The Lightning Thief (Percy Jackson and the Olympians, #1)

by Rick Riordan

Look, I didn’t want to be a half-blood. If you’re reading this because you think you might be one, my advice is: close this book right now. Believe whatever lie your mom or dad told you about your birth, and try to lead a normal life. Being a half-blood is dangerous. It’s scary. Most of the time, it gets you killed in painful, nasty ways. If you’re a normal kid, reading this because you think it’s fiction, great. Read on. I envy you for being able to believe that none of this ever happened.

Or maybe they’d realized I got my essay on Tom Sawyer from the Internet without ever reading the book and now they were going to take away my grade. Or worse, they were going to make me read the book.

“O Zeu kai alloi theoi!

She glanced at the minotaur horn in my hands, then back at me. I imagined she was going to say, You killed a minotaur! or Wow, you’re so awesome! or something like that. Instead she said, “You drool when you sleep.”

“Wait,” I told Chiron. “You’re telling me there’s such a thing as God.” “Well, now,” Chiron said. “God—capital G, God. That’s a different matter altogether. We shan’t deal with the metaphysical.”

the heart of the fire moved to Rome, and so did the gods. Oh, different names, perhaps—Jupiter for Zeus, Venus for Aphrodite, and so on—but the same forces, the same gods.”

I thought about being a teacher for three thousand years. It wouldn’t have made my Top Ten Things to Wish For list. “Doesn’t it ever get boring?” “No, no,” he said. “Horribly depressing, at times, but never boring.” “Why depressing?” Chiron seemed to turn hard of hearing again. “Oh, look,” he said. “Annabeth is waiting for us.”

I tried to see what she was reading, but I couldn’t make out the title. I thought my dyslexia was acting up. Then I realized the title wasn’t even English. The letters looked Greek to me. I mean, literally Greek.

“Then who’s your dad?” Her hands tightened around the pier railing. I got the feeling I’d just trespassed on a sensitive subject. “My dad is a professor at West Point,” she said. “I haven’t seen him since I was very small. He teaches American history.” “He’s human.” “What? You assume it has to be a male god who finds a human female attractive? How sexist is that?”

“The flag is that way,” I told her. I wanted to sound angry, but I was afraid it didn’t come out that way. “Yeah,” one of her siblings said. “But see, we don’t care about the flag. We care about a guy who made our cabin look stupid.” “You do that without my help,” I told them. It probably wasn’t the smartest thing to say.

“Poseidon,” said Chiron. “Earthshaker, Stormbringer, Father of Horses. Hail, Perseus Jackson, Son of the Sea God.”

“Braccas meas vescimini!” I yelled. I wasn’t sure where the Latin came from. I think it meant “Eat my pants!”

“What did you want me to do? Let you get killed?” “You didn’t need to protect me, Percy. I would’ve been fine.” “Sliced like sandwich bread,” Grover put in, “but fine.” “Shut up, goat boy,” said Annabeth.

Annabeth muttered to me, “Circus caravan?” “Always have a strategy, right?” “Your head is full of kelp.”

“I appeared on my father’s doorstep, in a golden cradle, carried down from Olympus by Zephyr the West Wind. You’d think my dad would remember that as a miracle, right? Like, maybe he’d take some digital photos or something. But he always talked about my arrival as if it were the most inconvenient thing that had ever happened to him. When I was five he got married and totally forgot about Athena. He got a ‘regular’ mortal wife, and had two ‘regular’ mortal kids, and tried to pretend I didn’t exist.”

“Yes, an architect. Athena expects her children to create things, not just tear them down, like a certain god of earthquakes I could mention.” I watched the churning brown water of the Mississippi below. “Sorry,” Annabeth said. “That was mean.”

“Will the animals be okay?” I asked Grover. “I mean, the desert and all—” “Don’t worry,” he said. “I placed a satyr’s sanctuary on them.” “Meaning?” “Meaning they’ll reach the wild safely,” he said. “They’ll find water, food, shade, whatever they need until they find a safe place to live.” “Why can’t you place a blessing like that on us?” I asked. “It only works on wild animals.” “So it would only affect Percy,” Annabeth reasoned.