“These are the cabins-hey, HEY! Why are you wearing headphones?! You’re going to get us all killed!” Kayla scolded.

I laughed, “How could music kill us? And you gave me the headphones.”

Kayla stared at me with a confused look, “Not the music, your phone!”

“That still doesn’t make any sense.”

She rolled her eyes, “Phones are like homing beacons for monsters, they attract them like crazy.”

 I nodded my head and we continued with the tour. We visited the forge, the strawberry fields, and my favorite, the pegasus stables. It was all really cool until we got to the archery range and Kayla gave us an in-depth story about her love for the delicate craftsmanship of arrows or something. 

“She must be fun at parties.” I whispered to Evelyn.

“I know right. I can't imagine what living with her would be like” she said sarcastically.

“Hahahaha, now you actually seem fun.” I chuckled a bit. 

“Eh, not really. I'm very quiet sometimes,” She said as she scratched the back of her head.

“Same. Where are you from?”

“Texas, McAllen. Well… the suburbs part of it,”

“Oh that’s cool! I’m from a small town in Idaho, St. Maries.”

“That sounds pretty interesting,” She said with a smile.

“How’d you get here?” I asked “The last thing I remember was my principal trying to kidnap me. She kind of looked like one of those chicken lady things.”

“Ah, yes, Harpys,” Evelyn pondered. 

“Is that what they're called? Our glorious tour guide never bothered to mention it.” I said, a bit fussy. 

“You see, most people just don’t understand the time and effort that goes into the making of a perfect bow…” Kayla was still babbling about archery.

”Wow, she's still talking.” I said in amazement.

"I'm from Ohio " Mason suddenly blurted out.

"Ummm….cool" Evelyn looked away from Mason when she said it.

"Right… ok.” I laughed internally. He was slightly taller than normal, I guess he could have been handsome. He had gorgeous eyes, but he looked like the kind of guy that just got upset if he wasn’t the center of attention. So not the one you want to be around. 

“Anyways… how was high school treating you before all of this?”I leaned closer to her. 

“Like any high school would.” She shrugged. 

“That makes sense, especially if you had to go through it with him.” I said, gesturing to Mason.

“And that concludes our tour of Camp Half-Blood, any questions?”Kayla looked content, happy with herself.

Kayla turned around waiting for us. 

“I don’t think so, your wonderful speech covered everything.”I curled my fingers.

 She obviously couldn’t tell that I was being sarcastic. 

“Well then,” she clapped her hands “I will show you to Hermes cabin, they take in all of the newbies.”

 We walked over to the cabin. It had Hermes’ Caduceus on the top, but other than that it pretty much looked like a regular cabin. 

“Here we are,” a very cute boy emerged from the cabin “this is Jasper. He is the head counselor.” After she said that she looked at him and batted her eyelashes, but he clearly didn’t notice.

“Hello.” He held out his hand for me to shake, and I took it. Boy was he hot. He had light brown hair and bright blue eyes. He looked like a god. One that I was seriously falling for.

“Um, hi.” I said as I took his hand. God I probably looked so stupid! Really trying my best not to blush, I stepped into the cabin. It looked way bigger on the inside. There had to be at least thirty bunks throughout the room. It was like a maze to get through. 

Jasper showed us the beds that had been cleared out for us. Pretty generic bunk beds. I took the top and Evelyn the bottom. We had no personal items, so there was nothing to move in with. Evelyn and I sat down and talked about the camp for a little while before Jasper told us that it was time for dinner. We had a very short, very awkward conversation on the way there. 

It went something like this:

       Me: “you seem young compared

             to the other head counselors,

             you’re what? fifteen?”

       

       Him: “Yeah, our last counselor, my 

               brother, went on a quest a few

               months ago and still hasn’t 

               come back. We try to think that 

               It’s just taken longer, but we’re 

               starting to lose hope.”

       Me: “Oh. Um. Sorry.”

       Him: “It's fine. I didn’t mean to lay all 

                that on you on your first day.”

Honestly I’m not sure what I said next. Probably something super dumb. We got to a larger, roofless pavilion made of white marble. There were thirty tables for the thirty cabins. There was also a large blazer with a burning fire in it. Was there a sacrifice every night? Who were these people? Each table had a big symbol on the table top. The Hermes table had a caduceus, same as the one on the cabin. We sat down and plates appeared. 

I didn’t do anything, but one of my favorite meals popped onto my plate. Warm dumplings and fried rice from the Chinese restaurants down the street. After everything I saw that day I didn’t question it. The cup next to me is also filled with Dr. Pepper. 

Best dinner ever.

 I looked over to see what Evelyn got and saw her staring past me. She nodded her head in the direction she was looking and I turned to see a man riding a white horse. Wait, he wasn’t riding the horse. He was the horse.

“A centaur.” I muttered.

“Yeah,” Jasper said from across the table, “that's Chiron, our camp director.”

“Quiet!” Chiron’s voice boomed across the dining hall, and all noise went silent.

“We have some new campers today!”Chiron said proudly.

The whole pavilion erupted into cheers.

“Evelyn, Willow, Mason.” We slowly stood up and walked to the front. 

“Evelyn Chiva, Willow Rose, and Mason Middleton,” Mason grumbled when Chiron said his last name “we welcome you to Camp Half-Blood and hope that you get claimed within the near future.”

Jasper gestured for us to go sit back down. We walked back and dinner continued. The food was wonderful and I got to meet the rest of Hermes' cabin. The second oldest is a girl named Alex, then a very tall boy named Oliver, another girl named Anastasia who said to call her Annie, and the last one I remember was the youngest, a girl named Kya. 

Once dinner was over we all headed for the blazer in a single file line. I saw all the other kids scraping a portion of their meal into the fire so I did the same. We walked towards the amphitheater. It was completely dark now, but there was a large bonfire lit in the center. 

What is it with these people and fire? Kids started piling into the big marble benches that were in a semicircle around the fire. We were the last people in the line. Now that everyone was sitting down I saw how many kids there were and it was a lot. Maybe a hundred and fifty give or take a few. 

I was so focused on the amount of people I didn’t realize the step in front of me. I tripped and Jasper caught me. Both of our faces were bright red, staring into each other’s eyes. Suddenly he looked at the top of my head. 

“Willow,” he said, “your hair.”

I ran my fingers through my hair to find a crown of flowers resting gently on my scalp. He helped me stand up and gasped, this time looking above me. I looked up and saw a sickle (tool for harvesting wheat) covered in golden light, floating there. Chiron bowed down.

“All hail Willow Rose, daughter of Demeter, goddess of harvest.”