onto the boat.

"Yeah so hurry up. I'll inform others to work a bit more slowly, just to give you a chance." Victor winked and got up and left to goon back to his siblings.

I breathed deeply and poured paint on the canoe and painted that way. It made some of the areas uneven with the rest of the canoe, but it wasn't really that noticeable.

"Yo Mia!" I heard Travis call out my name.

"What?" I shouted back, slightly glaring at him.

"How much do you got done?" Travis craned his neck, trying to get a good enough look at my canoe and compare it to his--which by the way, was only the quarter of the way painted.

"Way more than you." I told him, my canoe was a little over half completed, looking much cleaner than Travis's.

"Dang it!" Travis's focus snapped back to his canoe and he painted like a madman. Connor sat behind him rolling his eyes, dropping a few drops of something into the paint. Connor looked up to see if anyone had seen him and I pretended I hadn't. I didn't want Connor to some how explain what he did.

I got back to painting, occasionally pausing to watching Travis scramble to paint his canoe, and pick out little bristles that had happen to fall out of the brush. Connor behind him laughed silently to himself as he watched his brother freak out over such a small deal. I chuckled and finished painting.

~~

"Would you stop moping already!" Connor smacked Travis in the back of the head.

"Ow!" Travis rubbed his head and glared at Connor. "You're the one to blame anyways."