Post by lucy on Jun 5, 2012 22:41:52 GMT -5
Finally, a bit of peace.
Honestly, Lucy didn't do well with crowds. Not in the slightest. Before she had gone to camp, she and her family had gone to the circus. She had been about nine years old... and she had gotten lost during the intermission. She could still remember how terrifying it had been... the prospect that maybe, just maybe, her mother and her stepfather and her half-brother would not notice and leave her there. Maybe she would even have to join the circus, she had thought, and become a fat lady so she wouldn't be homeless.
Okay, so Lucy was sixteen and not nine, and now realized how stupid that was... she knew now that of course her family wouldn't have randomly left her at the circus to become a fat lady (not that she could have even if they did leave her there). But it didn't mean that she did well with crowds, even if that particular incident was seven entire years behind her.
The mess hall at Camp Half-Blood was loud and crowded, and careless campers nearly always spilled food everywhere — some days at breakfast, you couldn't go ten feet without crunching a stray Cheerio. Even though there was absolutely zero chance of getting lost at the camp's dining hall-type place, she still got scared. And after that incident the other day — with Skye Remmington, the Oracle girl — Lucy had been getting kind of scared of being there. And the germs. She was somewhat of a germophobe, honestly. She couldn't go a few hours without slathering Purell hand sanitizer all over, and usually took at least five minutes to wash her hands. And the Mess Hall... it was practically a breeding ground for bacteria, what with all the sick campers and the food-sharing that people did because a) they thought it was romantic or b) they didn't care about their siblings' germs.
That night, around dinner time, Lucy had realized she wasn't hungry — she rarely was — and wanted to, say, take a walk instead. She slipped into her flip-flops she had acquired at Forever 21 several months beforehand and exited the Ares cabin gladly, heading for the beach.
Once there, she scratched the walk idea and kicked off her flip-flops, wading in the water... surely getting the bottom of her skirt wet, but she didn't care. There was sand between her toes, the sun was setting, and she felt free.