Chapter 61
The next few days we settled into a routine that felt almost normal, if you don't count the fact that we were getting lessons from satyrs, nymphs, and a centaur.
Each morning we took Ancient Greek from Annabeth, and we talked about the gods and goddesses in the present tense, which was kind of weird. The rest of the day, we'd rotate through outdoor activities; looking for something we were both good at. Chiron tried to teach us archery, but we found out pretty quick Percy wasn't any good with a bow and arrow. But James was amazing at archery. He can easily hit the bullseye on the target, he's so fast at shooting the targets and aiming for the targets.
Foot racing? No good either. The wood-nymph instructor left Percy in the dust. But James was amazing at running. He would easily beat the wood-nymphs. They told Percy not to worry about it. They'd had centuries of practice running away from lovesick gods. But still, it was a little humiliating to be slower than a tree.
And wrestling? Forget it. Every time Percy got on the mat, Clarisse would pulverize him.
"There's more where that came from, punk," she'd mumble in his ear. Obviously James is great at it, he would easily pin Clarisse down on the mat and mumble in her ear "Stop messing with my little brother or I will fuck you up"
The only thing Percy really excelled at was canoeing.
We knew the senior campers and counselors were watching us, trying to decide who our dad was, but they weren't having an easy time of it. Percy wasn't as strong as the Ares kids, or as good at archery as the Apollo kids. He didn't have Hephaestus's skill with metalwork. But of course James was great at all of them.
Luke told him he might be a child of Hermes, a kind of jack-of-all-trades, master of none. But Percy got the feeling he was just trying to make him feel better. He really didn't know what to make of him either.
Despite all that, we liked camp. We got used to the morning fog over the beach, the smell of hot strawberry fields in the afternoon, even the weird noises of monsters in the woods at night. We would eat dinner with cabin eleven, scrap part of our meal into the fire, and try to feel some connection to our real dad. Nothing came. Just that warm feeling we'd always had, like the memory of his smile.
We started to understand Luke's bitterness and how he seemed to resent his father, Hermes. So okay, maybe gods had important things to do. But couldn't they call once in a while, or thunder, or something? Dionysus could make Diet Coke appear out of thin air. Why couldn't our dad, whoever he was, make a phone appear?