Chapter 8 You Really Shouldn’t Trust Me with a Lava Sprayer
You Really Shouldn’t Trust Me with a Lava Sprayer
That night’s menu featured fried chicken with mashed potatoes, biscuits, and corn on the cob—some of my favorites. I couldn’t help wiggling in my seat when the fried chicken platter came my way.
I plucked a breast and wing off the platter. I peeled off the crackling breaded skin and was about to cram it in my mouth when Elam knocked it out of my hand.
“Dude!” I scowled at him.
“If that’s your favorite part of the meal, you have to sacrifice it to the gods, remember?”
He pointed toward the smoldering brazier in the center of the dining pavilion.
Kids were lined up, waiting to drop a portion of their meal into the flames.
I’d seen them doing this last night, but I’d arrived at camp halfway through dinner, so I hadn’t performed the ritual myself.
Apparently, the gods liked the scented smoke from our sacrifices, though why anyone would enjoy the smell of burning chicken skin, I wasn’t sure.
Elam had just saved me from breaking another camp rule.
“Oh,” I said. “Thanks.”
Elam grunted. “I just don’t want the rest of us getting in trouble for your stupidity.”
My face felt as hot as the fire pit, but I smiled politely. “I’ll be sure to return the favor the next time you open your mouth.”
Our cabin was called, and one by one, the other Ares kids came forward to drop their favorite pieces of food into the pit, saying our father’s name. I heard them whisper requests, too:
Please help me climb the rock wall.
Please make me brave around snakes.
Please come visit.
When my turn came, I dropped the fried chicken skin into the fire with a wistful sigh. Please let my rescue plan work.
It was the first time I’d even admitted to myself that I had a plan. But the pieces were slowly coming together in my mind. I didn’t have any faith my dad would listen, much less help. But if there was even a chance, I had to try.
As the chicken skin hit the fire with a sizzle and a snap, the scent of toasted rice mixed with cinnamon wafted toward me.
Definitely not the smell of burning chicken.
Instead, it was the smell of home—my mom working in the kitchen while she hummed along to her favorite songs.
Not my mom the Olympic sharpshooter, or my mom who insisted on straight A-pluses and at least three extracurricular activities a semester.
Just my mom who loved me, cared enough to scrape me up some nurungji from the bottom of the rice cooker, and occasionally even laughed at my stupid jokes.
My throat tightened. My nostrils tingled as I made my way back to my seat. If anyone noticed my eyes were red, I would blame it on the smoke.
I scarfed down the rest of my dinner before anyone could make me sacrifice any more of it to a lesser god of chicken wings or something.
Toward the end of dinner, the conch shell blew. Argus stood at the head table.
“Campers!” he announced. “As some of you may have heard, tomorrow night we’ll be holding our annual fall baton race. The course will begin in the forest at Zeus’s Fist and end here at the dining pavilion.”
“What’s the prize this year?” called Beckendorf.
“Money!” suggested Travis Stoll.
“A camp-wide dance!” called Silena.
Argus held up his hands for quiet. “Something better! The winning cabin will receive an all-you-can eat sundae bar.”
There was a murmur of conversation among the tables but no all-out joy at the idea.
Argus leaned in. “And also…a day trip to New York City.”
The entire pavilion erupted in cheers.
Argus smiled. “The race is a weapons-optional event, but I highly recommend you bring something to protect yourselves.” A few of his eyes flitted to one side—to the table where Silas was sitting—and his tone became serious.
“I’d also like to remind you all that while in the woods, if you see any area marked by mati pendants…
well, that area is off-limits for your own protection, and incredibly dangerous.
Do not enter upon pain of expulsion! Remember the old camp saying? ”
The older campers dutifully chanted: “Evil eye, you’re gonna die. Turn around; don’t be that guy.”
I caught Clarisse glaring at me, maybe wondering if I’d said something about the Wild Zone, but I gave her my best innocent look. I was thankful, though, that Silas had spoken with Argus. Maybe now they’d take Grant’s disappearance more seriously.
