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Drew was nine years old when she first noticed the looks she got. There was jealousy from girls and women, there was a strange gleam in men's eyes that she didn't really understand. But she noticed.
Her teachers told her off less, and her father's friends treated her with much more attention than her little brother. By the time she was ten, she had learned that when she asked for things, she got them.
"Pretty girls have to be careful," her step-mother told her when she was eleven and about to start her first day of middle-school. "You'll have to grow up more quickly than most do, Drew. I'm sorry about that."
That had been confusing for all of five minutes, right up until Tommy Sanderson left a note in her locker and Jimmy Hatton offered her his pen in home room, and suddenly people were glaring and calling her a slut because she had thanked them both very nicely. In the end, she said yes to Jimmy because then people were excited for her, not angry.
Jimmy was in the year above and he was a footballer who dumped her for Melissa the cheerleader after a month. She hadn't expected that to hurt, since she had mostly said yes to him out of convenience, but it did. She told him to jump off a bridge and it took the linebacker tackling him for him to stop his steady walk towards the road.
That must be the curse of pretty girls, Drew had realised quietly, internally, and she noticed intently which of her friends seemed to get their way too. She told her step-mother what had happened, and she had seemed perturbed, which made Drew sigh. Her step-mother must not be very beautiful either then, even though her dad's friends all whistled when she served dinner.
Fred Mitchell asked her out four days after the Jimmy incident, but Drew said no because she didn't want to be dumped for another cheerleader. Then the glares started again, this time calling her stuck-up.
By the time she turned thirteen, she had had five boyfriends and been called every name in the book for it, but she had also talked her way out of detention slips and into parties. Being pretty, she realised, meant attention. For better or worse, people were always calling you something.
Harry found her crying in the bathrooms after boyfriend number five said she was too obsessed with looks then turned into a weird snake thing and tried to eat her. He told her that he knew somewhere she could just relax for a bit and someone who could explain why she was so different to everybody else.
She went to his stupid camp that very summer because her dad always got a glazed look in his eye and said yes whenever she told him she wanted something, and found out that the reason she was so pretty was because her mom was the goddess of love.
If she was a daughter of Aphrodite, Drew asked desperately, why had all of her boyfriends chosen other girls in the end?
Camp wasn't very different at first, which was disappointing. Connor jumped in the lake when she told him to, and the Demeter girls glared at her because apparently Miranda liked him, and apparently everybody thought that children of Aphrodite were nice to look at but not much real use.
Then, a week in, Chiron looked very sad at the barbecue and announced that Freya had died. Drew hadn't known Freya, but she knew that the number of deaths that started coming in wasn't normal, until eventually her sister Silena admitted that there was a war going on. They didn't tell new campers, apparently. It scared too many off.
Drew had been tempted to leave because of the whole potential-death thing, but then an Ares kid called her sister vapid and the entire cabin yelled at him and cursed his pillows to leave foundation streaks on his face that wouldn't wash off so he looked like an extra on Jersey Shore.
She had never been in a community like that before, which would defend her from cruel words. It was only fair that she fight to help them too in exchange.
Every holiday was spent at camp after that - Christmas, Easter, summer and all of the half-terms.
Two of Drew's sisters and three of her friends died before she turned fifteen, which was hard, but she dealt because everybody was dealing and nobody liked to see a daughter of Aphrodite cry. They rolled their eyes as if tears were all they ever saw from them - like Lou-Ellen or Annabeth never cried!
Silena was her hero throughout it all. She was so brave - counsellor and dating Charlie Beckendorf without any intention of obeying mom's order to break his heart and helping in all the war effort stuff. Drew wasn't much good at any of that until Silena told her that the reason people did what she said wasn't entirely because she was pretty but because she was blessed by their mom. Charmspeak came in pretty handy when fighting monsters as it turned out when they invaded camp. People almost looked at Drew and Silena and the cabin with respect after a while.
And then Charlie died. And then the real war started. And then Silena died.
She broke their mom's orders. She paid the price. And despite what Percy Jackson said, Drew knew that she hadn't been a hero but a traitor because the respect disappeared and the glares came back.
But Drew was sick of glares by then, because she had fought the same war as them, lost the same friends so she glared right back. She became counsellor, she obeyed their mom (what was a stupid boy's heart worth, anyway? They cared more about what was between their legs than they did much else) and she stopped being so frightened of what other people thought. Boys could be eye candy if she wanted them to be. Other people could hate her all they wanted, but they would respect her as the daughter of the oldest goddess on the Olympian council when she told them to fetch her shoes for her and they did.
She was pretty and she was petty and cruel. Love is cruel. It had done nothing but hurt her, with death and betrayal and being nice hadn't got Silena anywhere. Why should she be called a hero when she had gotten so many people killed? Nice doesn't mean good.
Aphrodite appeared to her once, and stroked her cheek though she didn't say anything. Silena had been her favourite, but Drew had met her now and that was more than any of her living siblings got. If she found herself hoping for another appearance on days she was particularly catty, she squashed those thoughts back down viciously.
Piper came to Camp when Drew was sixteen. She derided everything that their siblings and Drew liked (to look pretty isn't a bad thing - this cabin is supposed to be safe from those sneers - to like boys isn't bad either, Miss-dating-the-son-of-Jupiter) and hopped off for a quest the first chance she got.
Drew didn't want a quest. She didn't want to fight. Fighting was all that had been done in camp for years, couldn't it just stop for a moment? Piper derided not wanting to fight too, but she was new and Drew hated her a little bit for not having watched anyone die yet. She'd learn soon.
When Piper got back from her quest, she took the counsellorship and then what did Drew have? Piper was mom's favourite, Piper was counsellor, Piper had stronger charmspeak, Piper got respectful looks while Drew was relegated back to annoyed ones. They were worse now, actually. Now she had bitch to add to the list.
The cabin tradition was scrapped again, and Drew felt her breath hitch at the proclaimation. Here was Piper, following in Silena's footsteps, dooming herself. A small part of Drew was happy at that. Let them write their own destructions. She wouldn't make the same mistake, as she smiled instead of cringing at the son of Athena who told her she had a nice ass and asked him if he wanted to go to the Campfire with her.
There was another war, and more death, and sometimes Piper looked haunted too but Drew didn't try to make amends. She wasn't going to mourn a dead-woman-walking. She just curled her eyelashes and wore waterproof mascara so in term time at school nobody knew that she cried in the bathrooms.
Jason died, just like Charlie. Piper was devastated, even though she had dumped him already anyway, and Drew wanted to shake her and tell her that she shouldn't have tried to avoid the tradition in the first place. Hadn't enough death happened?
But she didn't. She just rolled her eyes and told her sister that there would be other yummy boys, and took the outraged glare as a compliment this time.
People would always look at Drew, but she stopped caring when she turned seventeen. Pretty girls might grow up faster than some, but demigods always grow the fastest.