Invisible ― Jason Grace

xiii. camilla's mom sucks

CAMILLA FELT LIKE she was going to puke. Or cry. Or maybe both. 

Her feet blindly followed the Amazon—Maya—her mother—to a smaller, more private part of the labyrinth of a warehouse. It looked like a storage room for smaller items—vials of different-colored liquids, hair pins that looked like solid gold, miniature bottles of perfume. 

Camilla couldn't speak; she didn't trust her voice not to shake. All she could do was stare into a face that looked familiar only because it looked so much like the face that looked back at her in the mirror—not because it was the face of her mother. 

Her mother. The woman who'd left her at a firehouse when she was a baby, who abandoned her and never gave her another thought. 

Anger—something Camilla wasn't very familiar with—welled up in her, but she forced it down. Her mother didn't deserve her anger, her grief, her love—none of it. 

"You look good," Maya said, at last breaking the silence. "Sixteen. You've done well to get this far." 

"No thanks to you," Camilla bit out. 

Maya sighed. "Yes, I suppose that's true. But I knew you would make your way here someday—your father promised me this reunion would come soon enough." 

"My father?" Camilla asked. "Who is he? Where has he been? Why hasn't he claimed me?" 

"That is something I can't answer, Camilla," Maya told her. "Now, please, we should—" 

"Why can't you?" Camilla demanded. "I've waited years to find out who my godly parent is, and you know and you won't even tell me?" 

Maya's jaw tensed. "I swore an oath on the River Styx not to reveal who your father is, Camilla," she said. "Not even to you. Only your father is allowed to tell you—and I'm sure he will soon. You just have to be patient." 

"Patient?" Camilla felt like she was on the verge of screaming. "I've been patient! I've spent five years praying to every god I can think of, begging them to claim me, to send me some kind of sign. Five years. No other demigod at camp has had to wait that long. It isn't fair!" 

"Nothing in this life is fair," Maya scolded, as if she had any right to chastise the daughter she'd abandoned sixteen years ago. 

"What isn't fair is abandoning your child!" Camilla seethed. "This is where you've been this whole time? You could have raised me, it isn't like you're some—some defenseless mortal! What are you? A demigod? A legacy?" 

Maya let out a long exhale. "I'm a legacy of Trivia," she said after a moment. "But you're wrong, Camilla. I had no choice but to give you up. It was your father's will, and I knew you would be safest away from me. Away from us both, until the time came." 

"What time?" Camilla demanded. "I deserve answers, I've waited—" 

"You'll have to wait a little longer," Maya cut her off. "I don't mean to be cruel, Camilla, but we have little time for these childish demands."

The scream that threatened to come out turned into an aborted sob. 

Childish? she thought. How is wanting to know who your parents are—why they abandoned you—childish?

Maya reached into the pocket of her black leather jumpsuit. She produced something and held it up, nestled between her index and her thumb. She held it out for Camilla to see, the metal gleaming dully in the dim light of the storage room they were in. It was a small ring—a thin, polished gold band, as simple as anything Camilla had ever seen.