“As for tonight,” Argus continued, “when you’ve finished your meal, please head to the amphitheater, where the Apollo cabin will perform an exciting medley of songs from a new musical they’re putting together: Icarus Two: The Wax Is Back!”
Everyone not from the Apollo cabin groaned. A whole musical devoted to a guy who had plummeted to his death after his feather-and-wax wings melted? It sounded drippy and painful.
Argus crossed his arms and glared at us with all one hundred eyes. The groans turned to polite applause.
Lee Fletcher, the Apollo cabin’s head counselor, waved. “That didn’t feel forced at all. Thanks.”
“Ares, up!” Clarisse commanded, and everyone at our table got to their feet. “Except you, Katie.” She smirked. “As I recall, you have KP duty for the next two weeks.”
“Oooh!” My cabinmates jeered as they followed Clarisse to the amphitheater.
As the rest of the campers cleared out, I sighed and started collecting dirty plates, scraping food leftovers into a burlap sack.
At different corners of the pavilion, Benny, Zuri, and Harper were doing the same. I realized we were alone together for the first time since last night.
“Is it wrong to say I’m glad I’m not going to the musical?” Zuri asked.
Harper grinned. “Is it really that bad?”
Zuri tossed a half-eaten corn cob in her sack. “Our opening number is ‘Good Daedalus to You.’ ”
The rest of us winced and laughed.
Zuri carried her stack of dishes to the busing cart. Benny and I added ours until the cart was groaning under the weight of greasy plates, dirty goblets, and grimy, gooey cutlery.
Only then did I realize I had no idea where we were supposed to take it. I hoped some magical army of wind spirits would sweep in, say Thanks, we got it from here! and whisk all this stuff into the skies to clean it in a rain cloud. But I didn’t figure I could be so lucky.
“I found the kitchen,” Benny said in response to my confused look. He didn’t sound happy about his discovery. “It’s over there, behind that pillar.”
“I’ll meet you there in a sec,” Harper said, slinging a bag of food waste over his shoulder. “After I put these in the compost well.”
Benny frowned. “Are you sure you want to do all that by yourself?”
“Yeah, I think the worm is feeling misunderstood,” Harper said by way of explanation. “I’m trying to get on its good side.”
He sounded weirdly cheerful about toting bags of chicken bones to a giant white earthworm, but who was I to judge?
Zuri and I pushed the wobbling cart of dishes toward the pillar Benny had indicated.
He showed us how one of the iron torch sconces could be rotated downward, opening a large marble slab in the floor of the pavilion.
A ramp descended into darkness, its grade shallow enough that we could roll the cart down without losing control of it.
The brimstone stench coming out of that dungeon didn’t make me want to try, though, and the heat almost knocked me off my feet.
“This seems…bad,” I said. “How did you find the entrance?”
“I asked the harpies,” Benny said, like that should be obvious. Me, I would’ve preferred almost anything over having another conversation with the cannibalistic poultry ladies.
Zuri frowned at the dark opening. “This is giving me evil-laboratory vibes, but I guess we have no choice.”
She glanced at us, as if hoping we’d suggest another option. When we didn’t, she took the front end of the cart, and we slowly navigated it down the ramp.
The kitchen was so much worse than an evil laboratory.
The layout mirrored the dining pavilion above—a circular space supported by columns—but down here everything was rough-hewn black volcanic rock.
Between the columns, giant kitchen vents were set in the walls, sucking the noxious gas and heat out of the room just enough to make it not deadly.
On one side of the kitchen was a half circle of steel food prep tables, stovetops, and ovens.
The other side was dominated by sink basins the size of bathtubs, each one filled with a glowing, bubbling red substance.
I edged closer to the nearest sink. The heat emanating from it made my face feel like crispy chicken skin. “Are you serious right now? Is that lava?”
