Designing and building one tiny house had been fun. Constructing four? I was over the moon. “I won’t let you down, Chiron!”

Two weeks later, I let him down.

I had been working overtime to modify my original design. I widened the doorways for better access. I got some magical paint from the Hephaestus cabin so the exterior color of each new minibuilding could be changed with just a touch, making each one unique. I applied everything I knew about extra-dimensional construction to create impossibly deep storage containers, a larger shower in the bathroom, and built-in furniture that could be moved, collapsed, or reshaped as desired. With a snap of your fingers, you could turn the living area into a bedroom, or a gym, or a dining room, or a military command center that even Clarisse would be proud of. I added a dozen preprogrammed interior-decorating schemes so Lacy could never accuse the space of being boring. When I finally rolled out the new cabins and proudly presented them to Chiron, I expected him to be pleased. Instead, he looked puzzled.

“Um…is this it?”

I frowned. “You asked for four, right?”

“Four cabins. Not four models.”

My spirits deflated like a bunch of month-old party balloons.

“Oh, dear,” Chiron murmured when he saw my face. “That model you showed me—that was the full-size cabin, wasn’t it?”

I nodded. “That was the whole point, wasn’t it? Saving space? I—I thought smaller buildings…”

He kindly laid his hand on my shoulder. “Annabeth, your work is exemplary. But as lovely as these units are, I fear that the children of, ah, lesser deities—for lack of a better term—will not appreciate accommodations so much smaller than the other cabins.”

The flaw in my concept was so obvious, I couldn’t believe I hadn’t considered it. The whole point of Percy’s plan was so our new recruits—and their godly parents—would feel included at camp—equal, not lesser. But they wouldn’t see my tiny houses as fun minimalist living spaces. They’d see them as yet another snub from the more powerful deities and their kids. I was so embarrassed, I wanted to crawl under a rock.

“I’ll get Harley to blow up the tiny houses,” I mumbled. “He’ll like that.” I turned to go, but Chiron stopped me.

“Wait a moment.” He studied the units. “These have wheels.”

“Yeah. I mean, they don’t have to have wheels, but I thought—”

“Perhaps I was too hasty,” Chiron said. “Let me try something.”

He put his shoulder to the closest minicabin and pushed it toward the next one in line. Having the strength of a stallion, Chiron had no trouble moving the tiny houses around. A few more shoves and he had arranged the four units so they were back-to-back, two on either side. The slanted rooftops joined into one centerline peak. In short, the tiny houses looked as if they’d been designed to fit together as a single structure that was about the same size as the older cabins.

“You know,” Chiron said, “I think this might work quite nicely for our newest pair of demigods.” He called across the commons, “Holly! Laurel!”

Identical twin girls who had been arguing on the steps of Hermes cabin raced over, each trying to push the other out of the way so she could be first.

“What’s up?” asked the one on the left.

“Contest?” the one on the right asked eagerly. “World war?”

“Something even more exciting,” Chiron promised. “Annabeth, I’d like you to meet Laurel and Holly Victor, recently claimed daughters of Nike, the goddess of victory. Laurel, Holly, this is Annabeth Chase, the most gifted architect at camp. She redesigned the palaces of Mount Olympus!”

The twins’ eyes widened in amazement. I felt a little self-conscious with Chiron praising me. I was, in fact, the only architect at camp. But that bit about redesigning Mount Olympus—that was true. It was the centerpiece of my college-admissions portfolio.

“What you see in front of you,” Chiron continued, “is Annabeth’s latest triumph: completely customizable, modular cabins.”

Laurel edged toward the nearest tiny house. She peeked inside the door. “It’s small.”

“Ah, but it’s not!” Chiron said. “It’s private. Each module is for a maximum of four people. How many do you have to live with right now in the Hermes cabin?”

“Like a thousand,” Holly grumbled. “All losers, too.”

I didn’t think the Hermes kids would appreciate that, but I understood what Chiron was trying to do. I chimed in. “These modules are brand-new. The bathrooms are state-of-the-art.”

Laurel’s eyes lit up. “Bathrooms in the cabin?”

“Yep,” I said. “The furniture is programmable. The exterior colors, the interior design—it can be changed to whatever you want.” I touched the nearest cabin, willing it to turn from dull red to bright silver.

“Whoa,” said Holly.

“But we can’t give brand-new cabins like this to just anyone,” I said. “Whoever gets these, everyone else in camp will be totally jealous. We need to find the absolute best campers—”

“Us,” Holly said. “Obviously.”

“Me,” Laurel corrected her sister. “With you a distant second.”

“So who wants to claim a bunk first?”

“Me!” the sisters yelled simultaneously. They charged to the same front door, growling as they tried to push each other out of the way. Then they split apart and made for different entrances.

Shouts rang out from inside the cabins.

“I’ll get to my loft before you!” one sister cried.

“Ha! No chance, loser! I’m already halfway up!”

Chiron turned toward me and smiled. “There we are. Modular units that can be rearranged and moved as desired! Each cluster can be as big or small as we need it to be. More campers can be fit into the same amount of space as a regular cabin, but with more privacy and better accommodations. Annabeth Chase, you are a genius!”

I listened to the sounds of pounding footsteps and triumphant crowing from the Victor sisters as they argued about whose module was the coolest.

“Thanks,” I told Chiron. “Genius was exactly what I was going for.”

My tiny-house mash-up brought the cabin count to seventeen. Three more units—Hebe, Tyche, and Hecate—were added afterward, and construction crews are ready to build more. Space might still be an issue someday, depending on how many gods we end up needing to represent, but you know what? Not one person has complained about my tiny houses being too tiny. In fact, when I get out of college, I may go into business designing portable microhousing for demigods. It beats building rapid-response outhouses, at least.

This four-story sky-blue Victorian is a bona fide gem. The vast wraparound porch offers ample space for pinochle players and convalescents alike. The basement is currently set up for strawberry-jam storage, but can also be used to hide the occasional demigod driven insane by the Labyrinth. The first-floor living quarters, camp infirmary, and combination rec room / meeting room are wheelchair accessible, as is a specially designed bronze-lined office. The rooms of the top floors stand ready to welcome overnight guests, while the attic, now free of its resident desiccated mummy, provides the perfect catchall for camper discards and memorabilia.