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chapter fifty-six ☄︎. *. ⋆
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I HAVE A VERY SPECIFIC LIST of things I would rather take a swan dive into Tartarus than do, and it consists of: 1, go back to my aunt's house; and 2, run into Rachel Elizabeth Dare.
I managed to make it to June without experiencing anything from my list, which I thought was a major score, but of course summer came and just had to screw me over.
I'd been fine all semester at camp—sparring, practicing archery, balancing balls of light in the palm of my hand. The usual, you know? Now months out of my "relationship" with Connor Stoll (if you could call it that—we dated for three weeks and I was away on a quest for one of them), I felt like a new woman. I became a better fighter. An unfamiliar fire tore through my body from Artemis's blessing; an unbeatable agility similar to that of the Hunters' themselves. Not to toot my own horn, of course, but it was true. I was unstoppable. Not one of the whopping seven people at camp could beat me in a fight.
I was pretty content with my routine at camp, but then the first week of summer rolled around, and I had to make a return to my least favorite place on this planet—my insufferable aunt's house.
It wasn't by choice. Please know that. I would never make the conscious decision to return to that ratty hellhole. But this was required; Chiron told me things were stirring, that he could feel a battle impending on camp. He said, for the time being, it'd be safer for me at Carrie's than Camp Half-blood. For the record, I disagreed with him. The world could've exploded into a thousand tiny little pieces, the only place safe from the eruption being my aunt's house, and I still would've chosen to stay at camp.
But on the other hand, Chiron pointed out the fact that I could visit Percy. And as much as I hated to admit it, I missed the kid. He'd be a nice breath of fresh air. And it would definitely make the trip just a little bit more bearable...
So I packed a backpack and was on my way. Simple as that. I guess I didn't realize how much I'd missed my friends. Grover had been in and out of camp, searching as far as he could for Pan, but not wanting to stray too far from his new girlfriend, Juniper, a sweet dryad from the woods. So I'd seen Grover a couple times since the winter, but I'd received nothing but a few Iris-messages from Annabeth and Percy.
It'd be nice to see Percy again, even if we were about to reunite when he came back to camp for the summer.
So only an hour after I'd returned to my aunt's, I had already made plans with Percy to go to lunch together. He said he had some sort of orientation for a new school he'd be attending in the fall, assuming all went well, but we could meet up after it. He just told me to meet him at Goode High School.
