Invisible ― Jason Grace

i. the invisible optimist

IF THERE WAS ONE THING Camilla was certain of in a very uncertain world, it was that she didn't really matter. 

If you were to ask just about anyone at Camp Jupiter if they knew of a Camilla, they'd say something like: well, the name sounds kind of familiar or isn't that the praetor's friend? i thought her name was Camryn? or yeah, from the Third? oh, she's awesome! not her? there's another Camilla?

Camilla had come to accept the fact that she was as invisible as a demigod could be—in the metaphorical sense, at least. If she was invisible in the literal sense, then at least there'd be something interesting about her. 

But the simple fact was that Camilla wasn't all that important. In the grand scheme of things, she was barely a cog in the machine—she was just another nameless, faceless legionnaire from the disgraced Fifth Cohort. She was just another name on a roster, easy to forget and easier to overlook entirely. 

If she went missing, the camp would run as smoothly as it did everyday. The only people who might even notice she was gone was her roommates—she could count on a single finger how many of them would even care—and her best friend. 

If she disappeared, nothing would happen. The world wouldn't stop turning; the sun and moon wouldn't stop rising and falling. Daily life would go on as it always did, as seamlessly as anything ever went for descendants of the Roman gods. 

If she disappeared, the camp wouldn't be running on fumes like it was now that one of the two most important people there was missing. 

Okay, that wasn't really fair—the remaining praetor, Reyna, was doing a fantastic job of keeping the camp afloat, even as monster attacks became more and more frequent and more and more deadly; even as campers returned unsuccessful from their quests or just didn't return at all. Camilla doubted anyone at camp could do as well a job of running the camp alone than Reyna. 

But still, morale was low. Jason Grace—the almighty son of Jupiter, savior of Olympus, praetor of the Twelfth Legion, and Camilla's best friend—was missing, and everyone felt his absence. 

Perhaps none more than Camilla herself. 

Looking back on their friendship, she couldn't pin down the moment they actually became friends. She couldn't say when casual greetings turned into short conversations, gradually lengthening over time until they started meeting for coffee on weekday mornings just to talk. 

She didn't know how they became friends, either. The only thing they had in common was their Cohort. Jason had stood for her when she arrived at camp, eleven years old and terrified and as unimportant as she always was. She knew it was pity that made him stand for her. 

Since the start of her life at Camp Jupiter, Camilla was barely anything more than a naïve little girl who'd stumbled upon one of Lupa's wolves after her fifth time running away from a foster home and was led to the Wolf House for her training because the wolf could smell her godly blood. She had no credentials, no letters of recommendation, no sponsors whatsoever—she didn't even have a last name. 

Why the famed son of Jupiter decided to stand for her, Camilla had no idea.

On top of all the unanswered questions about the how and the why of their inexplicable friendship, there was also the matter of trying to pin down when their friendship began to feel like something more. 

It could have all been in her head—it probably was—but in the months between the legion's victory at Mount Tam and Jason's unexpected disappearance, something seemed to have shifted between them. Innocent glances felt more charged than before. Their hands would brush more often when they walked through downtown New Rome. Jason's smile would flood her stomach with a horde of angry butterflies.