Heartworm -
When you can't get a relationship out of your head, even after it's ended long ago. Replaying memories, songs, scents that remind you of them or just their name on loop in your head is referred to as Heartworm.
- - - - -
Luke was my boy...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
The sun was setting behind the dining pavilion as I joined the rest of the campers as they arrived from their cabins. I was shocked to see Tyson at camp, towering over the rest of the campers.
Turns out, Tyson was a cyclops. The mist had tricked both me and Percy into seeing two eyes, but when I focused, it was easy to see that Tyson actually had one eye.
Percy and I caught each other up in our minds as the different cabins filled in. He told me about his fun little drive with the Grey Sister and the mysterious numbers they gave him. He cursed about the bronze bulls trying to destroy camp when he arrived and Chiron mentioning something lost that could potentially save Thalia's tree.
I paused our conversation as the biggest cabin filed into the pavilion.
Last summer, Luke had led the Hermes cabin.
Now the cabin was led by Travis and Conner Stoll. They weren't twins, but they both looked identical. I could never remember which one was which. They were both tall and skinny, with mops of brown hair that hung in their eyes. They wore orange CAMP HALF-BLOOD T-shirts untucked over baggy shorts. They had the same mischievous look Luke used to have when I first met him, when he was undercover at Yancy Academy, over a year ago.
My heart started to ache and I quickly looked away from the Hermes cabin.
You okay? Percy asked.
I'm over him. I didn't know if I was remind Percy or myself.
As soon as the last campers filed in, Percy and I led Tyson into the middle of the pavilion. Conversations faltered. Heads turned. Percy and I shot glares at anyone who dared to look at Tyson wrong. He was still our friend, cyclops or not.
From the head table a familiar voice drawled, "Well, well, if it isn't Peter and Corey Johnson. My millennium is complete."
I rolled my eyes. "It's Percy and Cassie Jackson... sir."
Mr D sipped his Diet Coke. "Yes, well, as you young people say these days, whatever." He was wearing his usual leopard-pattern Hawaiian shirt, walking shorts and tennis shoes with black socks.
Mr D's real name is Dionysus. The god of wine. Zeus appointed him director of Camp Half-Blood to dry out for a hundred years - a punishment for chasing off-limits wood nymph.
Next to him, in Chiron's usual place, was someone I'd never seen before - a pale, horribly thin man in a threadbare orange prisoner's jumpsuit. The number over his pocket read 0001. His eyes made me nervous. He looked... fractured. Angry and frustrated and hungry all at the same time.
I got the feeling I wouldn't be as close to him like I was too Chiron.
"These two," Dionysus told him, "you need to watch. Poseidon's kids, you know."