“Don’t get any closer without gear,” Benny advised. He appeared next to us, wearing a silvery hazmat suit. “Safety first. Outfits are over there.”
His voice was muffled behind his fireproof hood, his eyes hidden by a red-tinted visor. I was glad he’d said something, because if I’d just turned around and found him standing there, I might’ve leaped backward into the lava sink.
Zuri and I suited up. Safety first apparently meant that instead of burning to death in lava, we would slowly suffocate inside sweltering fireproof clothing. I held up my hands, which were now covered in thick gloves like the kind police officers used to train K-9 dogs.
“How are we supposed to hold sponges with these?” I asked.
Zuri grinned and grabbed a dirty dish. “Very carefully.”
I didn’t register that she wasn’t wearing a hood until she plunged the dish and her gloved hand into the lava.
“Wait!” I yelped. “What about your hood?”
“Eh.” Zuri withdrew her hand from the lava.
The dirty plate was now so sparkly clean you could eat off it, which was good, since that was what people were going to do.
“I can’t breathe in that thing, so I’ll just be careful.
I should be fine as long as lava doesn’t splash in my eyes, burn a hole straight through to my brain, and leave me running around screaming words I can’t fully form because the lava burned out my left frontal lobe. ”
I stared at her and swallowed hard. “Thanks. That’s good nightmare fuel for the week.”
“Two weeks,” Benny said. He set down his own stack of plates next to the sink on my right. “You think they use lava just to torture KP kids, or because it kills 99.9 percent of germs?”
“Why not both?” I grumbled, and then started dipping and scrubbing my dirty dishes with a fistful of steel wool.
As terrifying as it was, I had to admit there was something satisfying about watching crusty mashed potatoes catch fire and disintegrate.
The work went quickly, too. One dip in the lava was really all it took per plate.
Each sink had a hose with a sprayer nozzle, so I suppose it could’ve gone even faster, but I didn’t feel ready to graduate to lava spraying.
It was kind of weird standing there between Benny and Zuri, quietly doing our chores in our silver alien coveralls. I wondered if I should start some small talk—just to keep from zoning out and making a fatal lava mistake—but Benny beat me to it.
“So, Katie…” he said. “How are things in the Ares cabin?”
“GREAT!” I practically shouted.
Zuri snorted. “Very believable. So, nobody’s found any sign of Grant?”
I thought about what Silas had told me. I wasn’t sure I wanted to break it to the other newbies that I’d confessed to him about our trip in the Wild Zone—especially not while they had easy access to lava sprayers.
“No,” I said. “The searches apparently came up empty. Clarisse has most everyone believing that Grant just decided to leave Camp Half-Blood, but I don’t think he ever left the forest.”
“He didn’t,” Zuri said.
“You sound sure,” Harper chimed in from the doorway.
We turned to look at him, and I threw up in my mouth a little.
Harper’s upper body glistened wetly like he’d just emerged from a refreshing dip in the ocean, but wherever moisture dripped onto the floor, pools of bubbly yellow goo appeared, speckled with chunks of food.
Apparently, his Aphrodite-granted allure only extended so far.
“What in the Underworld happened to you?” Benny asked.
Harper shrugged. “Lex got a little greedy and gobbled a whole sack of chicken bones. Poor thing got one caught in his throat and, well…” He gestured to his soaked self.
“Lex?” I repeated.
“The scolex,” Harper said. “That’s what the big white worm is.”
Zuri wrinkled her nose. “So you’re covered in…”
“Scolex puke,” Harper said matter-of-factly. “It looks grosser than it feels.”
“I’ll take your word on that.” Benny pulled off his hood. “There are towels in the closet on the right. Unless you want to take a bath in the lava.”
“Towels are good,” Harper said. Then he focused on Zuri. “So why are you so sure Grant didn’t leave the woods?”
“Oh…” Zuri cringed, like she was hesitant to explain. “Because…last night? I think I saw him disappear.”