Adam Binks and The Boundless Invasions of Personal Comfort Zones

Two • Adam

I jumped awake, a small scream escaping from my mouth.

I took a moment to breathe before looking around, then immediately screamed again upon seeing Victor Hernandez sitting right next to me.

"What are you doing?" I asked, scooting away from him.

He rolled his eyes and turned to call over his shoulder. "He's up!" He dragged out the u in 'up', as if watching me sleep like something out of a Stephanie Meyer novel was a responsibility he definitely had not wanted, but had been saddled with nevertheless.

Cosette, Noelle, Rowan, and even Ms. Fern rushed into the empty wooden room where Vic and I were.

It took me only a moment to notice that Rowan's cane was gone, and so were his pants.

Now, I, surprisingly, would've been a lot less shocked by this fact if his legs hadn't been covered with coarse black hair and didn't end in hooves. But they were. And they did. His hooves - never thought I'd have to use that phrase when describing a classmate - were even painted with what seemed like a soft white glitter nail polish.

"Could we back up about thirty paces?" I asked. Suddenly, my chest tightened. "Where is my lucky bookmark?"

Vic laughed in disbelief. "Your what?"

"My lucky bookmark!" I repeated. "You of all people should remember it, Mr. Green made you find it again after you dropped it out the third floor window!"

Vic turned to Ms. Fern angrily. "What the hell is he talking about?"

"I can't control w-what exactly it tells him," Ms. Fern defended anxiously, a hand to her temple. "Remember, he thinks you all have three years of history with him."

"What the hell is going on?" I spoke up. "Things are not making a lot of sense right now, and I'd just like to understand a couple things."

Rowan tapped Vic's shoulder and took his place next to me on the wood floor. "You ever read anything about Greek gods and goddesses?"

"We had two years of mythology together," I stated, offended that he'd forget. "Greek and Roman. And you've seen me reading the Odyssey basically every day since we met."

"Right," Rowan cringed. "Well... that's all real. The gods and the monsters and stuff."

"What the hell are you talking about?"

"And occasionally, those gods and goddesses have kids," Rowan ignored me. "And they-" he motioned to the rest of the group behind us, "-are just a few of them."

"And it's just coming to our attention that you are, too," Vic added, his words dripping with annoyance. "Seeing that our satyr is apparently defective."

"I'm new at this, okay!" Rowan whined, turning away from me to glare at Vic. "And he wears a really strong cologne!"

"Okay, okay!" I spoke over them. "Can we start with the part where nobody remembers the three years we've all had class together?"

"Well, see, you only think we've all had class together for three years," Noelle said matter-of-factly. "Jessica's mom Mnemosyne is the Greek goddess of memory, so she was able to manipulate yours and make you think you knew us."

"I call it 'stuffing'," Ms. Fern - Jessica - spoke up. Now that she had removed her large magnifying eyeglasses and oversized yellow cardigan, I could tell that she couldn't be any older than seventeen, and she'd stopped speaking in the strange, wispy voice I'd known her to have.

"I'm a satyr. Part goat," Rowan explained. "My whole job is to protect demigods like them, and find and protect new ones. I'm just... not very good at it yet."

"My dad is Hypnos, the god of sleep, so I had no problem magically knocking you out when things got ugly back at the schoolhouse," Cosette continued. "Sorry again about that."

"Speaking of which, what the hell was that?" I asked. "Why were there arrows shooting at us, and why would you sneak into my school and mess with my head so I wouldn't notice?"

"We've made an enemy that we probably shouldn't have made and needed somewhere to hide," Noelle said. "And I'll admit, that's mostly my fault. Apparently, this particular group of immortal archers didn't enjoy having their motives and lack of proper legal permission papers questioned."

"His father is Janus, the Roman god of doorways and choices," Jessica provided. "He tends to just... counter any point given to him, just because of that. It can lead to some unnecessary conflict at times."

"And what about Vic?" I inquired.

The boy tensed immediately, then stepped forward and looked me dead in the eye. "Look, kid, nobody calls me Vic. Nobody."

"What?" I laughed. "That's what everyone calls y-" I stopped, remembering what they'd said about all those three years being fake.

Luckily, Vic wasn't listening to me anymore, and had now turned on Jessica. "What's the idea? What do your little mind powers-"

"I can't control it!" Jessica cried, lifting a hand to her face and hiccuping lightly as a few tears rolled down her face. "I can't-"

"Hey, now, back off!" Noelle spoke out. Unlike most surely would have, Noelle didn't wither at all when Vic, steaming mad with his fist poised to strike, turned to him. Instead, he maintained impressively strong eye contact and curtly said, "Do you really want to punch me right now?"

After a moment, Vic sighed and lowered his hand, then turned back to me. "That's Victor to you," he said in a low growl.

I shook off the terror, then looked back to Noelle. "How did you guys manage to sneak into an entire school? Who are my real classmates?"

In perfect unison, Rowan's, Jessica's, and Cosette's faces fell.

"That school building was totally abandoned," Jessica said. "You were orphaned and living there alone."

"And I thought your cologne scent would keep monsters and others away from us," Rowan added. "But, it turns out, you just made us more obvious, since you're a demigod, too."

"Wait," I blinked quickly, trying to hold back what may have been tears. "I live with my dad. What do you mean I was orphaned and living there alone?"

Jessica went white with guilt. "The stuffing must've... covered up some of that pain, to make the whole process easier for you. We talked to you a bit before I stuffed you, your dad has been dead for five years."

"H-how did he die?" My heart was heavy. Was the man I thought I knew even my real father, or just a figment of my stuffed memory?

"You didn't want to talk about it," Cosette recalled. "What you could remember of it, anyway."

"Well, then who's my mom?" I asked. "The goddess?"

"We don't know," Noelle said, then cast a small sideways glance towards Victor. "And we may never."