Work Text:
She lives in Brooklyn most of the year in a small apartment with her dad. She sleeps in her decent sized room with white walls and green bedspread and Batman poster on the wall. She goes to Brooklyn Academy for the Gifted during the day, then comes home and practices on the beat-up keyboard in the living room. Her dad comes home from his job as a cook at a small diner. They eat dinner in silence before she starts her homework. She doesn’t go to bed till after midnight. Then summer comes along where she leaves the comfort of her small apartment and enters a world she was almost too old to be apart of.
In this world, she wakes up early every day, wishing to hang with her mortal friends. She instead drags herself to sword fighting and archery, begrudgingly learns Greek, and hesitates to climb that wretched rock wall that spews lava down its sides. This continues everyday. Then, July comes around and too many boys ask her to the fireworks, and she has to accept at least one invite because that's what a child of Aphrodite does. Then July ends, (it flies by in a blink of an eye) and August finally begins. She’s finally able to go back to Brooklyn. At her real home, she continues to teach her father English and goes shopping with her real friends before school starts.
She attends her classes like clockwork in September and achieves high marks, so her father doesn’t have to worry about her. She practices the keyboard, as usual, has dinner, as usual, and goes through her daily routine, as usual. She keeps up her mean taunts, continues to style her hair into ringlets, and does everything that she shouldn't be doing in the first place.
October passes as does November, and the school dance arrives in December. She really doesn’t want to go, but her friends convince her otherwise. They go shopping after school one day, and she tries to find the most inexpensive dress to buy. She’s late for dinner that day, so she plays a Japanese folk song on the keyboard she knows her father will enjoy.
The day of the dance comes, and her dad gives her a necklace she knew he saved up for. It’s her initial: the letter “D.” Her mother ends up coming by and helps her get ready. She mentions nothing of helping them financially. She disappears in a puff of smoke when her friends come to pick her up. They end up screaming songs in the car. They pull up to the dance, and her stomach drops. She regrets coming at all and wants to go home.
She and her friends confront Sadie Kane, and she ends up poking fun at her and Walt Stone. She doesn’t want to be a bully; she can hear her father nagging her at the back of her mind. She ignores him and continues on. It's what people expect of her. Karma ends up biting her in the butt when the Nico Di Angelo lookalike shows up. She wakes up groggy and disoriented a few minutes later.
Winter break comes along. She manages to get a job in retail. She can finally use her “gift” of charmspeak for something other than bullying. The Academy starts up in January, and she quits. Her grades are more important for her family. She studies math and science and struggles with English. It still manages to be her best subject. More months pass, and she passes finals with high marks in May. Her dad ends up taking her to a coffee shop to celebrate. She can tell it’s on the more expensive side. The cashier gives her dad a free coffee for being the one-hundredth customer. The cashier had her eyes.
June comes by in a blink of an eye, and her father drives her back to Camp. She trudges up the hill and waves goodbye, watching the beat up car drive away. She walks past the Big House to the dollhouse she's supposed to call home. The pink hurts her eyes and the ever-present smell of perfume gives her long-lasting headaches that never go away. Her siblings trickle in, avoiding her eyes. Then Piper comes in and the cabin bursts into chatter. There wasn’t much laughter when she was the head counselor.
The daily activities go on as usual. She unwillingly goes from station to station. She scurries to the Big House when not under watchful eyes. She knows she'll be accused of screwing with something. She instead helps the harpies and dryads cook dinner. She wakes up early the next day to help the satyrs pick strawberries. It’s one of the only activities that grounds her in the real world.
She endures through the “nice” words thrown her way, but perhaps she deserves it because she never treated other campers nicely anyway. She continues to wake up early to sculpt her face to perfection and spends “hours” finding the perfect outfit. She wishes she could wear the pants her dad bought her, but they weren’t designer. She would get laughed at by her siblings that she “loves” with all her heart.
This cycle repeats every year, and she sometimes cries herself to sleep at night and dreams for some normality. She wants a boyfriend who cares, and friends that were real, and a mom that actually helped her. She doesn’t want stupid rumors, fake laughter, and a dad who struggles for a good life. But here she was living in a small apartment in Brooklyn with her dad in a room with white walls and green bedspread. There was a keyboard in the corner of the living room and daily dinner with her father. There was stupid Camp Half-Blood and her stupid half-siblings during the summer instead of her being with her mortal friends. She was stuck in two worlds when she wanted to be in one. I think it’s quite clear which one she’d rather be in. After all, most of her anger got taken out one and not the other.