Ashes, Ashes

chapter 3

-ash- 

I sat at my table during lunch, thinking about this demigod I'm supposed to protect. I keep getting sniffs of her in the hallway but I don't know who I keep smelling. It has been two days and I need to find her fast. To make it worse, I have no classes where i'm constantly smelling a demigod.

"Yo, Ash, have you heard about Mystery Girl?" Chase asked me while munching on his food.

"Who's this 'mystery girl?'" I asked, brought out of my thoughts.

"Oh, man, she's actually pretty cute! And she's known around the school for being a silent mystery. She sits in the back of the class and everything. She's super quiet and nobody knows when she's even there!"

"But she's so weird! Strange things always seem to happen whenever she's involved." Noah interrupted. I perked up.

"What kind of strange things?" Could this be the girl i'm looking for?

"There was this one time where Mystery Girl was talking to a kid named Ashley and she must have said something really bad, 'cause Mystery Girl's eyes lit up and it looked like her pupils had fire inside of them. They were standing outside and immediately that Ashley girl had this huge sunburn for the rest of the month!!" Noah exclaimed.

"Whats her name?" I asked

"Aspen. Oh, look, here she comes." That was when a girl walked by briskly with her tray, shoulders hunched, keeping her eyes trained to the floor. As she walked i could smell her demigod scent and that was when i knew my job had finally started.

-aspen-

I nervously stood outside the cafeteria doors. The noise in there was so loud you could probably hear it at the other side of the school. I took a deep breath and entered. The yelling washed over me like a wave. Keeping my head down, I briskly walked to the end of the cafeteria to the lunch line.

I got my food and walked quickly back to my usual lunch table with my friends on the way there, I heard a snippet of a conversation from the popular guys' table. "... a kid named Ashley and she must've..."

I sucked in a breath and cringed inwardly, walking faster. Ashley. The girl i really didn't

mean to... well, didn't mean to what, I'm not sure. I was blamed for sunburning her, but I'm not even sure if that even is a thing. The last thing I remembered was that she asked about my mom and I got mad-really mad, and then, bam! her face was red. She didn't show up to school for weeks and since then, we've been even more of rivals.

I slid into my seat at our table where my friends were obviously talking about the 'hot' new kid. I sighed. That's all they ever talked about these days. I cleared my throat once, twice, before they noticed me. I had a way of doing that. I sighed and looked at my food. Just another typical day.