Oh, my gods, it’s my first night in the Fourth Cohort barracks! I scored a great bunk right next to the window, and I’m writing by the light of an ancient Roman oil lamp. Sooo cool! I want to record everything I’m feeling, everything I’ve seen and been through to get here. But it’s lamps-out now. So, until next time…

One hour later…

First item on tomorrow’s to-do list: Find a store that sells earplugs. The girl in the bunk next to me snores loud enough to rattle the tiles out of a mosaic. Explains why my bed was up for grabs when I first arrived.

I’m holed up in the girls’ latrine now, writing because sleeping is a lost cause. As far as bathrooms go, this one’s pretty awesome. Marble tile everywhere with gold-plated touches, like the hinges on the stall doors. Seeing those hinges makes me a little homesick, actually. Dad would geek out over them. I don’t get why he loves restoring old hardware so much, but hey, he earns a living doing it, so no judgment.

Apparently, making money is something that comes naturally to a legacy of Mercury. “A legacy of Mercury.” Yikes. It’s still sinking in that Dad and I are descended from a Roman god, and one of the twelve biggies of Olympus, no less. Especially because I knew next to nothing about my family until two months ago. I still don’t know anything about my mom except her name, Cardi, and what she looks like. Looked like. I found a picture of her stashed away in Dad’s room. In the photo she was maybe in her early twenties, and we have the same wavy dark hair, dark eyes, high cheekbones, and large nose. She was leaning against the frame of an open doorway, one hand resting on her stomach. I think she was pregnant then…with me.

Right. Moving on.

I had no clue about the Mercury connection until my twelfth birthday, when Dad gave me an old scroll that showed his family’s genealogy. Three generations back, there’s Great-Granddad, the messenger of the gods, also the god of merchants and shopkeepers, thieves and tricksters, and travelers. Wears a lot of hats, he does, all of them winged.

Full disclosure, Dad: I thought you’d gone bonkers when you showed me that scroll. And when you told me about your past and my future—that like you, one day soon I’d be summoned by the wolf goddess, Lupa, and brought to a crumbling old mansion in Sonoma, California, where her immortal wolf pack would train me to be a Roman soldier. (I have this to say about that: Worst. Campout. Ever.) Assuming I passed all their tests—aka, didn’t die a horrible, wolf-inflicted death—I’d then trek southward through a monster-infested wilderness (second-worst campout ever) to Camp Jupiter, where I’d present your letter of recommendation to whoever was in charge and hope I’d be accepted into the ranks of the Twelfth Legion Fulminata.

Which brings me to this question: How much would it suck to go through all that and not get into a cohort? Answer: A lot.

Not that new recruits need to worry about rejection these days. According to my centurion, Leila, the legion’s numbers were badly depleted last summer. Something about a war involving the primordial earth goddess Gaea, a bunch of giants, a humungous statue of the Greek goddess Athena, and a Greek demigod camp. Good news: Camp Jupiter helped save the world! ☺ Bad news: Camp Jupiter lost a lot of people while helping save the world. ☹ More bad news: Something funky happened to demigod communications soon after our victory. Which Leila says likely spells more trouble coming our way.…

Anyway, Dad, sorry I doubted you, because it all went down just like you said it would. And now I’m here, with my official probatio name tag around my neck: CLAUDIA, FOURTH COHORT. So thank you for the heads-up. And for this journal. If I ever have kids, they can read about my life here so they’re ready when their turns come.

Welp, time to head back to bed. Tomorrow I’ll get my first real look at Camp Jupiter. And the first place I’ll visit?

Wherever they sell earplugs.

Things I learned today:

1) Oatmeal is not the preferred breakfast food among campers. At least, that’s the impression I got from the disgusted looks when the aurae delivered my bowl of it this morning. Well, to each their own, I say.

2) Bargain shopping on the Via Praetoria is easy when you’re descended from the god of shopkeepers. I was on the lookout for earplugs when I spotted a toy store that sells Roman-deity action figures. Mercury was front and center in the window, wearing nothing but a short toga. Now, I’m sure that look was all the rage in ancient times, and the figure was pretty buff, but still, I was a little embarrassed to see mini Great-Granddad standing there like that. Plus, something about his eyes reminded me of Dad.…Anyway, I bought the doll. And I think Great-Granddad approved and loaned me his powers, because somehow I convinced the shop owner to throw in Mercury’s accessories—winged cap, winged sandals, caduceus, and tiny sack of coins—for free. Short toga included (thank gods).

3) Weird things happen on Temple Hill.

I learned this last lesson while checking out Mercury’s temple after my delicious and nutritious breakfast. Compared to the dinky shrines of the minor gods and goddesses, Great-Granddad’s place isn’t too shabby. A rectangular structure with marble columns all around the outside, an ornate fresco above the entrance, and inside, a life-size statue of the god himself.

The weird thing happened when I approached the altar. Someone had put two message bins there in honor of Mercury’s role as messenger to the gods. The bin marked OUTGOING was overflowing with notes, but the INCOMING one was empty, a sad reminder that our communications have flatlined.

Still, I added a note of my own to the outbox. Just a little Hey, Great-Granddad, what’s the word from Olympus? I was about to leave when I heard a fluttering sound. A piece of paper had appeared in the INCOMING bin. Written on it was the Roman numeral twelve—XII—and nothing else.

Now, it’s possible that the note fell out of the OUTGOING bin. But it’s equally possible that Mercury sent it. Either way, it felt important, and I didn’t want anyone else to find it. So I stuffed the note in my pocket and didn’t give it another thought for the rest of the day.

Yeah, right. That paper has been torturing me for hours! Where did it come from? What does XII mean? Twelve Olympians? Twelve months in a year? Twelve eggs in a dozen? My age? Argh!

It doesn’t matter that my roommate is snoring again and I forgot to buy earplugs. Thanks to XII, I’m not getting any sleep tonight anyway.

I once saw a T-shirt that read EVERYTHING HURTS AND I’M DYING. I need one of those. That way, when someone asks how my first weapons practice went, I can just point to my chest. Because ow.

Yes, sports fans, in just one session in the Colosseum, I managed to slice my hand with a gladius and stab my thigh with a pugio. I twanged my cheek with a bowstring and pierced my foot with an arrow. (Note to self: Never wear sandals to weapons practice again.) I launched a weird weighted-dart thingy called a plumbata into the stands. And for my grand finale, I clocked my instructor in the head with the butt of my pilum when I reared back to throw. (She turned it into a teachable moment about why we each wear a galea, immediately followed by a second teachable moment in which she explained galea means helmet.)